Did you know that spending as little as five minutes being grateful or focusing on someone that you love can boost your immune system for the rest of the day? Conversely, spending five minutes in an angry state can lower the immune response for the rest of the day? Our thoughts and emotions are very powerful agents in our body. We need to learn to use them wisely!

Mindfulness is a crucial skill for anyone, but even more so for business owners or entrepreneurs, for there seems to be no lack of worrisome items. The to-do list runs the length of a 20k marathon and fourteen people seem to need your attention at once. And like a run-away train, our thoughts can collide and erupt into frustration and anger or spiral down to apathy or depression. So many of the thoughts that feed our negative emotions focus either on the past or on the future – the two time frames we can never inhabit in the present moment. Thus, only by fully inhabiting this very moment, can we influence our future for good or learn to interpret our past differently, for the past is no longer a location to which we can return and alter. If we allow worry over the past or the future to consume the present moment, we have just sacrificed the only vehicle under our control to drive us to our desired destination. So…focus. Focus on the only moment you can inhabit – the right now. What do you need to do right now to make your future better? What small steps do you need to take right now to work toward your goals? What tasks do you have for right now that need your attention? What do you have to be grateful for right now? We cannot repaint the past. We cannot predict the colors of our future. But we can focus our attention and skill on the only canvas we have before us…the right now.