The only thing you need to learn in order to live in the present is how to be mindful. Simple. But it takes practice.
Where Does All the Stress Come From? The thing we call “stress” is an individual experience. It’s a word that wasn’t even defined in the way we use it now until well into the twentieth century. Before that, it was a term used in physics to describe a property of elasticity. In the 1930s, a researcher named Hans Selye rechristened the word to mean a body’s response to a demand for change. He experimented with subjecting laboratory animals to everything from temperature extremes and loud noise to perpetual frustration. What happened? The animals exhibited resulting physical symptoms such as heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and rheumatoid arthritis. These body symptoms correlate with the problems that humans have when they find themselves frustrated and subject to perpetual discomfort. The things that produce a sense of anxiety or being overwhelmed in one person can have no effect—or even a positive effect—on another. A good example of this is the way introverts and extroverts interact with the world, how they find peace and replenishment, and what aspects of social interaction they find most difficult. We create our own stress when we practice what I call “time travel.” As I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, we leave the 22 Chapter 1