This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Alice Naupery.

You know with our busy lives, it can feel like we're constantly living for the future.

What time do I need to leave for work? Can I get there on time?

Or there's the bigger stuff, such as, well, I ever get that promotion or meet that goal.

We have so many regrets about the past, worries about the future.

You think to yourself, why did I pick the fight or say that mean thing to my sister?

Why didn't I stand up for myself?

We're in a trans of thinking, we're time traveling, we're in the future, we're in the past.

That's Tara Brock. She's a psychologist and a kind of superstar in the meditation world.

And she says often those distracting thoughts can be about bigger feelings.

Like, am I doing a good job? Am I enough?

Tara says all this ruminating, it makes us miss out on the good stuff.

If we look at our lives, how many moments can you sense that in some way

the fear of failing or the self-consciousness or the feeling of being not good enough

was in some way dampening or contracting or pulling you away from real intimacy or spontaneity or

enjoying a sunset?

So this episode, a conversation with Tara Brock about her latest book, Radical Compassion.

It outlines something called rain, a simple useful mindfulness tool that can quiet those

distracting thoughts that frankly aren't very useful.

And to be everything we most value, love, creativity, wisdom, compassion, comes from being present.

So mindfulness gives us access to those qualities.

We step out of the trans of thinking and we come into our full being.

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