“At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been. So when you pay attention to something you don’t especially value, it’s not an exaggeration to say that you’re paying with your life.”
-Oliver Burkeman
I am probably not alone in this, but from the moment I wake in the morning my mind runs rampant from one random thought to another unless I begin to actively observe the phenomenon. And if I can sustain the observation, then thoughts slowly fade. Or shorten, at least. But it takes a certain degree of deliberateness to remind myself what is happening, and to make the connection that my life only really is what is happening right now, before me.