When mindfulness practice refers to "being present" it doesn't necessarily mean one only focuses on the current moment (although in certain circumstances this c

When mindfulness practice refers to "being present" it doesn't necessarily mean one only focuses on the current moment (although in certain circumstances this can be useful) -- rather, mindfulness is all about "going meta", moving outside your consciousness and looking at your thoughts and memories as they appear without allowing them to induce judgement or bias on your part: accepting how they make you feel, acknowledging those emotions, that you're human and they're perfectly normal, but then letting them go. This way you can minimise their emotional effects so you can then theorise objectively on why you had a disturbing thought, and can then either make a note to modify your behaviour to avoid the situation that generated the thought or rationalise a mental solution to the issue at the core of the thought. You essentially become your own psychoanalyst. Further, you can start to be "mindful" of others: acknowledging (consoling yourself with a little mental self-love is good here, "pet your inner monkey") and letting go of the feelings that resulted from their behaviours that upset you so that you can free yourself from the hurt and resentment they cause early, and allow yourself to explore an understanding as to why they acted the way that they did. Often (almost always) you can quickly establish some reasoning for their actions that don't involve unreasonable malice towards you, and thus you can dispose of thoughts that had they lingered would have festered and contributed further to your already 'sensitive' mental state. So while it seems to an observer that early mindfulness practice is focussed on meditation and the literal present moment, its long-term concern is on giving the practitioner the ability to keep an eye on their "present" -- that is, their stream of consciousness -- so they can manage negative thoughts effectively and mitigate any potential damage they could cause, developing strategies to cope with them more easily and eventually moving to an automatic, unconscious response that instantly changes the malignant "Bob is mad at me, I must have done something horribly wrong" to the far more benign "Bob is mad at me, he must be having a bad day. I wonder why?"