Introducing mindfulness into your daily life can completely shift your perspective and the way you appreciate everything that surrounds you. For achieving this, you will read first about mindfulness and what is it. Then I will show you how to form the habit of mindfulness in 9 easy steps.
What is Mindfulness?
Let’s first understand what is mindfulness. We all know those moments when our mind is just drifting away and we are daydreaming and very far away from the place where we actually are. Or the moments when we just replay in our mind things that happened in the past or imagining all kind of scenarios which can happen in the future. These are some examples of a lack of mindfulness.
Mindfulness means that we are completely aware of the present moment and we are living fully in the present. Focusing your awareness solely on the moment you live in now and clearing your mind of any other thoughts might sound easier than it is. The endless chatter in your mind and the variety of ideas you might have can easily become overwhelming and difficult to handle.
How Does Mindfulness impact your daily life
Living in the present moment might bring you more benefits than you can imagine right now. By reducing the chatter in your mind and learning how to let go of the endless thoughts, you will reach a state of calm.
With mindfulness, you can reduce stress and anxiety. There are easy techniques to achieve this, like meditation, yoga, deep breathing.
If you are still a bit confused about the benefits, you can watch this short video explaining why mindfulness is a superpower:
Easy steps to form a mindfulness habit
Even if it not an easy thing to achieve, you can start your journey towards mindfulness in few simple steps explained below. Any of these will help you get a bit closer to calming your mind and living in the moment.
We each have our own unique journey in life. It is important that at the beginning of this path you will allow yourself time and you will be patient. These are virtues you will need on your way to mindfulness.
1. Let go
Letting go is easier said than done. You might already know that it is good for you to just let go of things that do not serve you anymore but how can you do this?
It takes a lot of practice but in time you can learn how good you will feel if you can let go of things that are bringing negative energies and thoughts into your life. You can start with small steps and slowly you will see that it does become easier.
You can learn to let go of both physical and mental things and below you will find some examples of things to let go of:
- Clutter
- Thoughts
- Worries
- Crowded agenda
- Making everyone happy
- Self-criticism
- Comparison
- Controlling others
- Keeping things to yourself
- Mistakes and regrets
- Pleasing other people
Read more about it in my post 11 Things To Let Go To Increase Your Happiness .
2. Live in the present moment
Learning how to live in the present moment can show how to reduce stress and increase your happiness. We often forget about these concepts even if we know them. It happens because we tend to get lost amongst our thoughts. We allow the daily problems to completely absorb our attention. All these are normal as it takes a lot of practice and discipline to become a mindful person and to increase the strength of your mind.
It takes time to get there but all this starts with small steps. None of the mindful people achieved mindfulness without effort and dedication. Be determined to reach a higher state of mind and work every day towards your goal. Every little step you take towards mindfulness will take you closer to the person you want to become.
This does not apply only to mindfulness but to any area of your life. No matter what you want to achieve, you have to start with the first step. And then follow it with small steady steps towards the direction you chose. You will slowly but surely get closer to your scope and you will have time to enjoy your journey and the lessons you learn on the way.
Learn more about living in the present moment with these 10 Mindful Tips To Learn How To Live In The Moment.
3. Breathe
Breathing brings oxygen to our body. Every single cell feeds with the oxygen we breathe. But this can also be used as a mindfulness technique.
Stress can cause a lot of damage and inflammation in our bodies. Breathing exercises can act as a conscious way of directly influencing the parts of our body affected by stress. These can be lowering the heart rate, reduce blood pressure and inducing a state of relaxation. The main scope is to reverse the harmful effects of stress.
You can try some breathing techniques for stress relief described here.
4. Look around
Being aware of the things surrounding you will make you tune in and get back to the present moment.
It is all about not losing the focus and actually acknowledging the things that surround you. By noticing the things around, you will hit the pause button on your restless mind.
5. Meditate
Meditation is one of the best ways to become more mindful. Regular practice of meditation will keep your mind trained to focus easily. Start with short sessions for beginners and try to practice it daily. You can slowly increase the time as you fill more comfortable with being still.
Simple meditation practices are tea meditations as they are perfect for beginners. The tea meditation starts with the moment when you decide to make yourself a tea and you are heading towards your kettle. Tea is much more than just a drink, it is powerful and if you make time to pay attention to it, you start to understand more about it. I will now show you how to do that and how to get back to the present moment by just enjoying a simple cup of tea.
Try some of my free tea meditations and learn more about them here: Tea Meditation – All You Need To Know About It
6. Accept yourself
Accepting yourself for who you truly are is the most important thing you can do for achieving inner peace. Loving yourself can completely change your life and the way you feel living it.
You are the best version of yourself at this moment. By accepting all the little defects you consider you have which in fact are just making you the unique person that you are, you will be at peace with yourself.
We are the worst judges of our own person. If instead of judging every little action you did, you just accept and you love yourself for who you are, everything will come into place.
Workplace mindfulness
7. Create a routine
If you will try to push too many things onto your agenda it will make you feel overwhelmed. In time, all these ideas build up you will just have too many thoughts at the same time and lose focus. If your mind is scattered amongst the various thoughts you will not really accomplish any of them if you focus on too many at the same time.
One efficient way to start being more productive and sticking to your resolutions is to incorporate some of them into your morning routine.
Get my free step-by-step guide to your healthy morning routine to help you set up your day
8. Be grateful
Being grateful helps us attract more good things in our life. It reduces stress and it can really improve the image we have about our own person, life and environment. It can help us see all these in much brighter colors and filled with positive vibes.
Now it is the best time to start being grateful. You can start by being grateful for the things that happened during the last month. By starting with this, you can then create a daily or weekly habit. You will always be able to find things to be grateful for in your life, you just need to train the way you think into seeing all those things that we tend to take for granted.
If you are still a bit confused about what can you be grateful for, just start thinking about the smallest things around you. Everything that happening and that surrounds you is contributing to your wellbeing in one way or another. Here is a list of 50 Reasons To Be Grateful For.
9. Make time
Making time for yourself can offer you the possibility of adding to your routine all of the above mindfulness techniques or at least some of them.
When you are not stressed by the time your mind will be more calm and clear and overall you will be happier. If you need some inspiration on how to make more time in your day when we only have 24 hours per day, pop-over to my post How To Make More Time For Yourself
Love,
7-Day Mindfulness Challenge
Workplace mindfulness
