Mindfulness is a form of meditation that entails becoming and staying completely aware of your feelings and senses without trying to interpret them. The purpose is relaxation and stress reduction.
Mindfulness involves breathing and guiding your imagination to internalize peace of mind and reduce anxiety and the occurrence of negative thoughts and feelings.
Reject Reactiveness
If you’re reactive, you let external factors, like other people, dictate your life. You care about what they think about you, and this stresses and overwhelms you. Instead, choose to be “active” and focus on what happens daily. It can bring clarity of purpose and help you concentrate on what’s important.
Pay Attention
Often, our days move on autopilot from when we wake up to when our head hits the pillow at night. Try to pay attention to what’s happening around you instead. When you sit and look outside the window, take in everything you see. If you reach for your favorite snack, don’t devour it. Smell it, taste it, and enjoy every bite.
Don’t Push Too Hard
Mindfulness shouldn’t be a chore. You should enjoy meditation and feel refreshed when you finish. If your attempts to meditate leave you feeling uncomfortable or unhappy, change the timing and what you do when you meditate. Start with shorter sessions and find the right duration for yourself.
Find Joy in Simple Pleasures
Don’t become obsessed with feeling better or improving your situation overnight. Instead, keep a steady pace and try to enjoy every good thing during the day. Be open and accepting of your circumstances, including setbacks. If you have a tough day at work, try to find joy in a simple activity, like watching birds outside your window or going for a short walk.
Scan Your Body
Scanning your body is a simple mindfulness technique you can use every day. While lying down, you extend your arms and legs and focus on each part of your body. Ensure you’re paying attention to everything you feel when focusing on each part, and journal about any strong sensations (or lack of sensation) later.
Don’t Focus on the Negative
Not focusing on the negative is easier said than done. Research found that 80% of our thoughts are negative. We can’t necessarily help that because it’s a natural coping mechanism. However, we can let these thoughts pass through our minds without focusing or dwelling too much on them. Counter negative thoughts with positive ones. Try thinking about something that brings you joy, like your pet or hanging out with your loved ones. It will help your mood because positive thinking increases how much serotonin gets released into your brain.
Start Your Morning Right
One way to immediately improve your circumstances is to create a morning routine. Intentionally focus on feelings like happiness, energy, and confidence when you wake up. You can use affirmations, like saying, “I’m paying attention, and I have a clear purpose.” When you start your morning right, you’re less likely to spend your day on autopilot and become reactive.
Have Zero Expectations
Many people start a new activity with high expectations. They set themselves goals, expecting their anxiety to disappear in a week or a month. Expectations can be your worst enemies in the long term because if they don’t happen, you become demotivated, stressed, and depressed about your goals. Instead, have zero expectations. Without an expected outcome, you can let your mind take you where you need to go on your personal mindfulness journey.
Be Diligent
Like other relaxation and stress-reduction techniques, mindfulness requires diligence for any effects to become visible. Try to stick with your mindfulness routine even when you have busy days; excuses to avoid it are plentiful. Without perseverance, you’ll lose your intention to live in the now and return to the old, destructive patterns of behavior.
Show Kindness to Yourself
When you’re trying to improve your life and your mental health, it’s easy to become a harsh judge of everything you do that falls short of perfection. It’s one of the things I struggle with the most. But being kind to yourself and treating yourself like you would a dear friend is key to improving your outlook and reducing negative thoughts and behaviors.
Write That Intrusive Thought Down
We established we can’t eliminate or even control negative or intrusive thoughts. However, we can observe them and write them down. Once we do, they lose some of their power over our minds because naming our fears is the first step in conquering them. Once you write a negative thought down, counter it with a positive one. “I’m so over this annoying thing” can become “I’m able to focus on this and tackle it more smartly.”
Be Grateful About Your Life
You can’t see any joy in your life when you have a negative outlook. You naturally focus on the things that cause you frustration and pain and see nothing to be grateful for. Turn this around to eliminate stress and feel gratitude. Instead of focusing on what’s frustrating about your work, be grateful for what it helps you bring into your life. Share your gratitude with others, too. Tell your loved ones how they make you feel and how grateful you are to have them in your life.
Use Sitting Meditation
Sitting meditation is simply meditation you do when you’re sitting down. Find a wellness space like a quiet spot where you can sit comfortably and breathe through your nose, focusing on your breathing. When you notice a thought interrupting your focus on your breath, make a note of it to write it down later and replace it with a good thought. Then, focus on your breathing again.
Eliminate Distractions
If you’re new to mindfulness, you may become easily distracted. Practice meditation in a quiet area without distractions like your phone and fully concentrate on what you’re doing. Since most meditation techniques barely take a few minutes every day, it’s easy to control (or eliminate, if you’re diligent enough) your fear of missing out by putting your phone or anything else that distracts you away.
Learn To Say No
If you’re like me, you have difficulty saying “no” and often feel frustrated and overworked because you took on too much or said “yes” to too many people. Learn to say no, and you will finally experience time for yourself and relax.
Don’t Give In to Fear
Also, say “no” to fear. When you get a good feeling and immediately worry that something will come up to ruin it, reject that thought before it sabotages your good mood. Let it pass and replace it with something that keeps you in the moment. If you’re looking forward to meeting your friends tonight and your mind whispers, “But what if they cancel?,” remind yourself that you can always start reading a book instead.
Use Breathing To Eliminate Negative Thoughts
If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you know the important role that breathing plays in regulating your mood. When you experience negative or intrusive thoughts, you can focus on your breath as it moves in and out of your body to calm down. Even a couple of breaths can help get your mind under control.
Don’t Fret About Being Perfect
Many people care more about how good they are at meditating than about how meditating is helping them. Don’t be one of them. Let loose and relax instead of wondering if your technique is correct and overanalyzing what you’re doing. Meditation should make you feel better, without the expectation for perfection.
Try Walking Meditation
Similar to sitting meditation, walking meditation aims to put you in touch with your body by making you focus on the sensation of standing and walking. Practice it on a quiet path, focusing on how your feet and legs feel as you walk and noticing the thoughts that interrupt your concentration for later observation.
Don’t Procrastinate
Procrastinating or making excuses not to do something is an enemy of mental well-being. Avoid using your busy schedule as an excuse not to practice meditation or engage in good behavior for your mental health, like going for a walk. While missing a day or two because you’re under the weather or busy is not a big deal, make sure procrastination doesn’t become a habit.
Show Kindness Without Expecting Rewards
Showing kindness to others reminds us to be kind to ourselves. Offer to pick up groceries for your elderly neighbors, help clear the driveway for the busy single parent next door, or pay it forward by buying a drink for the next customer in line at your local coffee shop. When we show kindness without expecting anything in return, we wire our brains to experience joy, a natural remedy for stress.
Use Guided Meditation
You can use dozens of videos on YouTube if you want to make a foray into guided meditation this year. Guided meditation is easy to get into because all you have to do is follow a few steps. Look around and find something that works for you, whether you want to use it for mindfulness, better sleep, or a better start to your day.
Spend Time With Your Loved Ones
When we’re with the people we love and care for, our mental health improves because we can relax naturally. If you want to be in the right mindset for mindfulness, create routines with your family and spend as much quality time as possible with your family and pets. You can also do fun projects with your kids just to spend time together and bond.
Don’t Indulge in Sedentary Pursuits
To master mindfulness, keep moving. It’s hard, especially if you’re chained to a desk all day like I am, but it’s worth it. On top of the obvious physical benefits of staying active, there are also many mental benefits, like improved clarity of mind, a positive outlook, and a better mood — all resulting from endorphins (the feel-good neurotransmitters) released into the bloodstream when we exercise.
Disconnect From Your Online Persona
Besides putting your phone away or at least on silent, disconnecting from your online persona is necessary for mindfulness. Being authentic is nearly impossible when hiding behind our keyboards, typing what we think will make others like us. Nevertheless, authenticity is crucial for improving your outlook, lowering stress levels, and feeling refreshed and relaxed.
Don’t Compare Yourself to Others
In the same vein as our previous tip, concentrate on yourself, your needs, and your thoughts when you practice mindfulness. Even if your friends also use meditation to improve their well-being, comparing yourself to them will only make you reactive, which, as we’ve seen, is to your detriment.
—
This post was previously published on Wealth of Geeks.
***
You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project
Compliments Men Would Love to Hear More Often | Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Reality All Women Experience (that Men Don’t Know About) |
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: iStock