Practicing the Art of Mindfulness in Your Everyday Life
“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience”.
This quote has deeper meanings hidden in it. Often, in this fast world, we fail to pause and look around us. We are multitasking, running around doing one thing or the other without understanding the need to be attentive. In fact, being present or mindful as it is rightly called helps immensely in improving our physical and mental health. But, how do we achieve this? Here’s how you should practice the art of mindfulness in your everyday life.
Mindful Eating
With technology, our habits have also changed. We binge eat watching a series or TV show, or sometimes eat mindlessly while scrolling through the phone. There are times when mindless eating comes to rescue for an emotional breakdown. Either way, we are doing bad both to our physical as well as mental health. Slowly practice to be mindful about the food you feed your body. Understand what is going inside and how they are going to affect your body – it could build or break your system – so mindfulness is the key.
Mindful Interactions
The major mistake we unknowingly make often is being in a different zone while interacting with others. Be it your partner, parents, children, friends or colleagues, you are used to checking your phone every now and then while you are with them. This reduces meaningful conversations and heart-to-heart interaction. Be more mindful while making interactions. Keep your phone aside, look into the eye of the other person and listen mindfully.
Mindful Activities
How often do you fail to remember that one thing you wanted to take from your living room or the activity you wanted to do after work? Are you forgetful about trivial things such as applying conditioner on your hair after shampooing or keeping your used plate back to the shelf after cleaning? These may look trivial, but these indeed show how mindless we are. A million things run through our mind and we often tend to forget the activities we are supposed to do immediately. This could be even because of depression or anxiety, but we can change that too, through mindfulness. Studies show the tremendous transformations mindfulness can make in an individual, both mentally and physically. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/
Practice the art of mindfulness by appreciating the little things. Don’t consider cleaning your home as a chore but an exercise that keeps your surroundings clean, which in turn contributes in keeping your mind healthy. Relish that piece of chocolate mindfully and enjoy every bit of it. Your random thoughts or multitasking should not stop you from enjoying the little things in life – for that, be mindful.
Mindful Pauses
As everyday passes by, take a few minutes to pause and exercise mindfulness. It could be while moving from one task to another, or before traveling, but make sure that you take that much needed pause before you go forward. You could play mind relaxing music and feel the peace within, or do meditation or yoga while you are at it.
A Word from mindsupport
Mindfulness is the key to a content and peaceful life and it is important to practice it, slowly but steadily in your everyday life. It builds a better you and makes you look at life differently. Take one step at a time and Mind Support is here to support you through each step with mindful meditation and yoga. All it takes is a lot of patience, but after enough practice, you will learn to lead a mindful life.