Life is fast, people often speed through daily tasks on autopilot, forgetting to think about how they feel.
Have you ever noticed that every day you feel frustrated by the same thing? For example, every day you look for your keys, forgetting that they are on the coffee table. Bringing awareness to these moments can help you build more intentional habits.
Understanding points of frustration, and also points of joy, can allow you to live your life with more meaning. Similarly, do you ever make careless mistakes? This happens when you struggle to be fully present, despite if it is a mundane task or something you enjoy.
Practicing mindfulness allows you to bring awareness to your feelings, thoughts and actions. Essentially, learn to be more present with yourself and less judgemental or automatic by learning about mindfulness.
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present. It has trended in the last few years as a skill that can increase joy, productivity, and satisfaction in personal and professional environments.
Some folks struggle to fight toxic thoughts around stress, anxiety or things they cannot control. If you deal with these kinds of thoughts, mindfulness is an important tool to help you relieve them. By being present, grounding yourself at this moment, you can decrease stress and allow yourself to step away from anxiety, even if it is only for a moment.
Aside from personal benefits, it can help you be a better teammate. If you are being present with your team, you can be more productive and sensitive to their needs. For folks who get lost in the moment and don't pay attention to what is happening around them, conflict can arise. The same goes for personal relationships as well.
Having more self-awareness through mindfulness can help you to better communicate and interact with those around you, hopefully forming more meaningful relationships.
How To Incorporate It Into Your Life
Incorporating mindfulness requires making new habits and rewiring your brain. If you are on autopilot, your brain is just going and going without stopping.
The goal with mindfulness is to be present, start in any way that works for you. That could include meditation, breathing exercises, journaling or talking about your feelings.
Give yourself a break. Set an alarm or schedule time in your calendar for you. Some people benefit from meditation. Take a few moments to take deep breaths, evaluate how they feel and step away from the moment to recent themselves. If that works for you, fantastic.
If taking a moment isn't accessible to you, try a different modality for incorporating mindfulness. Try writing how you feel in a journal. Try to make a 5-minute journal entry at the beginning and end of the day to reflect on what happened, and how you felt about it.
While mindfulness should be a habit you form individually, feel free to share it with others who want to be mindful as well. This can also help you to build more awareness by getting out of your brain and getting feedback from others. Maybe people around you have good tips on how they like to take moments and reflect.
The Benefits Of Mindfulness
Being mindful will allow you to be more productive, thoughtful and less stressed.
No matter your stress levels, everyone feels overwhelmed sometimes. Having skills in mindfulness allows you to have tools to deal with stress when those moments arise. Instead of panicking, you can step away and re-center. Identify what is causing your stress, and accept it.
Mindfulness is about accepting how you are, not necessarily changing yourself, just being present with yourself. You can be a better partner, friend and colleague by practicing mindfulness. The better you know yourself and your feelings, the more you can communicate them and understand others.
Being present is a gift that too many people overlook. To be human and alive is a privilege that should be enjoyed thoroughly. You can be mindful of the present moment, whether it be a moment of doubt, happiness, or fear, it can be celebrated because you are experiencing it.
Getting comfortable with the present will also call on you to reframe your thoughts. In moments of stress and the unknown, try to see the glass half full, you are alive to experience it and now you have the tools to deal with the traffic jam of thoughts that occurs in these moments.
If you can control the traffic of thoughts in your daily life, you will be able to be more productive and take advantage of your time. Mindfulness will give moments and piece of mind back to you.
