Mindfulness is the practice of being aware or conscious of your behaviour, your surroundings and your thoughts, feelings and emotions.
When you are mindful, it allows you to focus on the present moment, which helps to relieve anxiety and stress about the past or future.
Practicing mindfulness has extraordinary benefits and can help you feel calm, balanced and at peace. It also allows you to accept whatever life brings your way and allows you to feel confident in making decisions.
Try for a moment to stop and observe 7 things surrounding you now. This small act is an act of mindfulness, as it requires you to become aware of the present moment.
How did this exercise make you feel?
If you want to start practicing mindfulness on a daily basis, here are 8 tips that you can use-
1.) Don’t Believe All Your Thoughts
Being mindful of your thoughts is about listening to your thoughts without judgement.
When a thought comes in, you don’t need to believe it or accept it, you just need to simply listen.
Thoughts flow in and flow out, but we are not our thoughts, we are the one listening to our thoughts. This means we don’t have to identify, believe or engage in thoughts that we don’t like the sound or feel of.
You have the power to choose your thoughts, and when you become mindful of your thoughts, it allows you to choose the best thoughts; the thoughts that are going to lift you up, inspire you and make you feel good.
2.) Embrace all Emotions
When you bring your awareness to the present moment, it allows you to really connect with how you are feeling.
When you connect with how you are feeling, it allows you to understand and process your emotions instantly, rather than bottling them away.
When you bottle your emotions away, they can fester and become bigger and bigger, but when you embrace and accept them in the present moment, they become a lot easier to handle and to release.
3.) Enjoy the Fluidness of Life
Everything in life is temporary, and when you tune into the present moment it will allows you to understand this on the deepest of levels.
Every day is just a series of different moments strung together and each of these moments evaporate as quickly as they came.
Accepting the fluidness of life is accepting that things come and go- thoughts and feelings, events, people and so on.
Change is a fact of life, and the more you can accept this, the easier it becomes to enjoy the flow of life.
4.) Really Listen to Others without Judgement
When you bring your awareness to the present, it allows you to truly listen to what others are saying and feeling.
When we are not present in a conversation, often we are thinking about our reply, or how the situation affects us. Sometimes we can even start making judgements about the person and labelling what they are saying without truly listening to their words.
To be an effective communicator, you need to learn how to be an effective listener. Simply practice listening to what other people have to say without making judgements or thinking about your response.
5.) Body is a Temple
When you tune into the present moment, it allows you to really connect with your body.
Take a moment to just get still and bring your awareness to your body. Do you notice any aches and pains? Do you notice you are holding your body in a weird or awkward position?
Tuning into your body can help you understand what your body needs and what your body is craving. Is it craving more sleep? Some water?
When you develop this connection with your body, it becomes very difficult to abuse your body with harmful foods, drugs and so on.
6.) Keep a Growth Mindset
Every experience in life is an opportunity to grow. Whatever comes your way in life can often simply be viewed as a leaning experience.
When you keep your mindset focused on growth, it can allow you to view life as simply a fun adventure that challenges you to learn, grow and inspire others.
A growth based mindset also allows you to not view your life as being so serious and to not take things so seriously.
Perhaps seeing life as a game can help you to take a step back and see things as an opportunity rather than a disaster.
7.) Breathe
It is important to slow down and just give yourself permission to breathe.
Often we put expectations on ourselves that we have to keep moving, keep working or keep doing things, but sometimes just sitting down and taking time to breathe can help bring more mindfulness into our day.
Mindfulness can then in turn actually make us more productive and help us to keep our energy levels strong throughout the day.
Breathing is also one of the best ways to connect with the body. Not only does it slow down your heart rate and reduce stress levels, but it can also help you to become aware of the present moment.
8.) Let it Be
One of the most powerful mindfulness exercises that you can do is simply practicing the art of letting it be. This means that you simply accept what flows in and what flows out of your life wholeheartedly.
When you accept the situations and events of your life, rather than struggling against them, it allows you to see things from a much clearer perspective.
It also allows you to focus on creating a solution, rather than fighting against things that may not even be in your control.
Accepting what flows in and out of your life is a very peaceful practice and one that will always help you to feel calm and in the flow of your life.
