Mindfulness is a state of mind that you use to train yourself by paying attention to your present environment. It helps you in your daily life, relationship, work, and your overall well-being.
Mindfulness involves people paying close attention to present moments with no judgment, allowing a relaxed mind and body. The most common form that everyone associates with mindfulness is meditation.
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Meditation forces a person to stop thinking, concentrate and focus on the world around them. To practice mindfulness, the person should pick one thing to think about. It can be paying attention to their breath, listening to the sounds around them, or feeling the warmth of the sun as it touches their skin. If your mind slips up and thinks of something else, that is perfectly fine. Bring your thoughts back to the original activity.
Practicing mindfulness can help you be more aware of your feelings and thoughts and be able to manage all these positively. Failure to be mindful may cause you to react to unpleasant feelings and negative thoughts immediately instead of thinking through your response. Moreover, taking control of your feelings can help reduce anxiety and stress.
Unveiling the Awesome Benefits of Mindfulness
Beginners and experienced professionals can all benefit from practicing mindfulness every day.
Here are some benefits:
- Greater connection within the body
- Improved relationships as mindfulness certainly help in placing check over automatic reactions. This also help you listen better and more effectively
- Better acceptance of some troublesome emotions and thoughts. Mindfulness also enables individuals to let go of such emotions before these start to pose negative impacts on life
- Improved ability to sleep at night
- Reduction on anxiety and stress levels
- Improved relationships with suffering and pain brought by learning acceptance of such pain and be able to live at peace with it instead of being locked up in the consistent struggle
- Positive improvements on how the brain works
- Improved concentration, cognitive ability, and memory
- A general feeling of well-being
- Increased creativity since you let go of doubts that stops creativity and rise in the level of productivity since distractions are being dealt with efficiently
Practicing mindfulness makes it easier for individuals to savor pleasures in life. We often travel or work so hard that it’s like to have horse blinders on. It narrows our scope of view and all we can see is our destination. Keeping these blinders on makes it difficult to savor the journey it takes to get to the destination. What are we not noticing when we are so fixated on the destination?
Mindful Video
Here’s a video that demonstrates what happens when we do not pay attention to our surroundings.
By focusing here and now and practicing mindfulness, you will realize that you are missing out on so much in your life.
Take a moment to stop, observe what’s around you, and pick one thing to cherish that you would have never noticed if you never stopped. You will be glad you did.
What’s one thing you noticed by being mindful? Tell me in the comments below!
Wen is a Certified Health and Wellness Coach who helped people change their behaviors. He brings experience from educating people about their physical health, nutrition, sexual health, and substance use. As a coach, he has worked with over one hundred clients in changing their tobacco use and had over five hundred conversations as a crisis counselor.
