Become More Mindful
Mindfulness is an important element for creating a cozy life for yourself. When you’re mindful of what you’re doing and what’s happening around you, then you can take specific actions to bring more coziness into your life. Mindfulness has been around for thousands of years and has helped millions of people create positive influences in their lives. It can also help you to determine how you can increase the amount of coziness you’re experiencing through being mindful and attentive of all aspects of your life.
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness means actively paying attention to what is happening in the present moment by attuning to that moment without judging it as good or bad, right or wrong. It is living your life with purpose, knowing each moment really matters, and actually noticing what is happening to you and around you. Mindfulness is an awareness of every sensation you feel and every thought and emotion you have, and then accepting them as your truth without criticism. When you’re practicing mindfulness, you’re fully focused on the here and now, the moment you’re living right this minute, instead of dwelling on things that happened yesterday or imagining what might happen tomorrow, much like fika in Sweden (see Chapter One).
Originating in the Buddhist religion more than 2,600 years ago, Buddha gave his monks the responsibility of teaching others about the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which are mindfulness of the body, mind, feelings, and phenomena (dhammas) in order to know each of these as they really are. Mindfulness is now practiced all over the world because of the benefits it gives you on both a personal and spiritual level. The concept of mindfulness was brought to the United States in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He created the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. His system originally contained the Buddhist philosophy, but he later removed those teachings and renamed the program Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in order to move mindfulness into the realms of science so it would become a clinical practice, which it has.
Since we aren’t automatically mindful, we have to teach ourselves to be. Typically, we’re off and running, doing this and that, and breezing through our lives, which often means we’re missing a lot that’s happening around us, and to us, simply because we’re not paying attention. Mindfulness keeps us focused on the task at hand instead of worrying about how other people are completing the same task or if we’re doing it right or wrong. It can help us keep an open mind about everything. When you’re mindful, you don’t pass judgment. You listen, understand, and know the experience is worthwhile. You don’t judge others for their decisions because it is their path, not your own. Mindfulness will change you, transforming your perception of the world and the way you act and react to other people. It also changes the way you perceive yourself and your place within the divine. Mindfulness teaches you to observe instead of reacting, to remain calm instead of losing your temper, and to create effective reactions to the situations you find yourself involved in instead of responding blindly based on emotion. Mindfulness broadens your horizons, expands your mind, and gives you profound insights into spirituality.
Within the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness is practiced through meditation and breathing techniques that are done while sitting on the floor in the customary lotus position. However, many people also practice mindfulness while going about their day, without taking the time to do a traditional meditation ritual. Sometimes you just don’t have the time to sit and meditate but you still want to make mindfulness a big part of your day. I enjoy doing five-minute meditations while sitting at my desk or at other times throughout my day to help me focus on being mindful.
The Energy of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness means you know what your feelings are, what drives you, and the things you want out of life. You know your gifts and faults, the areas where you need to make changes or improvements in your life, your attitude, and your outlook. It means you’re mindful of yourself on many levels. The energy that surrounds being self-aware is part of your frequency. If this gets out of balance, then you’ll need to take steps to restore it by becoming more self-aware. The more you understand your inner self the more you’ll understand what is causing your actions and reactions.
Becoming more self-aware may not fix every problem you have, but it’s a great place to start. The better you know yourself, the more information you have at your disposal to make decisions. For instance, if you know you’re afraid of heights, then you’re not going to look over the edge of a tall building, are you? If you’re aware that you tend to talk too much, then you can make a concentrated effort to streamline what you’re saying and not dominate a conversation. It’s difficult to make changes like this, especially if you’re an outgoing, chatty person. But if you try, that’s what matters.
As you practice being more aware of the energy of yourself, think about this. When you were created in the spiritual realm, you were perfection, which will never change. When you are born into the earthly realm, you’re still the same perfect energy that you are in the spiritual realm but now you have to deal with a physical body that offers its own unique set of challenges. It’s a huge learning curve, but that’s the purpose of living in the physical realm—to learn. You’ll always be you whether you’re in the spiritual realm or the earthly plane of existence. Being self-aware in the physical realm really helps you connect to your spiritual self because you look deeper, feel more, and understand yourself more. When you can see yourself as a miracle of creation and appreciate that there is no one else exactly like you on either the physical or spiritual planes, then you will love yourself more, feel more joy, and be able to share your uniqueness of spirit unconditionally with others.
Understanding the energy of self-awareness means striving to learn as much as possible in order to grow in spirit while on the earthly plane. It’s accepting all of the flaws of our physical body, discovering and relearning about our spiritual self, and learning how to treat others as we would on the spiritual plane. The energy of self-awareness is always positive and in forward motion; it’s up to us to move forward with it.
Mindfulness and Personal Growth
Many of us, myself included, can get so busy that we move through life too quickly and things happening around us can become a blur. When this happens to me, I have to step on the brakes, slow myself down, and purposefully make mindfulness a priority. I want to enjoy the little things in life, like connecting with the dragonfly who got stuck in the rain the other day and couldn’t move because he was wet. I put him in the barn to dry out and, after a while, he flew away. If I hadn’t been mindful, I would have missed that he flew right by me. Being attuned to physical sensations, like the rain on my skin and his little feet as he stepped onto my finger, made me feel more mindful and appreciative of both the rain and the dragonfly.
Practicing mindfulness can bring about great changes in your perspective which leads to person growth. It creates a need within you to slow down and relax, to notice more and be more aware of everything. It helps you to realize that everything changes from one moment to the next. If you’re holding onto a set way of thinking, you might find yourself considering things outside of what you perceive as the only way to do something. When you let go of preconceived notions it opens the door to allow you to consider other options which can lead to more spontaneity, which helps you grow and learn about new things. Mindfulness can help you become more aware, less stressed, and happier overall.
Mindfulness can help you overcome behaviors that are obsessive, negative, and self-depreciating. When you are more mindful, it’s easier to see where you’re making the same mistakes over and over again. Once you realize what you’re doing then you can take the steps necessary to change that behavior. For instance, if you get aggravated at checkout clerks who take a long time to ring up people’s items, then you will assume that the situation is causing your annoyance. But if you’re mindful about it, you will recognize that your irritation isn’t at the clerk but it has become a habit because you always want to do things quickly and this person is slowing you down. Instead of letting yourself get mad, work through the emotion, allowing yourself to break the pattern of negativity so you remain calm. Noticing your behaviors in this way enables you to make changes within your own energy, which can raise your vibration and allow you to move forward in your personal growth. Over time, you’ll find that you lose your temper less often when you practice mindfulness because you can stop your negative reactions, which can lower your frequency, from happening.
Personal growth through mindfulness means you’re able to learn from your new awareness and apply what you’re learning to your life. Becoming more aware can also lead you to being more easily distracted because now you’re taking the time to be present in the moment and you’ll notice things you’ve never paid attention to before. This will happen more at the beginning of your mindfulness journey. As you become accustomed to being mindful, you’ll still be distracted but you’ll be more attuned to your inner self and it will be easier to bring your attention back to where you want it to be.
Develop a Calm Concentration
One of the most common ways to develop a calm concentration while practicing mindfulness is to become aware of your breathing; feeling the air move in and out of your body and focusing on just that one thing and nothing else. As you breathe you may have a thought or feeling enter your mind. Address it or dismiss it and then return your focus to your breathing. If you don’t want to focus on your breathing, you could become aware of the sensations you’re feeling in your physical body or the sounds you’re hearing around you.
Keeping your focus on one specific thing allows for a deeper calmness to come over you as you’re working on mindfulness. When you’re experiencing this level of focus and concentration, you are able to observe your thoughts and feelings without being emotionally attached to them, you’re not judgmental, and you’re able to see your specific intentions. Imagine yourself as a spiritual being surrounded in darkness. Then you see a thought appear in the darkness that looks like orange words just moving across a black screen. Your spirit sees the thought, acknowledges what it means, but continues with the calm, focused, mindful meditation. The fact that you acknowledged the thought is a moment of mindfulness.
Developing a calm concentration while practicing mindfulness can help you in other areas of your life because you’ll tend to carry this feeling with you even when you’re no longer meditating. Mindfulness helps reduce stress; increase our ability to learn, focus, and remember; tune out distractions; and become more empathetic. You’ll feel more positive and optimistic about life; instead of being so hard on yourself, you’ll give yourself a break now and then, and you’ll find that you’re less angry, frustrated, or annoyed.
Have you ever become overly aware of how a word sounds? So much so that when you say the word it no longer makes sense? Try saying the word tongue over and over and over out loud until it gets to the point that it no longer describes anything but is simply an odd-sounding word. This is a way that a calm concentration can manifest into überawareness. You’re so aware of the word that it disassociates from its meaning.
One way that I like to work on having a calm but deep concentration is to pause in between movements to see what I feel. For example, when walking out to the barn I’ll often stop halfway just to listen to the sounds of the horses, the highway, and the birds. This helps to embrace the energy of these sounds, which is refreshing after spending hours writing at the computer. You might pause as you get into your car to feel the door handle and smell the scent of the interior.
Another way you can connect to the calm concentration of mindfulness is to enjoy the things you do more. Instead of scarfing down a piece of toast and hot coffee as you’re running out the door to work, get up earlier and sit down and smell the coffee as you drink it, feel the crunch of the toast as you eat it, and walk out of your house with purpose and awareness of the day waiting for you outside.
Being Reflective
to Bring about Change
Life is all about change. It happens whether you want it to or not. It’s often easier to make the change yourself than it is to continue along your current path, until something happens that changes your life for you, maybe even in a way you prefer it hadn’t. Sometimes we can get so caught up in things that aren’t in our best interest that we can’t see we’re heading down a path of self-destruction. Taking the time to be reflective about your life and the path you’re on, seriously considering how you live and how you want to live can help you see the things you’re doing that you need to change to get back in balance. Once you have a clear vision of what you want to change, you can create a plan that will enable you to achieve those goals.
Change has to begin within you. No one else can do it for you. There has to be a desire within your spirit that is pulling you in the right direction. Your higher self may be sending you messages in your dreams to let you know you’re heading in the wrong direction, or maybe you’ve been given a second chance at life. Reflect on the things that have happened to you and make yourself aware of the times you’ve been given a second chance or the support from another so you can change negatives to positives. If you’re feeling negative about yourself as a person— that you’re undeserving, or don’t feel love for yourself—then these feelings should be addressed so you recognize you’re a wonderful person who deserves everything the universe has to offer. You are worthy of all you can achieve because you have incarnated on Earth. Another person’s opinions of you may be important to you, but the amount of love you feel for yourself doesn’t rely on living up to their expectations of you. What is right for them may not be right for you. Try not to let someone else’s negativity affect how much you love yourself.
As you experience quiet reflection and then make changes in your life based on what you discovered about yourself during that time of reflection, work internally to sort through any emotions you have about the things you do that you want to change. For instance, if you’ve been mean to someone because you just don’t like them, instead, try to treat them nicely. Or dig deeper to figure out exactly why you don’t like the person and address those reasons. Work internally to forgive past wrongs if necessary and address any issues of guilt or whatever feelings are causing you to act outside of your normal character to someone else. If you find it difficult to be responsible for your actions or to instigate change through reflection, then take the time to look deeper still and to be honest with yourself about yourself. Admitting you’ve made wrong choices or that change needs to happen so you can feel happy again can be a hard thing to do, but it’s a step toward healing and a step toward positive change.
We are each responsible for ourselves. When we bring about changes within our lives then we’re acting on our responsibilities. When life seems chaotic, take some time to regroup, analyze, and evaluate so you can find your way back to a balanced, cozy, stress-free life.
Finding Balance in Your Spirituality
Being in balance means that physically and spiritually you’re moving along in joy, peacefulness, and without worry or stress. Being in tune with your spiritual self is essential to being in spiritual balance. To understand yourself better, think about what inspires you at a soul level, what is most important to you in this lifetime, and what challenges, inspires, motivates, and guides you along your life path. Think about your gifts and talents that make you unique. Consider your levels of awareness about different aspects of your spirituality. Are you in tune with your intuition, letting it guide you, or do you ignore impressions you receive?
When you’re in spiritual balance, life flows easily; when you’re out of balance, it doesn’t. You may have a niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right but you just can’t put your finger on what it is.
Realizing that you will experience times of balance and being out of balance all through your life will help you to recognize when it’s happening so you can find the cause and bring yourself back to center. Moments of recognition of your spiritual truths can shine new light on your beliefs. Living with passion, focus, and joy goes a long way to staying in balance. Understanding your soul’s purpose and continually growing in spirit will help you follow your divine plan with all of its ups and downs.
Try It Now Exercise
Meditation is a great way to obtain balance in your life. Since we’re talking about balance, I’d like to introduce you to a form of meditation that is often called a working meditation. The reason for this name is because it is a meditation that happens when you’re working on something else. It’s easy to fall into a meditative state when doing mundane or repetitive tasks. Part of your mind is on the work you’re doing but your thoughts wander elsewhere. I’ve often discovered that I get my best ideas during working meditations.
Let me give you an example of a working meditation. The stalls in our barn have to be cleaned twice daily. Picking up horse manure isn’t exactly fun or glamorous work, but it can be calming. So imagine this—you’re cleaning stalls and there’s a breeze blowing through the barn. The scent of the hay carries on the breeze. If you’re cleaning the turnouts, then the sun warms your skin. You hear the chewing, breathing, snorting, and sometimes a nicker while you’re doing your work. A horse nuzzles you, so you take a few moments to rub it. While you’re doing this, your mind is taking in your surroundings, but it is also wandering. In my case, I often wonder about what type of book I should write next or I go over the pros and cons of an idea or sometimes I just relax into that meditative state and release any negative emotions I might have. For me, there’s just something about being around horses that can erase a bad mood, anger, or any other negative emotion and replace it with a sense of calmness and balance. So while I’m working in the barn, my mind calms, which makes it easier to make decisions I have been contemplating.
You can experience the same type of working meditation if you’re washing your car, doing laundry, cleaning your house, washing dishes by hand, playing golf, or coming up with a creative repair like they do in India when practicing jugaad (see Chapter One). Anytime you’re engaged in an activity where you don’t have to be completely attentive and actively engaged in what you’re doing, then there is the possibility of turning it into a working meditation session. If you’ve got a situation that you can’t get off your mind, then contemplate it while you’re sweeping and mopping the floor. Or if you need a new idea for a project at work, are making a major life decision, or need to weigh the pros and cons of something, then do it while you’re cutting the grass.
A working meditation can help you reduce levels of stress and anxiety. It improves your mood, boosts your creativity, assists in decision-making, and helps you come up with solutions to adverse situations. It makes you feel more optimistic, less negative, more focused, and empowered. Working meditations also help you solve problems, have brainstorming sessions within yourself, and help you process information in a more balanced way instead of approaching a situation only through your emotions.
If you wanted to do a working meditation during your walk, I’d suggest slowing the pace down a bit. In other words, take a stroll instead of a power walk, look at your surroundings, appreciate the area in which you live, and let your mind tackle the issues bothering you. By the end of your stroll, you’ll probably have reached a solution.
Create Meaningful Relationships through Mindfulness
Relationships are built upon a mutual trust between you and another person, whether it’s a romantic interest, a professional colleague, or a friend. Trust must be authentic and real. Think about it—you’re putting yourself in a position where the other person, should they choose to break that trust, could hurt you emotionally. Trust means you believe and are committed to your relationship with this person regardless of the consequences of their actions.
Mindfulness helps us create more meaningful relationships with other people because we are more aware of their feelings, we are optimistic about our interactions with them, and we are accepting of them in every way. There are no conditions on how we feel about them, which brings two people closer. Mindfulness in a relationship means we are present and active in our interaction with the other person; we’re patient and honest with them, and we often go out of our way to do things for them. We truly listen to them by giving our undivided attention, we care about their opinions, and we enjoy their company. We are committed to interacting with this person. By being mindful in our relationships with others we let them know they matter to us, which is part of gemütlichkeit (see Chapter One).
When you practice mindfulness, you have a better understanding of yourself, which in turn helps you have a better understanding of other people. This enables you to have a better relationship with them. It’s important to also understand that you should never have to sacrifice yourself, your beliefs, and what you want out of life, for someone else. One of our purposes in life is to be our true, authentic selves. If we suppress our true nature just to satisfy what someone else wants us to do, then we’re not fulfilling our true purpose. Being mindful of ourselves, our purpose, and having respect for ourselves will help us to weed out those people in our lives who don’t have our best interests at heart.
In every relationship, we expect certain things of the other person. We expect them to treat us kindly, to be there for us as we are for them, and to give us their trust and not break our trust in them by doing negative or unacceptable things in the relationship. For example, you don’t expect your significant other to hurt you by cheating on you with someone else. If they do, that is often a game changer. Sometimes our expectations can be way too high, which makes it difficult for the other person to be able to meet them. When that happens, we’re disappointed and upset. If you keep your expectations reasonable for the relationship, then you’ll run less of a risk of being disappointed and may even be surprised more often.
During our lifetimes, we will have hundreds of relationships with people of all walks of life, not just romantic relationships. Every relationship we develop will teach us something about ourselves, will help us grow through those lessons, and will make us mindfully aware for future relationships. Each one also teaches us something about other people, how they act and react, which helps us decide what types of behaviors are acceptable or unacceptable to us. As we walk our paths and try our best to be true to our individual spiritual self, mindfulness will help us build strong relationships that have long-term staying power.
Pause and Reflect
to Change Directions
Have you ever been going in one direction and then suddenly gotten a really strong urge to turn around and go in a completely different direction? I’ve had this happen to me when I was driving only to later find out that there was a car accident down the road from the original direction I was traveling. Intuition can compel us to make drastic changes like this, 180-degree turnarounds, for apparently unknown reasons, especially if we’re being protected in some way. Mindfulness can also cause you to change directions completely if you’ll only pause to reflect on your path.
If you’re not sure what you want out of life, practicing mindfulness can help you gain clarity. As you become more aware and clear through mindfulness about what you want to accomplish in your life, you may realize you have to go in the completely opposite direction from where you’re currently headed. If this is the case, you can start to make small changes to achieve the new life you want so the change is gradual instead of a drastic deviation in a different direction. If you’re unhappy in your job or if you want to make personal changes but can’t seem to stick to what you have to do to make the change, small mindful steps will help you achieve results. For instance, if you want to lose some weight you don’t just stop eating. Instead, you make mindful healthy choices to improve your diet and result in weight loss. If your job isn’t making you happy, then you take small mindful steps to improve your work situation, but if that doesn’t work you could take classes in the field you want to work in or start looking for another position instead of quitting your job before you have something else lined up.
To mindfully make the decision to go in a different direction, it helps to pause and reflect on where you are, why you’re no longer happy in your current situation, and the steps needed to make the change. Once you’ve considered all of these things, then make a commitment to yourself to see your decision through until you’ve achieved your goals. Along the path make sure you continue to pause and reflect on your progress. Consider how far you’ve come and be proud of yourself. Giving yourself a pat on the back for a job well done keeps your self-esteem high and your motivation going strong.
Changing directions in your life can sometimes feel like the rug has been pulled out from under your feet, especially if it’s a change that is out of your hands or you weren’t anticipating. During these types of situations, mindfulness can play a key role in getting you back on track, keeping a positive attitude, and maintaining forward motion. If you feel like you’re getting overwhelmed by too much change happening too quickly, pausing to simply breathe while attuning to your awareness, your intention, and your attitude about the situation can help to ground you so that you can regain your balance. Once you feel focused again, you can face the situation in a mindful manner. Mindfulness will help you keep your emotions in check instead of letting them get out of control, it enables you to see what needs to be done right now, in the moment, so you can meet the changes happening with a smile on your face and contentment inside yourself. You know there is purpose in everything and you’ll come through it just fine.
Try It Now Exercise
Make a Moving
Toward Cozy Project
To find balance in life through mindfulness and to live in coziness and simplicity, there will be times when you have to make changes. For this exercise, you’ll be creating an outline of different areas of your life where you’d like to make mindful changes. I’m going to give you some topic ideas to get you started.
When I did this project for myself, I bought a small journal for my outline. In the beginning part of it, I spent some time mindfully thinking about what I wanted to change and I wrote it all down in the journal. Then in the pages after the outline, I kept a journal for six months and wrote about my progress and whether or not I was meeting my goals. During this process, you’ll discover that alternate ideas will come to you when something isn’t working. Make note of these ideas and try them out. If one thing doesn’t work, then something else just might be the perfect solution to the change you want to make. I would suggest that you do this project for a minimum of one month. Or you can just work on it until you’ve made all of the changes a permanent part of your life, regardless of how long it takes.
Within my project, some of the areas I wanted to work on were the following: find balance between writing and running our other businesses, letting go of what no longer serves me, spending more time with family and friends, creating a deeper connection to my spiritual self, make my home cozier by discarding or donating things that I no longer need, spend more time outside, move more, take better care of myself, appreciate everyone (including myself) more, do nice things for people I don’t know, and to find time to slow down and just be me. Feel free to use some of these for your own project or come up with additional ones for yourself. Also, you can create subheadings within your main topic headers to refine your changes. For instance, under my header of discarding or donating I made a list of all of the rooms in the house, then as I completed a room I checked it off the list.
Some of the things you’ll include in the project will be ones you’ll want to do for the rest of your life. Interweave these into your daily life so that they become a permanent part of who you are.
Overcoming Obstacles
to Mindfulness
As with any endeavor, there will be times when you’ll feel like there are too many obstacles in your path to keep pursuing your goal. And, as with any endeavor, if you want to be successful, you have to overcome those obstacles. Let’s take a look at some of the obstacles you might encounter as you’re practicing mindfulness.
When I started learning about mindfulness, I thought you had to sit in the lotus position and say om in order to be successful. After a few attempts, I decided that I just didn’t have the time to do that. So I forgot about it completely. Fast-forward a few years and mindfulness reappears in my life. This time I tried a different method and took a few minutes at various times of the day to be more aware and mindful of what was going on around me and to quiet my mind at the same time. I imagined everything happening in slow motion when my awareness was engaged. This worked for me to help me overcome the obstacle of not having enough time.
Focusing on the negative instead of the positive when you’re being mindful happens sometimes. It’s hard to push negative thoughts away and focus on your breathing when you’re in the middle of a difficult situation. When this happens to me, I tell myself that I deserve a temporary reprieve from worrying about the situation, and I use creative visualization to make a big steel box in my mind that has a key to lock it. Then I put all of my thoughts about the situation into that box and lock them up. Now, I get some time to just think about myself and to focus on being more centered and balanced in my life, which ultimately will help me deal with what’s in that locked box. When I feel ready, I’ll unlock the box and let the situation out. Since I practice mindfulness in short sessions throughout the day, I sometimes leave that stuff in there for hours until I decide to go back to it. Giving yourself a break can be rejuvenating.
Being mindful requires an ongoing effort. It’s really easy to forget to be mindful when you’re distracted by other things happening in your life. For me, catalysts to be more mindful are negative emotions like irritation and anger. When I feel those emotions rising, I automatically focus and become more mindful about the situation. That doesn’t mean I never blow up, but it does mean that it takes a whole heck of a lot to get me to that point. As you’re practicing mindfulness, you might discover you also have catalysts that will cause you to become more mindful.
Distractions, especially if you’re a person who is easily distracted, can have you giving up before you realize it. It’s very easy to say you’ll get back to practicing mindfulness later because right now you have to walk the dog or whatever thing has come up that is distracting you. Try giving yourself just five minutes at a time to focus and become more aware. Doing mindfulness work while you’re in the shower is a great way to achieve this! When you practice in small amounts of time, there is less time for you to get distracted and you will not want to quit.
Attention to Details
Do you pay attention to details? I’m a very detail-oriented person, sometimes too much so. I notice little things like if someone got a new mailbox or if a house got painted or if someone cut down a tree. Just little changes in my environment that no one else notices until I say oh look. I also notice a lot of other little details, like what people are wearing, misspelled words, missing punctuation, patterns, price changes, and when items have been physically moved to a different place. If you’ve ever entered a room that no one was supposed to be in while you were gone and just knew that someone had been inside—that’s paying attention to the details of the energy of the room. You’re sensing the energy disturbance from another person’s energy entering into your space.
As you’re learning to be more mindful, paying attention to details is part of the process. When you notice the small things like an ant crawling across the leaf of a daisy or the way rain runs off the tip of the leaf, then you’re being mindful and aware of those things. In Japan, they practice wabi-sabi (see Chapter One), where beauty is found in the imperfections of age and wear. Imperfections are a small thing to notice but can reveal a lot about an item. When you’re focused at a deeper level, you’re noticing the little things instead of just looking at the big picture.
Paying attention to details is important in our everyday lives. When you’re mindful about the specifics then you’ll make fewer errors, which gives you a higher level of accuracy in your work. Noticing details can help you make a good impression, which is especially helpful if you’re applying for a new job or trying to get a raise or a promotion at work. What if you’re house hunting? Noticing the details can help you get the best price possible on the house and save you from having to spend more on repairs in the long run. Paying attention to details helps keep you safer. You’re not going to step out in front of a moving car if you’re paying attention to where you’re going and looking both ways before crossing the street. If you’re an accountant, you have to pay attention to the numbers you’re dealing with in order to be accurate in your work.
Paying attention to details about yourself is also an important aspect of mindfulness. We always tend to take care of others before we take care of ourselves. Pay attention to how you’re feeling, your vision, your teeth, the kind of shape you’re in physically and if you need to make changes, then start a plan to do so. In addition, be aware of the details of your emotions. If you’re feeling out of sorts, do a traditional meditation session for mindfulness to look for the reason you’re not at 100 percent.
Life is in the details; notice them to feel more joy, abundance, and coziness.
Mindfulness Is Nonjudgmental
Being judgmental means you’re quick to have an excessively critical and negative perspective about someone, including yourself, or about a situation, that can block your spiritual growth, keep you from being more mindful, and cause problems for you in your daily life. Mindfulness discourages having a judgmental point of view. Think about the emotions underlying judgmental feelings. Emotions are always trying to tell us something, so it’s important not to suppress them but to acknowledge and work through them.
How do you recognize when a thought is judgmental or not? Is it negative, accusatory, or condemning? Then it’s probably judgmental. Let’s look at society for a second. Think about television shows, social media, or product advertisements. How many times have you compared yourself to people in society who are famous, rich, or embody some quality you would like to have for yourself? When you compare yourself and say things like, I’ll never have that much money, I can’t wear my hair like her, or I want to be famous like him but I don’t think I’ll ever make it. All of these are judgmental thoughts because you’re judging yourself against what someone else is doing. When practicing mindfulness, it’s just as important to not judge yourself as it is to not judge other people.
When you find yourself having judgmental thoughts, remember that each one of us is already divinely perfect at a soul level. It is our responsibility to one another to try to understand each other instead of being judgmental to one another. There is so much hatred in the world that could be neutralized if we’d only see that we all are the same deep inside. We are all strong spiritual beings here to learn specific lessons. We must become aware of this in order to understand and accept that love and kindness is important to share with others while living on the earthly plane of existence. Try looking at situations from the perspective of the other people involved. Does it change how you see things? We are more accepting of ourselves and others as we are, with all of our flaws, because we are all the same.
Being judgmental will not make you happy; it will make you upset and miserable, so why do it? If you are constantly judging yourself against someone else or if you’re always thinking you can’t do this or you’ll never do that, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. By being mindful, you will be aware of when these thoughts come up. This will give you the chance to not give judgmental thinking power over you. There is purpose in mindfulness.
Making Mindfulness a Priority
Giving mindfulness priority in your life is the best way to experience both personal and spiritual growth through awareness. Mindfulness awakens us to what we are really experiencing every single day. It gives us clarity of thought and purpose, which makes us happier. To reach the goal of being more mindful, you have to give the process of mindfulness a high priority in your life. And don’t worry, it’s not going to take up all of your time and you don’t have to give it a high priority forever because soon it will become second nature for you. It’s normal in the beginning stages to spend extra time on being mindful. Here are some ways to make practicing mindfulness a priority.
Pick a cozy, quiet place in your home where you can sit and practice. Get yourself a soft, round rug that you can sit on if you’re doing a traditional meditation session or a favorite blanket that you can snuggle into while lounging in your comfy chair if you meditate in a casual way. You’ll give mindfulness a higher priority if you have an area dedicated to meditating and mindfulness work.
If you need more structure when it comes to practicing mindfulness, you might check your local community colleges to see if they offer classes on mindfulness. Attending a structured event with a teacher can help you get off on the right foot. You’ll make new friends with a shared interest too.
Be kind and patient with yourself. When you make taking care of yourself a priority, it is easier to let mindfulness also be a priority. When you take care of yourself then you’re in a better position to take care of others or to help out when needed.
Some of the ways you can make mindfulness a priority in your life is to take a morning or evening walk, do yoga, set aside time for meditation, spend time with yourself doing things you like to do, spend time in nature, or go for a swim. Any situation where you can be active and clear and quiet your mind will help you connect to mindfulness by focusing inside of yourself to connect to your spiritual essence, universal consciousness, or simply to let your mind notice the simple things in life. Staring out of the passenger window on a car drive, watching the scenery go by is a way to tune into mindfulness.
When you make mindfulness a priority, it can help you heal. If you’ve experienced a difficult situation or if you’ve recently broken up with someone or lost your job, being mindful and examining the situation through mindfulness, can give you insights as to why the situation unfolded the way it did. When you make mindfulness a priority and take the time to look at the situation in a mindful manner, sometimes you may even glean information you never would have considered if you hadn’t used mindfulness as a tool to help you deal with the problem. The process of healing can cause you to feel emotions you’d rather leave buried. Mindfulness can help you to heal your heart over time.
Increasing your awareness is the primary goal of mindfulness. Making it a priority in your life will allow you to become more aware of yourself on many levels, of the people around you, and of the world you live in. With so much to learn through mindfulness, there’s no wondering why it’s become so popular.
Try It Now Exercise
This is a two-part exercise. First, we’ll look at journaling, and then let’s get out the colored pencils and crayons!
Getting into the habit of journaling can help you keep track of the progress you’re making while you’re practicing mindfulness. Being in the moment, being more aware, and noticing the small things as well as the big picture are all aspects of mindfulness. Writing down the things you notice is a mindful activity. The more you write, the more you will notice and the more you notice, the more you will write. Mindful journaling helps you feel more present in your life, helps increase your awareness, and helps you see areas where you can practice being more mindful.
As you write in your mindfulness journal, try to include as many details about your observations as possible. Include what you see, the smell of the air around you, what something felt like, the sounds you heard, and what something tasted like. Adjectives are your best friend when writing about what your senses felt. Being descriptive in your writing allows you to feel more present and in the moment, even if the moment was earlier in the day. It also helps you to get back into that same mindful place and the feelings you felt when you give full complete descriptions in your journal. Entries in your mindfulness journal can help you in the future to deepen your connection to mindful living.
Coloring for adults has really blossomed over the past couple of years. I’ve always loved to color, even when it wasn’t a popular thing for adults to do, because it helps me focus and is just a lot of fun. Today, the coloring books for adults are marketed to help you become more mindful, to ease stress, and to relax. They have thicker paper than kids’ coloring books and you could even frame your creations if you so desire. Looking at them after you’ve finished is a mindful practice. So head to your closest retailer, grab a coloring book that appeals to you, and get a box of colored pencils or crayons. Get a big box with a wide variety of colors so you have a lot of colors to choose from. Back at home, find a place where you can get comfortable, where it’s quiet, and choose a picture from the book. You might decide to go from page one to the end or just pick pictures at random throughout the book. Now start to color and notice what happens.
As you color, you’ll notice that your breathing slows down, you get more relaxed, and you feel calmer and more in tune with your inner self. Your mind starts to get quiet and the chatterbox that is usually talking a mile a minute shuts up (except to suggest a color choice here and there). Coloring engages your imagination, boosts your mindfulness, and increases your creativity. You’ll end up with a wonderful picture too. Date each one somewhere on the page or on the back with a note or two for yourself, that way when you look back at them, you’ll remember the coloring session and how you felt in that moment.