Being mindful is an easy way to help grow your happiness, reduce stress and anxiety, learn to let go of what you can’t change, become more productive, feel calmer and improve your wellbeing.
Mindfulness is the act of being actively aware of what’s happening right now around you, within you, and within others. The challenge is that the mind is constantly wandering off – thinking about the past or imagining the future – so people often miss out on what is happening in real-time.
But mindfulness isn’t just about stopping yourself from daydreaming; it’s about learning to pay attention to how you’re feeling moment by moment without wishing things were different or trying to change things that can’t be changed (and this includes other people). In doing so, you can learn to cope better with any problems that arise in your life and ultimately become a more self-aware person.
There are plenty of ways you can bring mindfulness into your everyday life. However, if you want a gentle way to get started, meditation is one of the most powerful tools. When practiced regularly, it’s been shown to help with both physical and mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, stress, high blood pressure, and insomnia.
Here Are The Best Ways That Meditation Helps Improve Physical And Mental Wellbeing:
Meditation can help with pain control
In recent years, there has been a rising scientific interest in how mindfulness practices and going monk mode may affect your psychological well-being and your physical health.
For example, research has shown that mindfulness meditation can help with pain control by changing the way a person’s brains process pain signals and reducing how much people feel these signals as painful.
Meditation reduces stress and anxiety
A key feature of most mindfulness-based therapies is the emphasis on learning to pay attention to the immediate moment in a nonjudgmental way (without thinking that something is right or wrong, good or bad).
People who are regularly mindful tend to have lower levels of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and other negative emotional states, such as stress.
Indeed, mindfulness meditation has been shown to be effective for the treatment of anxiety and depression when used alongside other therapies or with medication.
Meditation can help you learn to let go of what you can’t change
It’s all too easy to get coiled up in ruminating about the past or worrying about the future – after all, most people spend more time planning dinner than they do planning for their own death. But while coming face-to-face with your mortality isn’t pleasant, it can help you learn to let go of what you can’t change and take life one day at a time.
Meditation helps improve your well-being
Being mindful can be a great tool for helping give yourself a healthier mind as well as a healthier body.
Mindfulness has been shown to have infinite benefits for people suffering from common mental health problems, such as depression. It’s also been linked to less stress, better focus and concentration, increased empathy, and improved relationships.
And it seems that meditation isn’t the only technique that can achieve these things – there is increasing evidence that mindfulness-based approaches are helpful for dealing with many kinds of long-standing pain conditions, including chronic back pain and arthritis.
How You Can Incorporate Mindfulness Into Your Daily Routine:
Take Your Time
It seems that everything is moving faster these days, and that includes all lives. People live in a world where everyone expects immediate results with very little effort on their part, and they are constantly being pushed from one thing right into another.
It’s hard not to go along with this mindset when everyone else around you is doing it since they don’t want to be left behind. This busyness and lack of time cause stress, and it’s one of the biggest detriments to mindfulness.
You have no choice but to be mindful when you take your time with everything you do, so start small. For example, don’t check your email or Facebook messages right away when you get up in the morning; give yourself some breakfast first and enjoy every bite.
Don’t answer every phone call either; allow yourself a moment of peace between each ring while you sit down at the table for a meal or drink a cup of coffee while reading the news on your tablet.
Pay Attention to Your Surroundings
After taking your time, begin putting more focus on your surroundings. Whether at home or out in the world, you can never be too connected to what’s going on around you.
Even if it seems like a mundane thing at the time, give yourself a few minutes to smell the roses or watch how people walk by on the street.
Take notice of your surroundings every day, and soon enough, you’ll find that these are things that are always there but don’t get paid attention to unless you make an effort to do so.
What’s more, there are plenty of other ways you can bring mindfulness into your everyday life – so being mindful doesn’t have to mean spending time sitting motionless on the floor, eyes closed. For example, try putting down the phone during a conversation, focusing on what’s happening around you right now, or savoring a piece of food.
