Activate mindfulness

How often do you talk like this about everyday affairs in your life: “Yes, somehow I don’t think, just do it automatically”? Out of habit, you wear tight jeans and a prickly sweater, you take the same uncomfortable, but already memorized route to work, you’re sure to be nervous before calling strangers, eating an unloved but healthy oatmeal every morning…

Our brain is a lazy creature. In order to save energy, it’s more convenient for it to memorize a behavioral pattern once, and then turn on the “autopilot” and relax. On the one hand, why not? Well, I shouldn’t think every time about whether I put the spoon in my mouth correctly or if I pedal the bicycle at the right pace. But, on the other hand, the more actions, thoughts and even feelings you automate, the less freedom of choice, freshness of perception, the fewer useful changes and opportunities to develop, you’re left with.

There’s often a small interval between the external stimulus and your reaction to it, within which you can turn on your mindfulness and choose how you should reach at that moment. Or you can skip it and react unconsciously, as a habit.

When you act mindfully, you’re aware of why you’re doing it and what for, what’ll be better for me and whether it makes sense to try it differently.

A conscious presence in every moment of your life gives you many positive changes:

• your thinking becomes more flexible, your creativity develops;
• understanding your feelings and emotions helps you easily get out of stressful conditions;
• problems on the physical and mental level become visible,and solving them increases the quality of life;
• awareness of one’s true feelings and desires helps to make optimal decisions – both day-to-day and life-changing.

Therefore, if you are not interested in the “life on the autopilot” scenario, but have long wanted to bring a stream of fresh air into monotonous everyday life, then it makes sense to actively develop your mindfulness in the perception of yourself and your life.

Let’s see how this can be achieved:

Tactile sensations

Make note of your body right now:

• is the position in which you are in comfortable, is there tingling, goosebumps, pain in the body; are you slouching, are your fists clenched?
• are your facial muscles relaxed? or are your teeth clenched, your eyes narrowed, your forehead wrinkled?
• how your clothes feels: is the fabric nice to touch or does it prickle, tickle, rub, pinch? 

It’s useful to realize your tactile sensations in the body both for physical (you notice discomfort in time and get rid of it) and emotional (if you talk to your loved one, and your hands are clenched into fists, there’s something to think about) health.

Try listening to your body and make short “revisions” at least a few times a day.

Breathing

If you observe your breathing during the day, you’ll notice that you often hold it or breathe very superficially. Both these patterns have a bad effect on your emotional state – anxiety, tightness and nervousness increase. This is especially noticeable in stressful situations.

If you feel that the nervous tension is growing, the first thing to do is switch your consciousness to breathing: start breathing slowly and fully.

In order to quickly learn to control this process, it’d be good to introduce 1-2 breathing practices into your daily routine (before or after bedtime).

Emotions and feelings

These are our main indicators of how we perceive the world around us, and on their basis, we decide what should be done so that our mental balance remains stable. When you are not aware of your emotions or ignore them, you’re deprived of an opportunity to choose the line of behavior that would be beneficial for you and satisfy your desires and needs. If you don’t realize that communicating with a toxic friend makes you tired and irritated, then you’ll continue to communicate with her, wondering why you’re always exhausted and depressed.

Try monitoring your emotions in certain times of your day. What I feel right now when I’m:

• washing dishes;
• writing a report;
• listening to my mother;
• choosing a sweater;
• eating soup;
• reading this article, etc.

This way, you’ll learn to understand what gives you positive emotions in your life, and towards which things it’s time to reconsider your attitude.

Thinking

Perhaps this is the most complex process of those that require mindfulness. Notice when you look at one point and seem to be not thinking about anything, your mental flow doesn’t in fact stop, you just don’t realize it.

Try asking yourself “What am I thinking about right now?” more often – both in a calm and an uncomfortable state. This trick will help you catch yourself creating limiting attitudes, wrong assumptions and prejudiced beliefs.

For example, you’re really nervous before a job interview. If you concentrate your attention on the stream of thought, you’ll notice that now your nervousness is caused by the conviction that “HR people are always rude.” Having realized this thought, you’ll understand the absurdity of this attitude and calm down faster.

It’s very difficult to follow your thoughts but if you practice, you’ll learn to be aware of their appearance, transformation and disappearance.

Developing mindfulness, like any new good habit, takes time and willpower. You can start with just one thing (for example, the sensations), or pay attention to the various components of this practice at certain points of the day. In any case, the development of mindfulness has no end, you can learn it for your entire life, but the sooner you start this practice, the sooner your life will be filled with novelty, freedom and harmony.