Despite the idea of mindfulness trending in today's popular culture, it's really an age-old practice.
Mindfulness, in short, is a state of awareness promoting a moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts and feelings free of judgment. Not only does it improve your overall well-being—physical health, mental function, emotional stability, etc.—but it also helps you to enjoy your own life more fully.
Plenty of people assume that mindfulness is something you must naturally "be" such as a personal characteristic or trait. Rather, it's a state of being.
Although children are the most naturally aware beings of us all, this innate mindfulness does tend to wane into adulthood. Yet, you can make mindfulness work for you as an adult...if you practice it.
With that in mind, here are five proven ways that practicing mindfulness will benefit your life.
1. Helps You to Ruminate Less
To ruminate means to entertain deep thoughts on a subject. Often, rumination is focused on negative parts of the past. In fact, many people like to refer to it as "chewing the cud."
Unsurprisingly, rumination tends to have a negative impact on our minds because the thoughts remain unresolved. After all, thinking doesn't un-do a situation or erase the past.
Mindfulness is well-known to encourage a more present state of living. What this means for you is that you are drawn to ruminate less by focussing on the current moment instead.
By focusing on the present moment—acknowledging rumination and allowing those thoughts to pass—you empower yourself to live a more satisfying life.
2. Reduces the Impact of Stress
Although most of us would be thrilled to outrun the stress life offers, escaping stress isn't always possible. Coming at us from all sides, stress can be incredibly impacting.
Many times, stress adds up and washes over us like a torrent. Living with the tide of stress can decrease our overall health in a number of ways—heart disease, sleeping issues, chronic pain, etc.
Mindfulness works to reduce the impact of stress by enabling you to acknowledge the stressor and then kindly release it.
It's a natural reaction to hold on to stressful situations. As mentioned, however, this response is detrimental to your health.
The goal isn't to remove stress from your life. More than anything, practicing mindfulness helps you to respond to stress in a more meaningful way.
3. Decreases Your Emotional Reactivity
Going with the theme of stress reduction, mindfulness also makes us less emotionally reactive.
When we hold on to stressful situations by ruminating or feeling anxious, it frequently sets us on edge. We often react out of character or in extreme ways, possibly damaging relationships along the way.
When you practice mindfulness, it gives you the ability to deal with one stressor at a time rather than an entire day's full (or lifetime full). This helps you to manage your emotional response, helping to make it more appropriate to the situation.
The more you practice mindfulness the better you can control your own emotions in any situation.
4. Improves Your Ability to Focus
Our concentration level is a primary indicator of our mental health. When we lack the ability to focus, something is usually bothering our minds.
As you may have guessed, many people struggle with concentration issues. However, practicing mindfulness has a tremendous impact on our ability to focus.
In fact, this is often the first benefit that people notice after beginning a mindfulness practice.
Mindfulness gives you the strength to suppress distracting information, helping you to focus on any activity. Therefore, you're able to increase your productivity and memory function as well.
5. Encourages Emotional and Cognitive Flexibility
Adaptability is a highly sought after skill in nearly every area of life—romances, friendships, careers, hobbies, etc. Though it's the idea of mental flexibility and being able to handle any challenge that really sums it up.
Without emotional or cognitive flexibility, we are more easily overwhelmed. We also have negative emotional reactions to challenging situations.
Practicing mindfulness allows us to acknowledge and accept any situation.
Not only does mindfulness help you to be more self-observing, but it offers you the space to make adjustments to your thought pattern and responses, too. As a result, you are more reliable and dependable.
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Remember, mindfulness will work for you if you practice it.
For more tips on how to live a more satisfying life, please reach out to me today. I would like to help you launch your own mindfulness practice and support you as you create the life you truly want to live.