3 Mindfulness tips to introduce more peace, energy and power into your life
Over the last several years, meditation and yoga have rapidly expanded into mainstream consciousness, as companies like Calm, Headspace, Peloton, and Nike Training Club have made these practices more accessible and approachable. Many people have extolled and discovered firsthand the virtues of these practices, from reducing stress or anxiety, to improving sleep, to increasing mental resilience, to developing insights, and beyond.
The concept of mindfulness has also increased in recognition, but nowhere near to the same degree as meditation and yoga. According to Google trends since 2004, yoga has out-ranked mindfulness in the number of Google searches by 64:1 and meditation has out-ranked mindfulness by 10:1. When considering that mindfulness is such a fundamental underlying structure for both meditation and yoga, this seems a bit strange. Additionally, mindfulness can be practiced in virtually any application - not only during yoga or meditation - which makes the benefits achieved from mindfulness even more accessible to humankind.
So what is mindfulness?
The Oxford dictionary defines mindfulness as: “a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.”
Headspace defines mindfulness as: “the idea of learning how to be fully present and engaged in the moment, aware of your thoughts and feelings without distraction or judgment.”
I like to think of mindfulness as “the practice of fully accepting the present moment by fully accepting whoever and whatever you are in the moment, irrespective of your life situation.”
In a word, mindfulness is all about the present. It shows us the way to welcome more peace into our lives by realizing that we are all Presentverts.
So what does it mean to be mindful of the present moment? How does one practice mindfulness?
The concept of mindfulness and being able to just be present can be intimidating or frustrating. This is because our lives are almost entirely oriented around the lens of how our present compares to the past or affects our perceived future. Our lives are almost entirely devoted to doing, rather than being. We think of doing as positive and not doing as negative, which leaves being as a neutral or begrudging state at best. However, mindfulness is all about allowing things to be. Similar to the Tao, or The Way, only indirectly and without urging of thought do things manifest through action when from a place of mindfulness.
Therefore, mindfulness and the wider philosophy that it stems from cannot be best described by active words, such as doing, achieving, or accomplishing. Rather, the philosophy of mindfulness is best described by words thought of as passive, such as being, accepting, or allowing. By definition, mindfulness is something that comes about when we let go of the past and future to live in the present moment. This is perhaps why mindfulness is less popular than the forms it can be expressed in, which we think of as activities - doing - such as yoga and meditation. As a note, the more you explore mindfulness, the more that you will discover many teachings that reference the ego, and how the ego is what pulls us out of the present as we think about ourselves in the past or future; when our awareness is fully concentrated on the present moment, we aren’t thinking about ourselves and our egos are quiet. Therefore, several of these tips reference ways to disengage your consciousness from the thoughts and emotions created by the ego so that the awareness of your consciousness is freed up to focus on what is going on in the present, beyond the self.
If you are intrigued to start allowing more mindfulness and presence into your life, then this article is a great place for you to begin. Here are three tips that are specially tuned for modern citizens to open more space for mindfulness and peace to arise in your life. As you read, focus on keeping an open and curious mind and go ahead and give some of these a try!
These first two tips are actually many for the price of one cheats that will hopefully stoke your interest to keep reading through to the end.
#1: Introduce more mindful habits into your life, such as one or two of the following:
Meditate for 10 to 15 minutes every day. Using an app like Headspace is a very easy way to get started! Or try a YouTube instruction, like this beginner’s playlist by Breathe and Flow.
If you struggle with being still with your thoughts, then try yoga, tai chi, or some other movement-based, meditative practice that can help clear your mind of thoughts by focusing your awareness on your body.
Allow yourself to be absorbed into everyday, habitual actions, like brushing your teeth, washing your hands, washing the dishes, or taking a shower. Fully engage your senses to take in the experience. Concentrate on the temperature and heaviness of the water on your skin. Take in the sounds of the splashes. Revel in the smells - good or bad. Close your eyes and taste whatever you can while brushing your teeth. Allow your awareness of what is coming in from your senses to pull you fully into the present moment.
Learn to breathe more through your stomach, rather than your chest. Breathing through your stomach can engage your diaphragm more and enable you to breathe more deeply. Try laying on your back or sitting when getting started, and focus on expanding your stomach out as far as you can before you expand your chest. Don’t turn it into a challenge, however and don’t strain yourself. Just breathe through your stomach as best you can, and gradually it will become easier and more natural.
Resist looking at yourself in the mirror every single time you walk by a mirror. This is an extremely simple, but powerful micro action that can leave your ego disengaged during a period in which it normally would be hyper-engaged. Looking at your reflection shows you the present reality of your body, and as we all know, we are never satisfied with our bodies. We constantly long for our bodies to either never change - superiority - or to change - inferiority. Even when we feel superior, we quickly long for change again and may find something as simple and unimportant as an out of place eyebrow hair to think about. If we feel inferior, we may even develop an intense hate for who we see looking back at us. This dissatisfaction is driven by the ego, which for our entire lives has learned that it is easy to latch onto the way our bodies look as the basis for strengthening itself by generating these feelings of superiority or inferiority. Ultimately, the ego does not care whether the image of self you believe in is superior or inferior. So long as the self image it convinces you to seek is different from your bodily reality - which again is always the case, even if it is as simple as a stray eyebrow hair - then the ego is alive. The ego is alive in this longing for things to be different from what they are here and now, because the ego is only alive when you are thinking about the past or future. There is no room for the ego to exist in the present. So weaken your ego and its hooks into the past/future by choosing not to look in the mirror, and instead just be present with what you came to do.
Take a tip from Andrew Padova, whom I met through the weekly networking community, Lunchclub. Andrew suggests picking up a five minute journal and writing a couple entries in the morning and evening.
#2: Reduce the amount of digital noise that you are bombarded by throughout each day.
Mindfulness is about creating space for the present and allowing yourself to be undistracted by thoughts of past/future, and thinning your digital addictions is key to this.
Go into your phone settings and scroll through the notification permissions for each of your apps. Turn off push notifications that go to your lock screen or are sent as banners and switch to badge notifications or messages that go only to your notification center. Chances are, you don’t need notifications for everything that is enabled, and you can make a noticeable impact in reducing your daily distractions by whittling down notification permissions, if not turning them off altogether. As a bonus, you may also find some apps that you don’t even use or want to use anymore during this exercise.
Uninstall apps that you can access via your laptop and tend to check obsessively every time you unlock your phone, such as Slack, Teams, Discord, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Removing these apps from your phone is a mindfulness defensive action that will create some more space between each present moment and your addiction to the past/future that manifests in constantly checking these apps. When you need to, you can check them from your computer; because this is not as accessible as your phone it will therefore take more effort, which will hopefully result in you checking in less. However, your ego will put up a significant resistance to uninstalling the apps and imagine a slew of rational-seeming reasons not to. Your ego will envision negative outcomes like being fired, passed over for a promotion, missing out on what’s going on in friends’ lives, or being bored to tears with no distraction. Despite what your ego tells you, life will go on just fine if you uninstall these apps. The reality is that there are other ways to prevent these negative outcomes from happening, and your mental resistance to removing these apps is just a distraction from exploring those other options. If you cannot find the willpower to uninstall such apps, then make a habit of reducing their usage to certain hours, or lock your apps so that they can only be used for a certain number of times or hours per day.
Don’t reach for your phone in the bathroom and for at least 5 minutes after you first wake up. Practicing mindfulness requires you to refrain from distractions so that you can be fully present in the moment, even when it is boring. By definition, distractions take you away from the present and into the world of past or future where energy that could be utilized to actually enjoy or advance your life in the present moment is instead invested into wasteful, ego-driven mental loops such as comparing, judging, wanting, reminiscing, imagining, self-inflation, or self-deprecation. If you can practice being still with the benign, boring moments, then you will build your mindful resiliency that will help you to rely on distractions less. This will in turn translate into helping you be still and present with the less benign moments of sadness, frustration, fear, and anger.
#3: Learn to use breathing to create an internal space between your negative thoughts and emotions and your bodily reaction.
When something happens that hooks into your instincts of fight or flight and you feel your heart start to race or your mind start to fire off thoughts left and right, realize that you are in reaction mode and create a space between your mental and physical reaction.
Start by taking a deep breath from as far down in your stomach as you can manage. In that breath, feel the small space that opens up between your thoughtless concentration on taking that deep breath and the thoughts and emotions that flood in at the top of your inhale or the bottom of your exhale. Realize that in that space of breath concentration you were present and still; nonreactive. Now, take another deep breath in from your stomach. This time on your exhale, realize that this brief, thoughtless space created by drawing your awareness into your breathing has allowed your mouth, hands, and feet to continue remaining still and nonreactive. Finally, take one more deep stomach breath and let those thoughts and emotions go on the exhale. Realize that the negative thoughts and emotions zooming around your mind do not actually need to be given a reality in form by your body if you do not wish.
You can practice this at any time. Try it now.
Practicing this mindful habit of using your breath to create a space of presence is what can reveal the power of your awareness and show you that these thoughts and emotions are actually separate from the inner you that created the space of presence. These thoughts and emotions do not automatically move your body; only the inner you does. And so, this inner you can also decide to allow these thoughts and emotions to dissipate within your head. Then, you can react to the situation from a place of presence, which is a place of peace, energy, and power.
When someone makes a rude comment and your hackles rise and your blood turns hot, consciously decide to make your immediate reaction taking a deep, stomach breath. Your ego will already be running around in an imagined future where you have been wronged and the only option is to fight back and not to be pushed around by yelling something rude back. But the truth is that you - the inner you beneath ego - don’t have to choose to react to negativity with more negativity. Breathing deeply will help you come back from the future into the present, where the inner you can react from a place of peace, energy, and power - not ego - and decide to react in any way you wish. Instead of yelling, you could stare blankly at the person, leave the room, or smile at the antics of a child. From a place of presence, the inner you can then react to the person’s next move. If they become angry and call you a name, you can continue staring blankly, smiling, or otherwise holding a nonreactive position until they tire themselves out or become bored with your nonreactivity and move on.
Choosing to disconnect your internal thought-based negativity from your external bodily reaction is important for many reasons. The vast majority of incidents such as disagreements escalate to a worse or even dangerous situation when both sides react with negativity. Also, channeling your negativity into reality through a reaction will make it harder in the future to let go of the negative thoughts and emotions that your ego creates, because you have strengthened your ego by giving its negativity form in reality. At that point, you will likely feel more identified with that negativity, because it is now tangibly part of your life.
If you don’t let the negativity go in the moment of space before your bodily reaction makes it a real part of your life, then you will carry the identity to which that negativity belongs with you. If you don’t let that negativity go in some future moment, you will act out according to that identity again, which will further strengthen your association with this identity. So long as you continue feeding your identity of one who is rude back at people who are rude to you, your identity will eventually sink into your subconscious. At this point, eventually these automatic reactions of yours will begin blowing small situations out of proportion and you will yourself reflexively react rudely not only to strangers, but even to friends and family. Unless you disengage from this identity cycle, you will continue creating evidence that your ego will only use to further strengthen your identity as a rude person and convince you that this is who you have to continue being, because this is who you have been.
This is completely avoidable, however. It can begin by using mindful breathing to create a space at any time, wherein the inner you can realize that you do not need to allow that negative energy to become part of your external life by channeling it into a reaction.
Stay tuned for more tips on mindfulness, and stay present.