We’re back with mindfulness tips on Mindful Monday, first of in 2020. Last year I began using mindfulness in my everyday life while doing banal activities and saw a vast improvement in how anxiety affected me daily.
It wasn’t curative but I found that I was able to create better coping mechanisms, and even sometimes, successfully took the edge off of a building panic attack.
Now that we’re in a new year I’m looking to deepen my mindfulness practice. I even brought mindfulness into my solo-sex time and it’s allowed me to connect with my body on a deeper level—I feel less detached, and more in tune with my body.
Using Mindfulness in the New Year
For me, 2020 is about healing. Last year I excavated a lot of trauma and began unspooling years of repressed emotions. I laid myself bare, bled all over my keyboard and the screen; I was open, more awake, less guarded.
By December I found myself drowning in crippling depression. I felt like I was trying to wade through thick, steamy tar on a bed of quicksand. Things went dark and I almost crumpled. I wasn’t using mindfulness to help steer me at all, I was just so emotionally drained after operating under truth serum in November that I had nothing left. 2020 will not end that way. I’m taking control of my mental health and emotional well-being and that starts with deepening my mindful practice daily.
3 Quick Mindful Hacks for Daily Emotional and Mental Well-being
You can incorporate these into your daily life with ease. They aren’t complicated and can be used throughout the day. Start small and see what changes come.
1. Be Unapologetically you and don’t Censor yourself.
We tend to censor, judge or try to repress our thoughts as they swirl around in our heads. This is ill-advised. Thoughts are the action and process of thinking. When your thoughts arise during activity, acknowledge them, don’t judge, attach or censor them.
Instead, gently turn one of your five senses in another direction. The goal of mindfulness is to become more aware of the present moment and includes all the mundane things that go with it. There’s something extraordinary about observing yourself and the present moment this way. Widen your awareness.
2. Journal and Record Your Intentions
I love following the 30-day Meditations Deepak Chopra and Oprah host. I rarely complete the entire sequence but it’s the start that counts. Usually, during the meditation of the day, Deepak starts with a mantra or centering thought in Sanskrit and the English translation. You’re encouraged to record these and keep a journal.
Create a mindfulness mantra to use as a trigger when you need to jumpstart your memory and focus on the present moment. Keep a journal to track why you desire to make mindfulness a habit. Journaling is a mindful exercise itself.
Mantra Examples:
A. I exist
B. I am powerful
C. I am pure love
D. Ohm, Om, or AUM
E. I am
Express frustrations at letting life slip by. Write about the beautiful, small moments you notice— how the barista made a shape in your morning java or the finer details throughout your day. This act of documenting your mindfulness will help cultivate more of it.
3. Understand that there are no mistakes in mindfulness
It can take 18 to 254 days to create a new habit. For the average person, that’s 66 days. Everyone makes mistakes, but the beauty of mindfulness is that there are no real mistakes.
I stumble often and can go long periods of forgetting to implement mindfulness only to pick it back up in a dire time of need. Be patient with yourself. The key is to start.
Mindfulness requires no magic. It’s simply being aware of the moment, as it becomes the next moment. Be kind to yourself and know that you are taking steps towards living a more mindful, intention-based life.
Friend Links to some Favorite Medium Stories
I realized last week when I rolled out 6 Things Thursday I included no links to any Medium stories. That happened because I have been having the worse time trying to write. It’s not writer’s block, but, it’s a weird form of anxiety. When I do write it’s pure shit and I don’t feel satisfied at all.
The stories I have written in January haven’t done very well. I have an alternate account on Medium where I focus more on Sex, Love, Dating and Relationships and that account suffered in December when I couldn’t write much of anything. Now I’m trying to get her on track and it’s taking some time.
Hopefully, during the next 3 weeks of January, I can get my writing act together and produce better stories. My Medium stats are in the crapper. So here are a few stories from last year that pertain to mindfulness or spirituality.
Your Mindfulness Routine doesn’t Have to be Fancy or Over-involved
How I Seek Healing Through Witchy Woo Woo
How to Achieve Lasting Satisfaction for a Better Life
Thank you for being here! See you next week for Why Wednesday!
Candidly,
Nicole