How Do You Develop Mindfulness?

As we go about our day, many of us are inundated with overstimulation that causes stress and anxiety. Wouldn't it be great if you could figure out a way to relieve the effects of this on your mind and body? There are many different ways to do this, but one of the most popular ways happens to be by inserting mindfulness practices into your everyday life.

There are multitudes of different ways to develop mindfulness, but all of them boil down to finding ways to embrace your senses and clear your mind. This can be anything from taking a mindful shower where you pay attention to how the water falls on your body, how it makes you feel, and all the other senses encompassed in this process. Or it can be simply finding things that you love and doing them every day.

The ultimate trick is that whatever mindfulness practices you incorporate into your day should be centered on breathing and staying in the moment.

Developing mindfulness can be challenging in the beginning, but like with anything beneficial to your health, it is definitely worth it. So in this article, we're going to take a look at what mindfulness is and the benefits it can bring to you.

Breaking Down Mindfulness: What Is It? And What Are the Benefits?

Before we look into the question “how do you develop mindfulness”, we should probably break down mindfulness quickly. For those that aren't familiar with mindfulness, having a basic understanding of what it is and the benefits that come with it could be the catalyst to ensure they really devote themselves to developing a positive mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness is a new word for a very old practice. Centered on Buddhist teachings of living in the moment and being present, utilizing meditative practices and breathwork, it brings with it a plethora of benefits.

Mindfulness builds pillars and skills within the body that allow you to be more aware and accepting of your thoughts and the world around you. This awareness and acceptance can allow you to find the path to internal balance and harmony, which will lead to elevated feelings and emotions of happiness.

What Else Can It Do For Me?

The truth is that the biggest benefit you get is the one we discussed above. The fact that you are able to live in the moment allows you to be present and have a more fulfilling life and relationships. But there are a ton of other benefits that can affect your overall well-being.

Here are a few of those:

Emotional Balance

Being unable to control our emotions can throw our energies off and create an anxiety loop that continually feeds itself. By adding mindfulness to your everyday life, you can end that anxiety loop and gain control of your emotions. This will allow you to be able to recover from emotional situations and react to them clearly and concisely.

Resilience

That over stimulation and anxiety that we are inundated with every day can cause a lot of psychological stress. This stress can affect our physical health as well as our mental health and reduce our resilience to be able to handle difficult situations. By inserting mindfulness practices like meditation into your life, you can help build your resilience so that you can bounce back from these spiritual and psychological attacks.

Fights Aging

On physiological and neurological levels, mindfulness has been shown to help combat age-related cognitive problems as well as other signs of aging. This is because it has been shown to help build pathways in the brain and activate areas that may have been degrading due to age.

Awareness

One of the best ways to relieve stress and anxiety is to remove judgments from your mind. But before you can do that, you have to be aware of your blind spots. By introducing mindfulness into your life, you can build skills that allow you to be more self-aware, which, in turn, will help you be better at decision-making and relationships.

How Do You Develop Mindfulness? A Few Ways To Practice Mindfulness

With all that information about what mindfulness is and the benefits it can bring with it, it's now time to look into that core question we started this article with and understand how to develop mindfulness.

There is a wide range of methods that you can utilize to build mindfulness in your life. There is, of course, the standard meditation and things like yoga that many people turn to in order to start developing their mindfulness practices.

These are well-known and ones that we have covered in many other articles. So instead, we want to look at a few unique ways to practice mindfulness:

Pay Attention To Cravings

As you begin to develop mindfulness, you're going to find yourself being more aware of your body and its needs. This is a great way to develop mindfulness and is quite simple. It's the idea that your habits, cravings, and addictions need to be understood before you can overcome them.

So when you start to feel these cravings, you want to stop, acknowledge them, and be aware of how they make you feel. By doing this, you should eventually be able to follow the path back to the trigger, and that will allow you to accept it and move on.

Do the Dishes

This may seem like a strange mindfulness practice, but it can be very meditative if you do it properly. If you can think mindfully when doing this, you will be able to go through all the senses that you feel as you accomplish this task.

You can look at how the soap smells, the feeling of the water, the sights, and the sounds that come with it. This is the same thing you would do in meditation, just transferred to a physical activity that many find tedious.

Mindful Shower

Anything can be made into a mindfulness practice, from taking a walk outside to eating. But one of the places that might be the most relaxing and one that will allow you time to live in your own personal space is the shower.

Just like with dishes, you can take this everyday activity and make it a mindfulness practice. As you sit underneath the waterfall, you can think about how everything smells, sounds, and feels. Engage all of your senses as you shower and allow your mind and body to be in that moment.

Engage With People

Mindfulness practices have a lot to do with inner work and that is a good thing. But utilizing the tools that you're developing can be helpful when engaging with people as well. Instead of being locked inside your inner world, take in the surroundings and really engage with the person you are spending time with.

Note things about them, such as the sound of their voice, or the way their voice makes you feel. Stay engaged and listen mindfully and you will find that you will develop mindfulness to all-new levels.

Be In It

Maybe the best way to develop mindfulness is to really enjoy the things that make you happy. This means spending time doing things like cooking or hanging out with the people you love. And when you do these things, you will find it easy to be in that moment. Make sure to take note of how these activities or people make you feel so that you can be more aware.

Final Thoughts

The question of how do you develop mindfulness really can only be answered by you and you alone. We hope that by going over some of the methods that you can bring into your everyday life and the benefits you can get from doing so, we have helped you find your path to living that happier and healthier life we all desire.

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