mindfulness & meditation

Meditation can help with stopping bad habits because it trains you to have better control over your mind, thoughts, and desires, which means that you will be better able to break bad habits by controlling your behavior, addictions, cravings, or what ever else is causing these bad habits.

Meditation helps train you to control your mind better by increasing your ability to focus on a single thing, be it an object, thought, sound, or anything else. This is in contrast to how peoples minds usually work, which is to just wander off into thoughts, and many times, harmful thoughts. This can cause stress, anxiety, depression, and can encourage bad habits.

Being more in control of your mind will allow you to have more control over your chain of thoughts, it will allow you to prevent your mind from wandering off and thinking about things you do not want it to, which can also help keep your mind off of the bad habits, and focus on creating new, better habits.

Meditating first thing in the morning is a great way to ensure that you keep a consistent meditation practice, especially if you find it difficult to fit a meditation session in your schedule later on in the day.

Though, if you try meditating first thing in the morning while still feeling very tired, you may feel that you actually can't meditate because you are just too tired, and may even find yourself slightly falling asleep during the session. For some, this doesn't happen or is very minor and may even start to feel more awake during the session, for others, it may be best to walk around a little bit or to do something that will wake you up enough so that you can actually meditate.

Meditating first thing in the morning is also a great way to start your day, as you will start it with a much calmer mindset, and this can be the starting point for the rest of your day, leading to a calmer, more relaxed and mindful attitude, which can help reduce much of the stresses of the following day.

The point of mindfulness is to bring your awareness to the present moment, and to stop focusing on the past and future.

Mindfulness practices include certain exercises that help achieve this goal, such as meditation, yoga, and being mindful during certain actions such as walking, brushing your teeth, reading, and basically any other action you perform.

To be mindful means to really pay close attention to even the small details of what is currently happening and going on. You can even be mindful while walking by focusing on how your heels feel when they hit the floor, and how your foot moves as you transition from heel to toe in each step.
You can be mindful in the gym, when lifting weights, by focusing on each muscle being activated by the exercise you are doing.

Mindfulness can be implemented in most actions you do on a daily basis, and their goal is to keep your mind in the present moment, focusing on the here and now, and preventing it from wandering off to unwanted thoughts such as the past and future.

Meditation helps teach you how to focus on a single point, for example, on your breath. By focusing on your breath, you are better able to calm your mind, which can mean less stress and anxiety.

This is because you will be focusing less on the things that cause you the stress and anxiety, and more on the things that you want, for example, the positive things in life.

For most people, this is a difficult task, since their brains are usually on autopilot, which means that their mind can focus on what ever it wants, and they have no say in it. They can try to redirect their focus, but in the end, their mind decides what to actually focus on. This is an example of how most peoples brains work, and how their mind is untrained.

Meditation teaches you to focus on certain things, such as your breath, a sensation, a sound, or other things such as objects. By creating a habit out of this and really sticking to a meditation practice, you will be taking the power from your brain, and will be better able to choose what you want to focus on, and to actually focus on it in a much easier way, without your mind going off on its own.

That is a significant way in which meditation helps with stress. People tend to feel stress about things that may happen in the future, and by overthinking these things and focusing on them, people feel even more stress. If we are able to stop this and even prevent it, much of our stress can be reduced.

Meditation apps can be very effective, especially for beginners. This is because meditation apps usually have a large amount of guided meditations, which are a great way for beginners to get into the habit of meditating, but also for more experienced meditators.

Many of them also have meditation timers that you can customize to your preferences, and other options such as meditation sessions with different background sounds that you can choose from.

Many of the meditation apps are also community based, meaning, there is a community that uses the app, and in that community you can read other people's experiences, questions, answers, and share your own.

A big reason why meditation apps are so effective is because beginners who are just getting into the practice of meditation tend to overdo it. Instead of slowly getting into it by starting with short sessions, they start with long sessions which they get very bored with, and eventually stop meditating.

Meditation apps usually have courses, and structured practices made for beginners, for example, the first few sessions will be 5 minutes, and as you progress, the sessions become longer and explore other types of meditations.

Having a structure, especially when starting out, can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of the meditation practice. And this is where meditation apps excel.

The use of objects can be a great way to practice mindfulness and to actually stay more mindful. There are a few ways you can utilize objects to help you stay more mindful.

Trying to constantly think about an object, and to focus on that object rather than on the thoughts that pop up into your mind, is a great mental challenge and a great mindfulness exercise.

By doing this, you are training your mind to stay focused on a single point, on a single thought, and to let the other thoughts pass by. You are training your control over your mind, and you are training your ability to control the thoughts your mind focuses on.

Another way to use objects to be more mindful is to simply look at an object, and to try and pay attention to it and to notice all of its details. To really sit and look at the object and to try and see all of the small little details that make up the object. You can focus on the shape, the texture, lines, curves, anything that you can notice on the object.

These two exercises may sound very simple, but, actually doing them can prove to be very tricky and difficult. Our minds are experts on getting what they want, which very often is to distract you. For the majority of most people's lives, their minds have been in control, their minds were what decided what to think of and what to focus on. Training to take this power away from your mind and trying to control it is not an easy task.

These two exercises allow you to work on taking back this power and choosing what your mind will focus on, rather than it choosing for you. This can help you to stop thinking about negative and unwanted thoughts, and can help you better stay positive by thinking positive thoughts, and thinking about and focusing on the things that you want.

Meditating correctly may not be the correct term, as everyone's experience while meditating may be different, and everyone may have a different pace at which they see the benefits or feel any difference from meditation.

Think about what your purpose is for meditation, and then try to understand if you are reaching those goals. Is your goal to calm down? If so, has meditation helped you calm down?

If it has not, then you could ask yourself why it hasn't, maybe you haven't given it enough time. Meditation is a practice that takes time to actually get good at, meaning, for you to actually get into the mindset, to be calmer, relaxed, and to help reduce stress and anxiety, and all of its other benefits.

If you have not given it enough time and practice, then you may actually be doing it correctly, just not long enough and not often enough.

I would say that one of the few ways to not meditate correctly is to expect the wrong things from meditation.

It's not a miracle, it's not a fast fix or a cure. It is a practice, something that can take a long time to reach the goals you are trying to reach.

Also, if you meditate once in a long while, then that too would not be an effective way of meditating. You should try and have a consistent practice, and to meditate as often as you can. This does not mean that you need to meditate everyday multiple times a day for hours, but even just a few minutes per day will do it and get you a long way.

Other expectations that some have, are to have clear minds when meditating. They expect their thoughts to just go away as soon as they start meditating. This is an expectation that is not realistic, and expecting this will just harm your practice, as this most likely will not be the case.

So just meditate often, and don't expect things that are not realistic. Just be in the moment and focus on the meditation, on the breath.