Every day, we are bombarded by hundreds of tasks and distractions that may keep us from what we need to do. Although these distractions may be hard to let go of sometimes, there is one thing that can solve this problem.
That’s right. We know one solution that can keep you focused and help you regain complete control of your thoughts. This one effective trick is to be aware of your surroundings, your own emotions and maintain your attention throughout the day.
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness means being fully present at any moment. This means that you don’t react impulsively to any sudden changes around you. Although this valuable skill may seem like it’s difficult to achieve, every single person in the world actually already has this. It’s all about practicing it.
There are many different ways to develop the skill of being mindful, and all of them prevent us from drifting away when we’re trying to do something. Mindfulness improves our performance in any given field and reduces the overwhelming stress we feel even as we multitask.
Common Misconceptions About Mindfulness
With all the benefits that mindfulness brings, it’s hard to imagine why many people are hesitant to incorporate it into their lives. In our quest to find the truth, we found some of the most common misconceptions about mindfulness that may be keeping other people from trying it or believing in its effectiveness.
Mindfulness is About Positive Thinking
The truth is we do not have a hundred percent control of our minds. Some thoughts pop out of the blue, and we can’t prevent that. Mindfulness will not help you regulate these thoughts and provide you with a positive outlook. Instead, it’s about acknowledging these thoughts and determining how much they affect our lives to understand how we can face them or discard them.
Mindfulness is Not for Older People
We noticed that lots of older people do not try mindfulness exercises because they believe it’s only for young individuals. However, with the research surrounding mindfulness, it has been proven that all of us, no matter what age, will benefit from this practice. In fact, mindfulness is now being used as an alternative for therapies. This is probably why assisted living homes have started using this technique in taking care of the elderly.
Mindfulness Will Solve All Your Problems
Just because you sat by your bed this morning for five minutes does not mean your problems are automatically solved. After all, mindfulness is about the mind, and solutions are about actions. Mindfulness will reduce the fog in your head for you to think more clearly and eventually solve your problems.
Mindfulness Benefits
Although mindfulness is, or rather loosely, defined as being aware, there is so much more to it than that. Since you will gain a holistic improvement of your mental well-being, you also improve different aspects of your life. That being said, below are some of the best benefits of practicing mindfulness.
No More Rumination
It’s not uncommon to overthink when we’re trying to process a few things at once. This hinders us from being fully attentive to our task as our mind keeps on working on other unimportant things. Mindfulness helps prevent this rumination by centering your energy on one specific task at a time.
Reduced Stress
Sometimes, having too many thoughts in our heads can be quite overwhelming. This leads to lots of unnecessary stress because it keeps us from finishing one thing, and all other tasks will keep on piling up. However, when we focus on the task at hand, we also finish it quickly and move on to the next one. This eventually leads to a significant reduction of stress.
Improved Focus
Ultimately, what mindfulness targets in our brain is our ability to focus. By reducing the amount of distracting information that we receive or process, we get to center our attention on what matters. This is the main essence of being focused.
Better Control of Emotions
Aside from our mental state, our emotional well-being also benefits from mindfulness. Being mindful means focusing on what is necessary. This also means that we don’t react quickly to everything that happens to us. Mindfulness allows us to process what we think about something and react accordingly. This eventually leads to improved control of our emotions.
The benefits and significance of mindfulness in our lives are already present and proven. It is an essential value that must be practiced in everything we do if we want to be fully present at any moment. Make sure that you practice it from time to time.
