The 7 day guide to incorporating mindfulness into your everyday life
Learning how to be mindful in an increasingly mindless world is one of the best gifts you can give to your authentic self.
by: E.B. Johnson
Being mindful is an invaluable skill in today’s increasingly mindless world. When we learn how to be mindful, we learn how to tap into that secret part of ourselves that opens the door to authentic self-discovery and self-acceptance. It’s the slumbering part of who we are that allows us to truly live in the moment, but it’s often the most overlooked in our overwhelmed and distracted state of being.
If you want to become happier, more successful and more fulfilled, you have to develop a mindfulness practice that allows you to tap into the angels of your better nature. By increasing your mindfulness, you can increase your physical health and your mental wellbeing, and you can improve the relationships that mean the most to your personal and professional careers. Stuck in a rut and looking for a new way of living? Try being present in the moment and intentionally cultivating the mindfulness you need to thrive.
What is mindfulness?
When we think of being mindful, we often assume it means simply being nice (to ourselves and others) — but it’s much, much more than that. Mindfulness is a powerful tool and a powerful state of being which can help us to unlock our true potential and create more loving, compassionate and fulfilling environments and experiences for ourselves. It’s being present in the moment, and it’s being aware of both where we’re at and how we’re feeling.
Mindfulness is an innate aspect of who we are, but it often gets buried beneath the manic chaos of day-to-day life. We can get back in touch with this mindfulness, however, by working to intentionally incorporate that state of being in our lives. Relearning how to connect with ourselves is an invaluable skill and one with many benefits to both our inner and outer lives. If you’re looking to reinvigorate your life, looked toward learning how to tap into your natural mindfulness.
Learning to be more mindful.
Losing touch with our mindful natures can be detrimental to both our physical and mental wellbeing. Forgetting to pay attention to our emotional temperatures can lead to fatigue, burnout and a range of mental and physical disorders that are both challenging and life-altering. Discovering true happiness in our lives often comes down to learning how to be more mindful.
When we learn how to be more mindful, we actually unlock powerful avenues of emotional intelligence, which in turn allows us to better deal with the toxic stress that permeates our lives. Cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and major clinical depression are just a few of the side-effects of living in a life that’s stressed to the max and focused on everything but the here and now. Learning how to be more mindful can transform our our perceptions and our health — but it has a number of other surprising benefits too.
The benefits of intentionally incorporating mindfulness in your life.
Becoming more mindful in your day-to-day can inspire and empower some really major transformations in your life. Plugging in to who you are in the moment allows you to unlock the power of your emotions and personal strengths, while building on new aspects of your authentic self that would otherwise have remained buried. More than just boosting your health, intentional mindfulness has the power to boost your mental wellbeing and your life experience; two things we could all use a little more of.
Preventing depression
Mindfulness — when combined with cognitive therapy — can be a great benefit in the battle against depression. According to the American Psychological Association, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) helps those at-risk for depression in combating negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs about themselves, thus helping to keep depression at bay. Research has also shown that this type of mindfulness therapy can prevent depression reoccurance as effectively as antidepressants.
Better body satisfaction
A lot of us struggle with body dissatisfaction, but getting more mindful is actually a great way to combat that. Those who engage in intentional mindfulness exercises have been shown to have greater self-compassion and a greater sense of continent self-worth. In short — spending some time getting to know yourself is actually good for your self-esteem and the way you see and appreciate your body.
Cognitive improvement
Some researchers have found that even brief mindfulness training improves cognitive ability. Taking some time to get present in the moment has been shown to enhance our ability to pay attention and improve our working memory and executive function. When we plug into our true selves, we find some surprising strengths that allow us to better live with the stress of daily living and our decisions within that world.
Reduce distractions
Modern living requires our attention to be split in about 100 different ways. This can become distracting, however, and keep us from achieving our goals or completing the internal work we need to thrive. By learning how to be more mindful — intentionally — we can actually improve the flow of sensory information in our brains, allowing us to better process the stress and overflow of information that is constantly bombarding us.
Decrease stress
Mindfulness is considered a key element when it comes to effectively dealing with stress. When we learn how to be present in the moment, and learn how to be present with our emotions, we build up resilience and decrease our avoidance tendencies — learning eventually to face-up to the things that are bringing us down or keeping us stuck. This type of new approach has a funny way of unlocking new potential while empowering us to make the changes that are necessary for happiness and fulfillment in our lives.
A 7-day guide to building mindfulness in your life.
Creating a regular mindfulness routine is the first step in cultivating that mindfulness in our lives. Rather than being a complex process that takes days and weeks in introspection, developing a practice can be done in as little as 7 days. By zeroing in and focusing on things like gratitude, compassion and acceptance, you can create the mindfulness you need to thrive in any circumstance.
Day 1: Focus on gratitude
On the first day, find yourself a quiet space (where you won’t be interrupted) and take a few minutes to just close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Feel yourself in the present moment and let the worries and stresses that congested your mind go — if only just for these few moments.
Once you’ve cleared your mind, focus your attention on the things in your life that you’re grateful for. Try to think of all the things, big and small, that bring joy, happiness or fulfillment to personal and professional spheres and relationships. How do they make you feel? Let those emotions come to you and linger as they will.
Take at least 10–15 minutes to think about the things in your life that your thankful for. Set a timer and — at the end of the process — take another 5 minutes or so to journal about the experience and how these things in your life make you feel. Whenever you’re struggling to be present in the moment, or deal with some new obstacle, refer back to the journal. Are you still thankful for those things? Are they worth overcoming these challenges for? Let them be the inspiration that navigates you through the tough times.
Day 2: Get compassionate
Day two of your mindfulness journey is all about compassion. We are quick to extend compassion to our friends and family members, but we’re often not willing to extend that same compassion to ourselves. By taking your second day to focus on compassion, you can unlock some of that missing self-acceptance that you need in order to truly unlock your happiness.
Find your quiet space again and take the first few minutes to close your eyes and find your breath. Just like before, let go of all the thoughts that are plaguing you from the day. They’re not needed here. Instead, focus on setting and intention to decrease the pain and suffering of those you encounter throughout the day — yourself included.
Shifting to this focus will allow us to see the world through a different lens, and therefore see ourselves differently through that same lens. When we set our focus to compassion, we naturally boost that compassion when it comes to applying it to our own circumstances. It’s the first step in acceptance, which is another necessary ingredient in any thriving state of mindfulness.
Day 3: Learning to accept
The third day of your new mindfulness journey is all about learning how to accept yourself and the way you feel and react to the environment around you. We all have our baggage and the experiences that define who we are in the moment, but that person is always changing. In order to truly learn how to live in the moment, we have to learn how to accept ourselves as we are.
Let go of all the judgements and preconceived notions you have about yourself and others. Remind yourself that the only behavior within the realm of your control is your own.
If there’s something you don’t like about yourself — make a plan to change it — but only after looking it boldly in the face and accepting it for what it is. Acceptance is the key to all change and understanding, but it is often the hardest hurdle to overcome. Only when we accept something that is within our nature can we dig into the meat of it and come up with a plan to change or transform it. Spend a few minutes on your third day practicing this radical self-acceptance, and look to build it into your regular routine.
Day 4: Deep-dive for meaning
Meaning is what gives our life purpose. It’s what drives us and it’s what pushes us toward the people and things that bring both energy and fulfillment to our existences. When we learn how to define the meaning behind why we do what we do, we can create lives that are more authentically our own and more authentically matched to who we are at our core. If you want to be more mindful, you need to deep-dive for meaning and you need to do it now.
On the fourth day of your new mindfulness journey, take your quiet moments to center yourself and consider what meaning you have in your life. Separate yourself from your responsibilities and compare them against the things that truly inspire your passions or ambitions. What are the things that make your heart sing and your soul throb? Those are the things you should be pursuing in your day-to-day.
Consider your ultimate purpose in this life. Consider too where you are right now and where you want to be in 10, 20 or 50 years from now. What steps can you take to move yourself closer to your goals? What changes need to be made in order you to feel as though you are doing what you are meant to be doing? Only when we find those things that truly fulfill us can we unlock true happiness in our lives. By getting mindful, we can move ourselves closer to this purpose and the things that better who we are and help us move to where we want to be.
Day 5: Starting to forgive
Forgiveness is a hard process and one that takes a great deal of time to truly master. It is a pivotal part of mindfulness, however, and a skill that we often forget to use on our mistakes and missteps. While we might be willing to forgive a spouse or a parent, it’s often hard to forgive ourselves for even the simplest of miscalculations. Spend your fifth day focusing on forgiveness and figure out how you can practice this skill on yourself each and every day.
As you close your eyes to begin your 5th day of quiet and uninterrupted reflection, focus first on forgiving yourself and then on forgiving others. Only when we get to the root of where we went wrong and forgive ourselves can we truly give that same deep forgiveness to others. We are what we preach. Look bravely at your past transgressions and understand that they were who you were, not who you are. Let them pass you by and rest in the past where they belong.
Be forgiving not only of yourself, but of your process too. One afternoon won’t allow you the gift of suddenly understanding every place you went wrong. It will allow you to release the relief, however, that comes with facing things for what they are and letting them go. Put a little forgiveness into your new practice each day and reach for affirmations like, “I forgive who I was so I can become who I need to be.” The only person holding you back is you.
Day 6: Celebrating small wins
We live in a society that tells us to achieve, to achieve, achieve, and this often warps our perception of what true achievement looks like. While the TV and our parents might preach material success as the only way to guage how well we’re doing, there’s much more to being a successful person than just doing well at your job or having a huge family. Taking the time to celebrate the small wins goes a long way in making us feel better about ourselves and who we are.
Take your mindfulness time on this day to zero-in on the small wins in your life, and then take some time to celebrate them. Record them in a journal, or share them with a friend. Don’t shy away from the tiniest of victories, and acknowledge what it took from you to achieve even the smallest of wins.
It’s important too to take this time to acknowledge that habits that helped you achieve these victories. Appreciate the added value they have brought to your life, and appreciate too the effort that you had to put in to change those habits or shift them in such a way that they allowed you to achieve. Part of being more mindful is being able to be truly present in the positive parts of our lives. Be present in the moment and revel in your success. Sometimes, just getting out of bed is an achievement when you’re learning how to be more present.
Day 7: Taking time to reflect
Just as you might close out the week at work with a quick look back at what you’ve tackled — part of creating thriving mindfulness in your life requires learning how to take a look back at how you’ve excelled in the past.
On the 7th day of your new journey, take some time to look back over your thoughts for the week, and note any improvements you might have made where it applies to your emotions or perceptions of certain situations.
It’s a good idea to make this type of reflection a regular part of any mindfulness routines you might incorporate into your life. Only by performing regular checkups with ourselves can we truly track our progress and keep and accurate note of where we are and how far we’ve come. You won’t unlock the secrets to total and absolute mindfulness in just a week, but you can give yourself one heck of a head start. Take the time to look back from point B to point A. You might just be surprised at the headway you make in such a short time.
Putting it all together…
Mindfulness is a powerful tool that we should incorporate into our lives for its plethora of benefits. Creating genuine mindfulness can transform our physical health and help improve our cardiovascular function as well as the way our body responds to stress. In addition to its many physical benefits, it also offers a number of mental benefits as well, the least of which is its ability to help alleviate and prevent both depression and anxiety.
You can create the basis of a transformative mindfulness routine in just seven days, but zeroing in on the aspects of healing that are most important in learning how to reconcile yourself against your environment. By focusing on gratitude and compassion, while learning how to extend true and radical acceptance to yourself and your situation — you can increase your mindfulness and start the deep-dive for meaning that is so necessary in order to feel fulfilled and joyful. Start being present in the moment by forgiving yourself as you forgive others and celebrating your victories, no matter how small. Only when we learn how to love ourselves and appreciate ourselves for who we are and how we feel can we unlock our true destinies that are just waiting to be built.
