How To Make Your Mind Happy: 5 Secrets To Mindfulness
Sometimes it seems like your brain just sits around creating lousy feelings and worries. You want this, you’re frustrated about that, you’re annoyed about some other thing and the list never stops. And it makes it impossible to be happy. What would be nice is to have a perspective that helps your brain deal with all of these negative emotions. And there may be one — and you’ve probably heard the name a lot lately: Mindfulness. And research shows it works. Three big names in the field have collaborated to produce an app that can teach you how to be more mindful. Dan Harris is the anchor of Good Morning America and author of 10% Happier, where he recounts his journey from mindfulness skeptic to believer. Now here’s the part where I give you an actual definition of mindfulness, right? You and I are gonna walk through the first few steps on how to be more mindful so you don’t just sound like Merriam-Webster, but you really understand what the deal is and how to do it. From The Upward Spiral:
Beyond Hacking Your Habits
The essence of mindfulness is training the mind to recognize unconscious reactions, so that we may move out of autopilot and into more adaptive responding. Once you start Hacking Your Habits, there are three simple processes to practice undermining autopilot. Mindful-Mastery Mantra Moving from Awareness to Effectiveness Just as each component on the dashboard of your car indicates a particular need for care, each component of your internal experience does too. 3 Steps to Practice: Validate – Check – Change Step I: Validate Emotions The Skill. To validate is not to approve, condone or cheer lead. The Mix Up: Humans naturally want to feel more good feelings, and get rid of the difficult feelings. Barriers to Practice. But, as we have learned, our emotion regulation system is a Paradox. The Practices. PAUSE: Notice that you are feeling triggered.Find the verbal label for the emotion. Step II: Check Thoughts The Skill. There are two ways to effectively check thoughts; 1. The Mix Up. The Mix Up.
The Daily Chore That Can Increase Mental Stimulation and Decrease Anxiety
When done properly, the chore decreased nervousness by 27% and increased mental inspiration by 25%. Mindful dishwashing can decrease stress and calm the mind, a new study finds. People in the study focused on the smell of the soap, the feel and shape of the dishes to help them enter a mindful state. Doing the dishes in a mindful way also increased the pleasurable feeling of time slowing down, the researchers found. Mr Adam Hanley, the study’s first author, said: “I’ve had an interest in mindfulness for many years, both as a contemplative practitioner and a researcher.I was particularly interested in how the mundane activities in life could be used to promote a mindful state and, thus, increase overall sense of well-being.” In the study 51 people were split into two groups. One group did the dishes in their normal way — most likely while letting their minds wander to the usual anxieties. The other group were encouraged to focus on the sensory experience of washing the dishes.
Mindfulness: What’s the POINT?
The brain loves to chunk information in order to remember things and there are so many great acronyms that help us remember to bring mindfulness into our lives. I’m going to list a few really key ones and then link you to respective guided practices or posts as a reference to play with them and bring them into your life. Finally, I’m going to introduce you to a new powerful acronym that gets to the point of mindfulness. STOP (Stop, Take a breath, Observe your experience and Proceed) This is an all time favorite. RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Inquire, Non-identify/Natural Awareness) This acronym created by Michelle McDonald and popularized and adapted by Tara Brach, is incredible for helping us gain perspective, self-compassion and confidence with our difficult feelings. ACE – (Awareness, Collect, Expand) SAFE (Soften, Allow, Feel, Expand) This is a newer acronym from Uncovering Happiness that helps us find strength and confidence through vulnerability. Warmly, Elisha
12 Indispensable Mindful Living Tools
By Leo Babauta The focus of my life in recent months has been living mindfully, and while I don’t always remember to do that, I have learned a few things worth sharing. The first is a mindful life is worth the effort. It’s a life where we awaken from the dream state we’re most often submerged in — the state of having your mind anywhere but the present moment, locked in thoughts about what you’re going to do later, about something someone else said, about something you’re stressing about or angry about. It’s worth the effort, because being awake means we’re not missing life as we walk through it. The second thing I’ve learned is that we forget. The third is that mindful living isn’t just one thing. I’ll share them in this post, and hope that you’ll consider each in turn. Why You Should Care Why bother to spend the time learning these tools? No. This is what I’ve found. The Toolset This list, of course, is not complete. Meditation. The Practice Well, there’s hope.
RAIN: A Mindfulness Practice for Welcoming Your Emotions
Most people who come to meditation are looking for respite from what is sometimes called the “monkey mind”—the perpetual, hyperactive (and often self-destructive) whirl of thoughts and feelings everyone undergoes. But the truth is that meditation does not eradicate mental and emotional turmoil. Rather, it cultivates the space and gentleness that allow us intimacy with our experiences so that we can relate quite differently to our cascade of emotions and thoughts. That different relationship is where freedom lies. The RAIN Practice RAIN is an acronym for a practice specifically geared to ease emotional confusion and suffering. R — Recognize: It is impossible to deal with an emotion—to be resilient in the face of difficulty—unless we acknowledge that we’re experiencing it. A — Acknowledge: The second step is an extension of the first—you accept the feeling and allow it to be there. As we get closer to it, an uncomfortable emotion becomes less opaque and solid.
