Ten Things To Do When You Feel Like Crap Meditation for Beginners: 20 Practical Tips for Quieting the Mind Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Todd Goldfarb at the We The Change blog. Meditation is the art of focusing 100% of your attention in one area. The practice comes with a myriad of well-publicized health benefits including increased concentration, decreased anxiety, and a general feeling of happiness. Although a great number of people try meditation at some point in their lives, a small percentage actually stick with it for the long-term. This is unfortunate, and a possible reason is that many beginners do not begin with a mindset needed to make the practice sustainable. The purpose of this article is to provide 20 practical recommendations to help beginners get past the initial hurdles and integrate meditation over the long term: 1) Make it a formal practice. 2) Start with the breath. 4) Meditate with Purpose. 5) Notice frustration creep up on you. 6) Experiment. 7) Feel your body parts. 8) Pick a specific room in your home to meditate. 9) Read a book (or two) on meditation.
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. The state of mind where we’re lost in our smartphones and social media. 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.