We all want the quickest and most effective tools to help us improve our health in any way possible. Of course, here on the blog, the main goal is to help you do so in a safe and realistic manner, so I’ve been hard at work discovering more ways how. These past couple of months I have been on a personal journey of discovering the many different ways that mindfulness can improve my overall health.
I’m talking seeing a significant improvement mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Both on the outside and on the inside.
For those of you who do not know, mindfulness is the practice of being aware. You learn how to be aware and accepting of all your emotions in a non-judgmental way. It does not matter the situation or moment at hand, you simply acknowledge your thoughts and emotions as they arise, accept them for what they are, and effectively process them.
Mindfulness by no means is an easy technique to practice! In order to be mindful, it takes a great amount of patience and dedication to the craft. Luckily there are many different ways that you can practice mindfulness and for many different reasons. Some practice mindfulness for their mental health, as a manifestation technique, and even as a meditation technique.
I’ve been practicing mindfulness as an effective tool to improve my overall health. Curious to learn what mindfulness techniques I’ve picked up along the way and how they can help improve your health? Then continue reading below because I promise these techniques will completely blow your mind!
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Mindfulness Techniques to Improve Your Health
1. Do one thing at a time
There is nothing more frustrating than trying to accomplish more than one task at a time. We are raised in a culture where multitasking is a skill that you need to have in order to be successful. This tends to make us operate in a fashion where we do not give any of the tasks that we do our full attention, and the ones that we do give our full attention to, we do not give 100% of our effort to it.
This is because we are spreading ourselves too thin.
A big part of mindfulness is truly giving your undivided attention to the task at hand. That means you are not trying to focus on doing one specific task while also trying to give a little bit of your time to other tasks. Instead, you adopt the F.O.C.U.S. mindset where you see one specific task all the way through to the end before moving onto another.
In hindsight this may be a little challenging because we lack the self-discipline to follow one specific task all the way through. However, consistently practicing mindfulness can help you get there. How does this connect with having an improved health?
When you are able to zero in and focus on one specific area of your health, and one specific action to help you improve it, you are more likely to actually see quick results. For example, as part of my journey I really wanted gain back the consistency with exercising daily. So as part of my mindfulness journey I made a point to specifically focus on simply moving my body for at least 15 minutes a day.
Doing one thing at a time gives you space to really dive deep into the task at hand, and understand how it is either positively or negatively impacting your overall health. It separates your commitment to other tasks from your dedication to one specific task. This allows you to follow that goal through until you have seen it to the very end.
2. Look for mindful moments throughout the day
Another key to practicing mindfulness is understanding moments when you are able to engage in it. There are many opportunities all around us that allow us to stop, take a breather, and engage in mindfulness. However, we live in such a fast pace world that we don’t ever recognize when those moments present themselves to us.
Having the skill or ability to stop and smell the roses gives you the advantage of always being aware of your surroundings. When this comes to your health this is an extremely crucial tool to have because it really can make all the difference in your ability to achieve a goal. You want to always be aware of what you are exposing yourself to, and what in your environment you may be limited with using to the full extent.
When you really live your life taking every day second by second, minute by minute, and hour by hour, you will learn how and when to find moments to practice mindfulness. Most of us have a specific routine that we follow from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed. Having a routine is not a part of practicing mindfulness. However, finding spontaneous moments to stop and really process your surroundings is a part of practicing mindfulness.
For example, while on my journey I got to a point where I was losing interest in my exercise routine. In order to keep myself going I had to teach myself to be mindful of what specifically was making me lose interest, and what specifically would help me keep interest, then adjust accordingly. Looking for mindful moments can improve your health by teaching you how to stop and mindfully pay attention to everything that is working in your favor and everything that is working against you.
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3. Notice your patterns/habits and make necessary changes
Our habits, patterns, and routines are everything. There is so much that we tend to mindlessly do on a day-to-day basis that we often times do not attempt to make changes. We adopt the mindset of it’s not broken then don’t fix it. This is how we tend to move throughout our day. If something is working well for us and so far, it’s not causing us any setbacks, then why switch it up?
You switch it up because when you become accustomed to doing something a certain way your mind and body naturally begin to stop reaching for new heights. You essentially adopt a sense of laziness by choosing to do what you know you can do and do fairly quickly, rather than stretching yourself to new heights so that you can grow more into your full potential.
There is so much that can be revealed through our patterns/habits and how it influences many different avenues in our life. Mindfulness can help you break a lot of habits, and change a lot of patterns that are no longer helping you get to the next stage. For example, while on my journey one thing I noticed was that I was becoming extremely comfortable with was only exercising for 15 minutes a day. This pattern was causing me to take longer to reach my goals because I was no longer challenging or pushing myself harder. Recognizing this and making necessary changes to grow and expand allowed me to stay on course with reaching my goals in a timely manner.
This mindfulness technique can help you improve your health by allowing you recognize the patterns that currently exist in your life that are helping go farther in life, and the habits that are supporting your desire to get there. It can also give you the confidence to make the necessary changes with these patterns/habits by helping you understand why a change may need to be made.
A lot of the time we just go with the flow until the rhythm naturally begins to change on its own. In this case, we take control of the rhythm and we teach it how to dance to our own drum.
4. Practice mindfully responding and not simply reacting
This can be a bit confusing mainly because a lot of people do not understand the difference between responding and reacting. In hindsight they are essentially the same thing. However, it’s the behavior that initiates the action that follows for each type of response which highlights the key differences between the two.
When we react, it’s instinctual and often immediate. We don’t really allow any time to think or process something, instead we just do what our mind and body may tell us to do. Whereas when we respond we are processing everything that happened, while thinking about the appropriate and most beneficial way to follow through with the situation. Responding over reacting gives you the advantage to mindfully process what needs to be processed in order to better understand how to move forward.
For example, something I had to teach myself while on my journey was that no matter what my results were, I would respond (not react) by mindfully analyzing what worked best and went well for me that week. I had to teach myself how to respond to my results in order to mindfully make changes, instead of reacting and making no changes.
This mindfulness technique can help to quiet a lot of the outside noise that has the potential to have a negative impact on your thought process. Every situation you face in life is going to be different and produce different results. Ultimately at the end of the day what truly matters is learning how to mindfully respond to whatever life may present you with so that you can continue to move forward.
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5. Be more aware of everything
Awareness is such a crucial tool for anyone who is looking to make any kind of changes in their life. This is because everywhere you go you will always be surrounded by temptations that are either going to try and hold you back, or falsely push you forward. A setback may be telling yourself that you can eat fast food once a day for an entire week, still exercise daily for at least 30 minutes, and hit your weight loss goal of 5 pounds by the end of the week. It’s a temptation to go back to your old ways briefly as a means to “reward” yourself for staying on course the entire month.
A false promise would be making the decision to detox daily in hopes of losing weight at a much faster weight. While this not only has the potential to be dangerous, it’s a false promise, Detoxing cleanses the body. Which means it’s only as effective as the foods that you are then putting back into your body after your cleanse. If you don’t change your eating habits hitting your weight loss goals will be difficult no matter how often you detox.
This is because you are not practicing the art of being mindfully aware of everything little thing that can either make or break your health and wellness goals.
For example, while on my journey one of my goals was to lose a certain number of pounds every month. I knew that in order to reach that goal I had to be extremely mindful of not only the kinds of foods that I was eating, but the kinds of foods that I already had in my home. Such as snacks, foods that I could cook for dinner, how much fruits and vegetables I had in stock, and even whether I was eating more processed or organic foods.
While this may seem overwhelming at first it can be very beneficial for you in the long run. This is because you are aware of what is in your environment that can either help or hinder you from reaching your goals, as well as being mindful of how big of a positive or negative impact your environment can have on you.
6. Live one day at a time
If there is anything that my mindfulness journey has taught me so far, it’s that you have to take life one day at a time. You can’t jump into something and expect fast and immediate results. Instead, you have to meet yourself wherever you may be on your journey and stay there until you know you are ready to move on. In the beginning we are so anxious to get to the end that we often times fill ourselves with an overwhelming sense of anxiety.
This is because our minds are moving faster than our bodies can keep up, and faster than what is really happening in real life.
When we take the time to mindfully be present with each passing day, we are able to better take in how we are living our daily lives. Do you have an effective routine in place? Are your eating habits improving day-by-day? Are you meditating? Journaling? Are you allowing yourself to be fully present in every moment that you experience?
Acknowledging and truthfully answering questions like these help us see where effective changes are happening, and where we are failing to grow and expand. Mindfulness is not a quick and easy process that will help you get quick and easy results. It’s a process that requires a great deal of commitment, concentration, dedication, and above all practice if we really want to see positive and desirable changes in our lives.
There are no shortcuts to improving your overall health through mindfulness. Everything is a matter of mindfully being aware and present of what is happening not only within yourself, but outside of yourself as well, and understanding how it is impacting you for the better. My journey so far has not been an easy one, but these mindfulness techniques have helped to keep me on track and in it for the long run. They may be helpful for you as well.
What mindfulness techniques do you use to help improve your health? Share them with me in the comments below!
-Xo
Kimora