Mindfulness - Page 4

In this section, we cover a variety of mindfulness practices, tips, and resources to encourage the importance of mental wellness.

How Meditation Can Help You Uncover Your Passion and Purpose

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Meditation to Uncover Your Passion and Purpose

 

Did you know that having a sense of purpose for your life will make you live longer? In fact, it’s even been proven to reduce your risk of heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

Those who develop a strong sense of purpose usually do so by discovering their passions. Following your passion doesn’t necessarily mean finding the right occupation; it means finding what you love and what you live for.

But how do you discover what your passion and purpose in life is? With so much noise going on out there and in your head, maybe you just need to quiet your mind and soul so that they can tell you what it is.

What you need is to observe your thoughts as they drift through your mind. And the only way to do that is through meditation.

Meditation allows you to refocus your awareness and let go of random thoughts. As your experiences play out in your head, recognize how they make you feel. Meditation has the power to unlock even our deepest memories, things you may have thought were left behind in your childhood. You’ll be surprised by how glimpses of the past can have a profound effect on you today and in this moment.

You can remember the warmth on your face on a sunny day or your laugh as you played with the family dog. Sometimes our purpose in life comes from the recollection of simpler days when we remember the things that made us happiest.

Ask yourself when the last time you laughed uncontrollably was, had a grin on your face you couldn’t wipe off, or had butterflies in your stomach.

Was it the times that you’ve helped others? Or maybe it was when you baked your first pie. Perhaps the last time you felt true happiness was when you traveled alone.

Reflective and mindful meditation allows us to gain a deeper insight or wisdom to a question we bring to mind. Sit comfortably and take slow and increasingly deeper breaths until you are relaxed and calm. Ask yourself the question.

“What is my purpose?”

Insights will surface in your mind. They could be memories, random thoughts, or even dreams you’ve once had. Watch them like a movie. Observe them without judgment while you continue to focus on your question.

The answer won’t always come to you right away. But over time, you will be able to focus on what the insights are telling you. And soon, you’ll come to recognize exactly what your body, mind, and soul have been trying to communicate to you.

Remember that you have your own path and your own pace when it comes to tapping into your consciousness. Only you can make the mind-body connection.

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3 Powerful Ways Meditation Can Benefit your Mind and Body

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There’s no point in doing something if it doesn’t benefit you, right? This is something many people consider when they contemplate starting up a meditation routine. They consider it to just be sitting down and being quiet…not much else is involved with meditation, right? 

Wrong. Meditation has never been a holistic hoax, and that still stands. While some benefits of meditation are very superficial, there are actually a variety of important mental and physical benefits that practitioners of yoga experience when they meditate.

What are those benefits? There are honestly too many to mention in just one blog post. However, there are three powerful benefits that any meditation skeptic should know about:

Meditation is great for anxiety and soothing the physical soul.

Your nervous system is the gateway to all of your bodily functions. From how you think to how you move, your nervous system is an amazing thing…and meditation can greatly affect how it functions.

Being specific, meditation activates your parasympathetic nervous system. This directly relates to your rest response — or how calm and relaxed you are physically and mentally. While many people associate rest with a mental state, it can also affect how your body functions overall. This relates to your heart rate, blood pressure, immunity, digestion and blood pressure. Meditation also helps to lower your stress hormones through this system as well.

Similarly, meditation can also help you sleep at night. While it obviously relates to your body physically shutting down, meditation also calms your racing mind, making it easier to turn in at the end of the night.

Meditation improves your creativity and productivity.

A clear mind is a mind that comes up with great ideas. When you have a bunch of thoughts racing around your brain, it can be hard to settle on one idea and fully realize it. Meditation helps to clear away these thoughts, making room for your creativity to shine through.

Think about your mind like a cluttered desk. What can you do with a cluttered desk other than clean it or walk away? Meditation is the process of cleaning it, allowing work to actually be done at the desk. This is the perfect illustration for how meditation makes a person more productive. A clear mind is a mind that gets things done.

Meditation makes people happier.

Meditation is calming, and being calm leads to being happier. When someone meditates, they let the weight of the world fall away from them and they experience a small taste of enlightenment. Meditation helps a person to process thoughts, get rid of negativity, and clear their mind.

The fact that meditation relieves stress is one of the biggest benefits of meditation, but not just because of this obvious relaxation benefit. A relaxed person with little stress in their life will obviously be happier than someone who has a life filled with stress and minimal downtime.

One final benefit of meditation — it’s a great way to take some time out to focus on yourself, not the clutter of everyday stressors and irritants. Take some time out of your day to meditate. You’ll be glad you did.

Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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4 Valuable Tips for Staying Mindful on the Go

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Reads for Budding Entrepreneurs

A common misconception about mindfulness is that it’s entirely the absence of thought. However, it should be obvious that this is wrong — it’s not called mindfulness for nothing. To be mindful is to (simply put) accomplish two things. First, you clear your mind. Second — and this is the important part — you focus on the present environment and the world around you within that very moment.

No past, no future. Just the moment you currently exist within.

The problem is that as entrepreneurs and busy people, we don’t often have the time or ability to shut off our brains and focus on what’s really around us. That’s why when the moment occurs, we all have to strike while the iron is hot.

Your Daily Commute.

It’s probably a good idea to avoid spacing out while you’re driving to work, but that doesn’t mean you can take some time during your commute to be mindful. This is much easier if you take the train, bus, or subway to work. You aren’t having to worry about the rules of the road and it’s easier to let your mind wander and focus on the world around you.

If you do drive, try and make it to work a little early. Don’t try to be mindful while driving, but instead for a few minutes once you get to work. Sit in your car, turn off your brain and take in your environment.

Make Food Mindful.

Being mindful isn’t just about drifting away and taking in the sights. It’s also about savoring all of your senses — including your sense of taste.

You’ll find time to eat during the day, which means you’ll find time to be mindful. The food you’re eating doesn’t have to be from a 5-star restaurant in order for mindfulness to occur. Even if you only have time for a Hot Pocket at your desk, take the time to notice the flavor and only the flavor. How does the food feel? How does it taste?

Before Sleep.

You aren’t a robot — you’ve got to sleep sometime! If you don’t have time to be mindful during the day, simply make time at night. About five minutes before you’re scheduled to go to sleep, let your mind wander and experience the world around you.

It’s actually easier to be mindful when your mind is already looking forward to shutting down. Practicing mindfulness before bed is one way to be more successful at the exercise, and it’s also simultaneously relaxing so you can fall asleep faster.

Emotional Awareness.

We’ve covered things like sight, sound and taste, but mindfulness also encompasses another spectrum of yourself: emotions. Examining your emotions in the present is a great way to get in tune with them and ease stress.

This can be done at any time during the day. One idea is to consider focusing on this during any bathroom breaks you take at work. Wash your hands and focus on feeling the water and soap, then look inward and assess your emotions. This takes only a few seconds and can still leave you feeling at ease.

At the end of the day practicing mindfulness will only add positive effects to your life and it doesn’t cost you anything to try it. Be sure to take some time out of your day to monitor your thoughts so you can become better at fine-tuning your emotional awareness.

Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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How to Stay Mindful When You’re a Busy Entrepreneur

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Entrepreneurs live very busy lives. They go, go, go and never find the time to fully come to a stop. If this defines your own life, consider this: you can be just as productive while still having inner peace and a way to put your mind at ease when you do find some downtime.

Many entrepreneurs might think this is ridiculous. A way to stay busy while still being able to relax when you need to? Preposterous! The truth is that it’s entirely possible thanks to one helpful technique: mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the ability to focus entirely on the present, and that’s in the most literal sense. Not the current day or the current week instead of a far-off to-do list. No, mindfulness means focusing on each second as it passes; being utterly and completely in the moment. It’s unrealistic to say you can always tune out your busy day, but practicing mindfulness gives you a place to escape when it’s time to put work down for the night.

But…how can you stay mindful and practice mindfulness when you have such a busy schedule to adhere to? I have a few tips that can make it work for you, no matter how packed your schedule is.

Skip the evening…go for a mindful morning.

Many entrepreneurs feel the pressure to practice mindfulness during the evening, right after they (maybe) finished up their to-do list. While this is the time when it’s most helpful to be mindful, don’t leap into mindfulness right after you round out your day. Instead, practice mindfulness when it’s easiest — during the morning.

In the morning, it’s a lot easier to clear your head. Right after you wake up, you haven’t thrown yourself into the thick of the day. At night, you’ve already got a ton of work thoughts swirling around in your head.

Set aside time for short breaks.

It’s not to say that you need to take whole 15-minute chunks out of your day to practice mindfulness. Instead, set aside little bite-sized pieces of time (like three to five minutes) to let go of all of your thoughts and slip into being in the moment. This can help to keep your mind sharp and focused during the day, and it also keeps your brain from going 100 miles per hour non-stop throughout the day.

Indulge the senses.

One of the most important aspects of mindfulness is, well, being aware of your mind and what it’s feeling. The best way to do this is to directly stimulate the senses as much as possible.

A great opportunity for this that doesn’t interrupt your schedule is your lunch break. Put aside your phone and focus only on your food. Savor each bite and catalog the flavors, smells, and textures of what you’re eating. Is it cold? Is it crunchy? Does it make you feel nostalgia or bring up a memory?

Master Mindfulness doesn’t have to be difficult

Being in the moment means truly feeling every emotion and sense that passes through your body. Once you’ve mastered this, you’ve truly mastered mindfulness.

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How Practicing Mindfulness Can Change your Life

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No one is ever entirely free of stress…or are they?

Stress is something that we consider a standard in life. Sometimes stress is direr than it is simple. We stress as teens studying hard for tests and as adults stressing over how much money we need to make to break even. Stress creates a very cluttered mental space, which then begins to impact other areas of life, like productivity and health. In short, stress is something that we don’t want but that seems almost inevitable, especially as professionals.

This is where mindfulness comes in. You may have heard the term in passing, but are you familiar with what it is and what it can do for you?

What is Mindfulness?

To keep things simple, mindfulness is being very aware of the world around you on a moment-by-moment basis, as well as accepting it simultaneously. People assume that this is simple — aren’t we all already living and experiencing every moment of our lives? Experiencing something and actually being 100% aware of it, however, are two different things.

While it’s true that we are physically present for all of our lives, we aren’t always mentally present. The opposite of mindfulness is mindlessness, or essentially running on autopilot. Many people don’t fully understand how much of their life is spent lost in thought, avoiding outside stimuli.

Say that you’re walking down a busy city street. What are you doing? Are you keeping your thoughts to yourself, running through your daily to-do list? Are you listening to music from earbuds, lost in the sound and not paying full attention to the world around you? Both are examples of clogging our minds with something in order to avoid being cognizant. Someone who has embraced mindfulness is fully living in that moment, noticing things, and taking them in.

What Can Mindfulness do for you?

Mindfulness is often associated with total positivity; it’s something written off as a new age, existentialist way of avoiding life’s problems. However, it’s exactly the opposite.

Let’s look at stress and mindfulness. When someone who is used to mindlessness is confronted with stress, the negative emotion, and thoughts of the future cloud their vision. Anxiety gets in the way of productivity. Someone who is mindful, however, fully accepts the stressful stimuli and then formulates a plan based on their acceptance of their current predicament.

Practicing mindfulness can help reduce the harmful repercussions of stress, like panic and anxiety. Realize that stress is a state of being, an emotion — it isn’t a situation itself. When someone is mindful, they don’t experience stress because they experience a situation, not the harmful emotional side effect that comes with it.

Thus, mindfulness is growing in popularity as a way to increase productivity. When we are mindful of our surroundings, our emotional state and what we must do, we are much more likely to seize the day and get things done with no negativity involved.

Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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Positivity Fun Facts; How it Really is the Best Medicine

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Facts about positivity

We hear all the time that it pays to be positive, but is that really true? How does positivity impact our lives, and what is the point of being so upbeat all the time? If positivity is so rewarding, does that mean there’s a consequence for sadness all the same?

Despite sounding like such a simple concept, positivity can be truly mystifying. How do we find happiness? Can I have positivity without happiness, and vice versa?

While it’d be impossible to condense all that we know about positive psychology (which yes, it has its own subset in the psychology world), we do have four fun facts or tidbits about positivity that may brighten your day.

  1. Positivity lengthens your life.

If you Google “Nun Study” you’ll find a very prolific scientific research project about aging and Alzheimer’s — that’s not the study we’re talking about here. This study is instead by Danner, Snowdon, and Friesen from the University of Kentucky and is strictly about Catholic nuns.

These researchers found that based on the nun’s own writings, those that expressed more positive sentiments lived longer lives. Look it up for more concrete and fascinating stats.

  1. Positivity boosts sales.

Many believe that the secret to happiness is success. That once you’ve finally found your place in life, happiness is just around the corner…and if that’s not true, then what is? Is it possible that this assumed standard is false?

According to Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, the opposite is actually true. This creates a bit of a chicken vs. egg scenario, but Seligman is sure that optimism comes before success. Based on an optimism test Seligman designed for MetLife, those who were positive based on the test results were almost always likely to outperform those who were negative.

  1. Positivity helps counteract stress effects.

Stress is a part of life and it’s one you’ll likely never fully be able to run away from. If you figure out how to live a life 100% free of stress, tell us your secret — we’d like to know.

Still, just because stress is a natural phenomena, it doesn’t mean it’s one we have to take lying down. There are a million different teas on the market meant to combat stress and its side effects, but what about something like positivity?

Many credible studies focus on how positivity helps to combat stress, but mostly how our own negativity leads to a majority of stress. While a catalyst may be the biggest source of stress, self-doubt and blame often contribute to our negativity more than the original problem.

  1. Positivity broadens your horizons.

From a young age, we learn to be positive. Most children are not born pessimists but are instead taught to be negative based on those around them and their life experiences. Children play, grow and learn while basking in that positivity. At this stage of development, their world is infinite.

This is how positivity can affect all of us every day. When we open our minds to possibilities and positivity, we see our worlds as they can be — not as they are.

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New Self-Activation Strategies for 2017

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The time to start motivating yourself was yesterday, but there’s still no time like the present. In short? While it was probably a better idea to already have been working on your self-activation strategies for the new year, there’s still time to do so right now.

Self-activation is all about motivating yourself without outside influences. No buddy-system, no bribes, no tools. Just you finding the will to do something and executing a plan. Why is self-activation so useful? It removes the crutches many other motivation techniques use.

While these techniques in and of themselves aren’t bad, they still require an outside influence to get you motivated. What happens if you don’t have access to your reminder app and you’ve run out of credit card account space to buy yourself that reward for being so good about your to-do list? When you know how to self-activate, you know how to get things done no matter the circumstances or environment.

In 2017, think more about being mindful and looking within yourself to achieve your goals. Here’s how to get started:

Reflect More and More

Part of being self-activating is to be mindful. In fact, mindfulness and self-activation often go hand in hand. When you’re more aware of yourself and your surroundings, you’re more likely to get things done. You face reality and see what you must do.

Many people don’t take the time to reflect on the lessons they’re learning all around them and throughout their lives. When something profound happens to you, do you actually take some time to absorb the situation, learn and grow? Part of being self-activating is learning from mistakes and pushing forward in spite of failure, and self-reflection can greatly help with that.

Start Scheduling

A schedule isn’t counterintuitive to a self-activating lifestyle, as long as it doesn’t become your source of motivation. Organization isn’t the same thing as activation.

Thus, helping yourself figure out what all you have to do and when to do it is crucial to keeping things organized and flowing on time. Clutter and disorganization can often lead to self-activation hindrance because they create a large roadblock. The more distressed your mind becomes, the less likely you’ll be to self-activate.

Nap More

Seems like the opposite of self-activating, right? While you may not be able to indulge in a cat nap if you’re part of the working class, entrepreneurs should take more advantage of their lax schedules and sleep more often. Napping is a great way to reinvigorate the mind and reset both your physical and emotional system.

We often find ourselves living from one caffeinated beverage to another, and we drink more cups of coffee than we sleep hours at night. This sets a disturbing standard — we’re exhausting ourselves. It’s hard to be self-motivated when you’re exhausted, which leads to motivational crutches and full on burn out.

Finally, be self-activating about your own self-activation. Look for more strategies and find different ways to motivate yourself. Before long you’ll be a self-activation pro.

How Positive Emotions Impact Our Health

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Facts about positivity

Have you ever considered the role of positivity in your life? In fact, think about this question for a moment: how positive are you?

If you immediately answered with a “very” or “yeah, I’m positive,” then stop and rethink your answer. Give yourself five minutes. Positive people exude their positivity in everything they do. They may not be eternally smiling, stereotypical balls of sunshine, but they do have a “can do, will do, will succeed” attitude that helps them get through the day.

But is there a purpose behind all of this positivity? It makes sense that being positive can increase your productivity and lift your mood some, that’s for sure. There’s also that other quip that people like to throw around that you should think about: “being more positive is healthy for you!”

Is this actually true though? Is there any direct correlation between being positive and being healthy?

In reality, there have actually been quite a few studies done on the subject. Many scientists and researchers wanted to officially find out how positivity affects a person’s health.

For instance, a 2015 study shows that what you say on Twitter could actually be directly correlated to a person’s heart health.

Based on the data found, users that used more optimistic language presented a lower risk for their mortality in terms of heart disease. This means that users that used words in their tweets like “stronger” and “faith” were healthier than those who used more negative language or who had indiscernible leanings.

Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley conducted a study based on the emotion of awe. Awe, amazement and wonderment are all positive emotions that can positively affect your health, based on the research that discovered the emotions have natural, anti-inflammatory properties.

The Berkeley study involves researches looking at subjects that had recently experienced awe versus those who had not. Those who had experienced awe were found to have lower levels of cytokines, inflammatory markers that may cause autoimmune diseases, depression, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

One of the study’s authors spoke to news website The Huffington Post about her thoughts on the study and subject.

“Rather than seeing a walk through the park or a trip to the museum as an indulgence, we hope people will view these kind of experiences as important ways to promote a healthy body in addition to a healthy mind…”

Another study conducted on positive emotions was spearheaded by positive psychologist Barbara Frederickson. Her research focused on the effects of loving-kindness meditation (known as LKM) which is a traditional Buddhist practice that combines meditation with compassion and collective love within a group.

She found that the boosted feelings of compassion led to improvement in resting vagal tone. The vagus nerve has to do with a person’s overall physical health as well as their feelings of connection and love.

Frederickson had this to say about her findings:

“In a way, our bodies are designed for love, because the more we love, the more healthy we become.”

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10 Minutes of Fitness Can Make You More Productive

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10 Minutes of Fitness Can Make You More Productive

You’re sitting all day at the office. Sitting to work, sitting to eat, sitting on the way home. You probably get to your house, sit on the couch, and then sit in bed before you lay down. When you work a lot, you become really sedentary, and this isn’t the answer to a healthy and happy life.

There’s also another problem happening here – when you sit and sit all day, you aren’t operating at your best. When you’re at work you should be firing on all cylinders, not slumping through each day wishing it was over. When you sit and don’t move, you aren’t as productive as you could be.

Here’s a fun fact for you – every year you get older, your brain’s ability to generate brain cells depletes. If you want to help curb this process, exercise is the answer. In the short term, even exercising for 10 minutes a day can help your blood circulate to your brain, keeping you sharper. When your brain is engaged, it’s staying healthy and youthful.

The happier your brain is, the more productive you are as a person. A fully engaged brain is one that is getting things done, which means you could be wasting your potential just sitting in your desk chair for hours on end. Thankfully it’s not hard to get your brain going again, even at work. Those 10 minutes that it takes to get your brain going can be done sporadically throughout the day in short bursts – or you can literally work on them while you’re working!

Not to mention, in general, exercising is good for your body and overall well-being. These exercises are all doable at work, no matter if you reside in a cubicle or the top floor office. What are you waiting for?

  • Leg Lifts – Sit at a desk all day? It’s like that this sedentary position keeps your legs in a near-still state for long periods of time, cutting off circulation. You may shuffle or cross and uncross them occasionally, but that’s not doing much. It may not seem like a lot, but do some leg lifts while you’re sitting down and working. Life one leg from the knee, hold for five seconds, and put it down. Alternate back and forth for as long as you’d like. This extra movement is enough to get your brain back in motion, especially because now it’s working harder to focus on counting and your work at the same time.
  • Dine and Dash – So you’re at work on your lunch break, sitting at your desk or in the break room. Instead of simply sitting through your lunch break, walk around and eat – where it’s polite to, of course. If you can go outside, walk around your building while you enjoy your salad or burrito. Try to keep things healthy (but that’s for another post). Getting out and moving around can get your creative and productive juices flowing again.
  • Work Rewards – Make it into a game. Pick an exercise that’s simple or that you enjoy doing, like toe touches or squats. Tell yourself that after every five minutes you spend fully focused on work, you get up and do your decided upon exercise. Once you’ve done 12 reps in a row, so you’ve worked and exercised for approximately an hour, take a 15-minute work break – if you’re allowed of course. If not, find another way to treat yourself for the accomplishment. When you feel accomplished, you’re more likely to be productive.
  • PE Routine – If you want to get your work workout over with all in one fell swoop, that’s fine. Just wait until your longest break and think back to middle school gym class. Go through about 15-20 reps of the most basic stretches and exercises like high knees, the butterfly position, a jumping jack or two. This can get your circulation going and boosts your productivity after a long and boring afternoon.

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