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The mind is our most valuable and precious resource through which we experience every single moment of our lives. We rely on it to be happy, content, and emotionally stable and use it to manage our relationships.
This is the same mind that we put under pressure to be focussed, creative, to perform at its very best in everything we do. While people understand the importance of and are keen to look after their physical health, many neglect their mental wellbeing, something arguably more fragile.
Today’s world is a busy one. Stress from work. Stress from others. A global pandemic. It’s a lot to manage and as powerful as our minds are they can get overwhelmed. The simple tools we can use to help deal with the problems the world throws at us are mindfulness and meditation.
What are mindfulness and meditation?
While images of sitting and chanting in a cave, surrounded by burning incense, might arise in your mind, the reality is that mindfulness and meditation are a lot simpler and less dramatic than that.
Meditation is about sitting and observing your thoughts for a few minutes a day and mindfulness is a mindset that you can adopt to be more present and recognise and appreciate your experiences. It is not about controlling your mind or thoughts but simply about observing and understanding them.
While mindfulness and meditation are sometimes used as one-off antidotes for stress, their true benefit is realised when they are used as preventative measures. This can be done by incorporating them into one’s daily life.
4 benefits of mindfulness and meditation
While the list of benefits is long, and I don’t want to bore you by regurgitating them all, I feel the four below may resonate the most.
- Helps to fight stress (have greater peace of mind)
- Increased awareness and clarity of thinking (solve problems more effectively)
- Inner stillness and appreciation for the present moment (greater innate joy)
- Improves physical health (who would’ve thought?!)
If you’re interested you can see more benefits here.
Practising mindfulness
The best way to build the habit of mindfulness is to undertake a mindful or positive action each day. Using LSW cards are a great resource for doing this as you simply take a card each day and carry out the stated task. They fall into the categories of kindness, ritual, gratitude, journal, and reflection.
Although you could probably put together a mindfulness pack for yourself after extensive research, these cards remove the friction to making mindful choices, which is one of the most effective ways to build a habit.
Practising meditation
For meditation, I personally use Headspace which I would highly recommend. The soothing voice of Andy Puddicombe guides you through meditation as short as 10 minutes and there are ‘packs’ aimed at helping people achieve their various goals – calming a restless mind, finding balance, practising appreciation and more. They’ve also added sections to help fall asleep and stay fit. One app. All the solutions. If you want to try a meditation check out this video.
Personally, I’ve adopted mindfulness and meditation for the last few months and have found it has made my life a lot calmer. Consequences don’t seem so dire, I don’t really stress about things and even appreciate the little things in my day. It’s not something that happened overnight though and I had to get used to sitting down daily and meditating, even when my mind was distracted. I’ve found that incorporating meditation into my morning routine is the best way to keep consistent and preps me for the day.
As for developing a mindful mindset, that simply took time and practice. Mindfulness is a skill. It requires practice like any skill. There aren’t any shortcuts and courses can only help you to get going. But if you stick with it I hope you’ll find it as enjoyable and rewarding as I do.
So, look after your mind. It’s easy to neglect as you can’t see it but it definitely feels the stresses of daily life. A 10-minute meditation and having greater appreciation every day can really make a difference in the long run.
Further resources
This is a huge topic and I would encourage you to check out this curated list from TED on mindfulness. There are talks on purpose, patience, burnout, stress and more.
Below is one of my favourites.
