During good times and bad, practicing mindfulness can make a big difference in how you think, behave and feel. It can help to ease stress, reduce anxiety, avoid depressing thoughts and create a new mindset. While everyone is mindful at times during their daily lives, anyone can learn to master it and use it on command.
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness involves focusing not on the past or the future, but the here and now. It is heightened awareness of the present moment as well as being fully present within the moment. Mindfulness provides the opportunity to free one’s self from thoughts of the past or the future and allows one to simply be here in the moment, which can greatly reduce stress and anxiety. When the individual thinks about the uncertainty of the future, anxiety may arise. And, when he or she dwells on their past, which cannot be changed, it may bring feelings of sadness and depression with it. Mindfulness doesn’t allow for would haves or could haves, but instead only the here and now.
Think About Your Thoughts
Mindfulness can be learned by anyone, used anytime and can have lasting results. It may help the individual discover the habitual ways their mind works. In other words, mindfulness assists in thinking about how one thinks, and how one thinks is associated with many outcomes like negativity, poor health, and stress. Mindfulness can also help the individual respond to situations in new and healthier ways rather than their old and habitual ways of responding.
Benefits of Mindfulness
How valuable would the ability to think positive and rid oneself of negative and depressing thoughts be? How wonderful it would be to not worry about the future or be stuck in the past? How liberating could it be to live in this exact moment, in the now, with full presence, where nothing is wrong, no one is hurting and life is great? The good news is, anyone can learn how to become mindful and reduce their stress and anxiety.
They can overcome depressing and negative thoughts that affect their mood. Mindfulness can even help with sleep and appetite disorders.
Manage or Reduce Stress
Scientific studies have examined the impact of mindfulness on many psychological and physical health conditions. One of the most studied is stress. It has been shown in research that mindfulness helps to both manage or greatly reduce daily stress as well as more serious forms of stress associated with chronic illness or life-threatening disorders. It can help the individual reduce negative thoughts and rumination of the past as well as decrease anxiety associated with thoughts about the future. It helps by breaking away from one’s habitually negative and stressful ways of thinking. It allows for a mental break and a quieting of such thoughts. Mindfulness can provide greater clarity in thinking and allow for a better perspective on things.
Final Thoughts… on Using Mindfulness
Today’s world can bring many things that create fear, stress, anxiety and depression. Even in good times, one’s mind is so cluttered by incoming information, that it becomes difficult to sift through one’s thoughts to find what matters most – clarity. Luckily, anyone can take control of their thoughts and learn how to become more mindful. While there are lots of benefits to thinking this way, knowing about mindfulness is one thing; the other is practicing it.