MINDFUL AWARENESS

Meditation and Mindfulness are both practices that can help us navigate through challenging situations in life. Mindful Awareness is defined as bringing our attention to whatever task is at hand and engaging fully with it using all five senses. It could be washing dishes, driving, talking to a loved one, or checking emails.

Understanding what mindfulness is, does not translate to a more mindful experience but practicing it does. The wonderful part about practicing mindfulness is that it does not require additional time and can be practiced anytime, anywhere, doing absolutely anything. All you need to do is set an intention. For example, if you are washing dishes, be fully present to washing the dishes. Turn your attention to the temperature of water, the touch of soap, the noise of the dishes, the movement of your hands etc.

Starting off small is the key. Set an intention to bring mindful-awareness to one task in the beginning.

Few tips to start practicing mindfulness:

~ Set an intention.

~ Identify your habits or daily rituals.

~ Select one or two to focus upon.

~ Try beginning with one or two that already bring joy.

~ Overtime, you can begin to focus on more neutral tasks or even difficult ones.

Benefits of practicing mindfulness:

~ Can be practiced anytime, anywhere.

~ Cultivates heightened yet relaxed awareness in the present moment.

~ Allows thoughts, feelings, emotions to just be.

~ Encourages attitude of acceptance.

~ Is backed up by scientific research as an effective stress management tool.

~ Enhances openness and curiosity.

Mindfulness to increase positivity

Mindful Awareness brings the good around us inside us. If you look around yourself now, you will notice that there are many things which are working well in your life but because of the brain's negativity bias, we notice negativity around us first. It is said that brains are like Teflon for the positive and Velcro for the negative. This is the reason we focus on the few extra pounds that we gained lately rather than the rest of our body which is working miraculously to keep us alive.

Practices like mindfulness can help us rewire our brains. With these practices, we can train our brain to take in more good so that we start noticing the things that work about life versus being overly focused on the things that don't work for us.

Set an intention today to notice the things that are working in your life. With practice it becomes natural to start noticing all that you can be grateful for. When we practice positivity, we start to open up to the present moment, accept it and see the opportunities and possibilities that were always there but somehow missed the eye.