Make 2020 the Year of Mindfulness

Have you heard of mindfulness? If you haven’t you must have been living under a rock for the past few years because it’s everywhere. And we mean everywhere. Just scroll through your social media feed and you’ll stumble across someone talking about a mindfulness workshop, or another friend discussing yoga as a route to mindfulness. But what exactly is the practice and what is the best way to implement it?

Simply put, mindfulness is the practice of being in the moment. Rather than disengaging from the present, you are tuned in to the time you are living through. It is a way of paying attention to your self – your thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations on a moment-by-moment basis.

Living mindfully is practising getting by without believing that there is a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ thought at any given moment – instead, trying to pass no judgement on any of your feelings, just accepting the moment for what it is. As a practice, it aims to calm a busy mind so, if you find yourself consistently preoccupied with negative thoughts and feelings, planning, lists, or daydreaming then it might just be that mindfulness could help you. That style of thinking – which we’re all guilty of – can be incredibly draining and cause stress and even depression. Mindfulness can help you engage with the world around you.

If this all sounds appealing, then read on. Below, we’ve come up with some ways of incorporating mindfulness into the day-to-day. With 2020 rapidly approaching, you might be thinking about resolutions to make for the new year. Whatever you decide to do, try and incorporate some mindfulness into the way in which you do it. You never know what kind of new perspective you’ll get.

Mindful Exercise

This is an area where many people place excess pressure on themselves. It’s very easy to slip into negative thinking about the exercise and fitness routine that you have. An example of this might be that you haven’t kept up an exercise as much as you would like and so your fitness isn’t at the level it once was. The automatic negative thoughts could be things like telling yourself you are useless at the exercise, that it’s pointless, that you’ve failed. Try and approach the situation mindfully and with self-awareness. Write down the facts relating to how you feel and then address whether the way you are feeling is supported by those facts.

Equally, you might find yourself unable (or unwilling) to train as hard one day than you did on a previous occasion. A big part of mindfulness is recognising how you feel on a given day. Life is taxing and, if you are tired, try and accept it. Acknowledge that, just by going to the gym or exercising, you have made a positive contribution to your life. Unless you are a professional athlete, or this is part of your job, learn to give yourself a break.

Mindful Money Management

Easily a part of everyone’s life which can cause stress and anxiety, managing your money in a mindful and thoughtful way could revolutionise the way you think about your finances. If you do some research, you will find countless tips and tricks on managing your personal finances, for example, you could look at Financial Advice That Will Change Your Regular Spending Habits. Articles and think pieces on the internet are a good way of feeling less alone and can help you make a constructive plan about how to manage your money mindfully. A good initial step is both to acknowledge how you feel and consider why you are feeling that way. Try advising yourself as if you are your own best friend. Incidentally, this is a part of mindfulness which shouldn’t be overlooked. If you find your internal thoughts are particularly nasty, ask yourself whether you’d let someone speak to your best friend like that. If the answer is no, then do whatever you can to shut down that thought. Don’t speak to yourself in a way you wouldn’t accept someone treating someone else.

Active Mindfulness

A brief Google will bring you a wealth of mindfulness exercises. We like short ones, that you can easily incorporate into the every day and won’t leave you feeling as if you’ve been given an additional part-time job to complete in your already busy schedule. Meditation is another excellent way of centring yourself. Try Yoga with Adriene’s meditation sessions on YouTube for a free and accessible meditation practice. It might be challenging at first, but Adriene acknowledges in her videos that every practitioner will be at a different level and she encourages you to use her videos as a starting point for your meditation journey.

Mindful Eating

Similarly to exercise, this is something else many of us will be making resolutions about, and another part of our lives which can bring up feelings of guilt, blame and excessive negativity. Eating well alone is a sign of self-care. If you find that, whenever you are cooking for yourself, or faced with food choices when you’re out, you always choose something unhealthy, it might be time to reassess how you feel about food and the attitude you have. It’s difficult, particularly with busy lives and family commitments, to practice mindful eating entirely. So try and gradually incorporate a few ways of eating more mindfully into your everyday.

Listen to your body telling you when you are full. If like many of us, you grew up in a household where you finished what was on your plate, this is often behaviour that continues well into adulthood. Instead of clearing your plate though, focus on how you are feeling and learn to stop when you feel like you are full. You can also serve yourself smaller portions – if you’re still hungry, seconds are a better option than overeating in the first round.

Eat when your body gives you the signals to, for example, low energy or stomach rumbling. This is an important point to consider as we so often conflate our emotions with eating and so reach for the biscuits when we feel lonely, bored or sad. If you think you’re hungry but there’s no reason to be, find something to distract yourself with for ten minutes. If at the end of the activity, you are still hungry and can recognise the signs, then it’s time to find something to eat.

Make choices about what you eat. Probably the hardest part of eating mindfully, but the most important. We are aware of what is nutritionally balanced and what is not, and making the choice to pick the salad over the chips is not always an easy one. But only you can make that choice and if you know the chips are going to result in future negative thoughts and feelings of dissatisfaction, bear that in mind and make a better food choice for yourself.

Mindful 2020

We aren’t saying that now you’ve read this article, you will be fully prepared to incorporate mindfulness into every aspect of your life. But trying a few new things and adjusting your thinking in certain areas might just make 2020 your best year yet. Remember, with mindfulness a little goes a long way.

*This is a collaborative post*