Physical Wellbeing

Let Mindfulness Be Your Guide

These days, we are pulled in a thousand different directions and it can cause us to feel overwhelmed and stressed. It’s important to be mindful of how we are spending our time because it can directly affect our mood, sleep, and other aspects of our physical wellbeing. But how? Let’s take a look at various ways we can slow down and bring mindfulness to our daily lives. 

The Challenge

Incorporate a mindfulness practice in your life. Before you begin, write down three words to describe how you are physically feeling at that moment. After one month of starting your mindfulness practice, write down three words to describe how you physically feel to determine if your practice is making a positive change in your life. 

Do you constantly feel like a web browser with multiple tabs open at once, where you can’t close any of the tabs because they aren’t complete and instead just keep opening new ones? If so, you aren’t alone. Multiple studies show that people are overwhelmed and stressed. How can we change course so that our physical wellbeing is increased and not decreased?

Dictionary.com defines mindfulness in terms of psychology as “a technique in which one focuses one’s full attention only on the present, experiencing thoughts, feelings, and sensations but not judging them.

It might sound easy to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life, but it takes intentionality to set up a habit of mindfulness. Otherwise, it can be very easy to fall back into the trap of overwhelmingness and stress.

An article titled, “How Mindfulness = Empowerment” by The Open Mind Institute, describes two ways to practice mindfulness:

1. Daily Meditation
This practice allows you to be completely present in the moment. Some people use it as an opportunity to clear their minds. For others, that may be more difficult, and that’s ok. Meditation is not always about mental clarity (at least in the beginning), but rather an opportunity to stop the outside world from coming in and taking time for yourself. Start with a 5 minute meditation where you close your eyes and take deep breaths. Or opt for a free guided meditation app where you can pop in your headphones for a moment.

2. Prolonged Act
This practice asks that you focus on just one thing at a time. For example, when you are brushing your teeth, instead of scrolling your phone, only focus on brushing your teeth. Another example is just folding your laundry instead of watching TV while you fold. If you are used to multitasking, this can take practice, and you may easily become distracted. Take note when you go to reach for the phone, or try to start another project. Our attention spans have shortened considerably with all the technology at our fingertips. By focusing on one thing at a time, it helps us to slow down our brains and be more mindful.

The feeling of overwhelmingness and stress can also create negative self-talk. When we can’t “get it all done” we blame ourselves and tell ourselves we aren’t good enough. Which then makes us think we should do more and the cycle starts all over again. Practicing mindfulness is extremely important to our physical wellbeing. Take the time for yourself to identify a practice and reward yourself when you incorporate that into your daily habits.

When you practice mindfulness, your stress and anxiety can go down, and you feel empowered. We know that you are an amaXIng woman and we know you can do this Sister!  


Report Participation

Sisters, we have made it easier for you to document your participation in A Clear Vision of Life: The Wellbeing Program and be entered to win a Challenge incentive.  Just fill out the form below! 

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