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How Mindfulness Can Help You?
Are you looking for a way to reduce stress, improve your focus, and boost your overall well-being? If so, mindfulness may be the answer for you.
Sol TV
June 29, 2023
This Newsletter at a Glance:
🧘 Mindfulness and Its Benefits?
🏆 TL/DR: What Does Success Look Like?
👣 Sol Bites: 3 Steps to Get Started
�� Video Bite: Neil Seligman on Mindfulness
🧠 Words of Wisdom
Last week, we discussed building five habits that can help you be awesome at regulating your emotions. Today, we’re starting a series that will focus on each of the habits and offer up tips on how to cultivate each one. Up first: mindfulness.
What Is Mindfulness and Its Benefits?
Thinking may come naturally, but learning to do it with intention takes time and practice. Mindfulness is a skill you need when switching your brain into higher gear—like if you’re working on end-of-the-month reports or school exams—but it also comes in handy when you want to shift into a more relaxed gear. For instance, calming your anxieties or being able to fall asleep requires tuning out persistent and pressing thoughts.
Mindfulness can help you shift from problem-solving and quick thinking to observing and appreciating the world around you.
🏆 TL/DR: What Does Success Look Like?
Think of practicing mindfulness as a mental exercise—and as with any fitness plan, you need to do it regularly to see the benefits. Creating a successful mindfulness practice requires two things:
🕒 Doing it at least 20 minutes a day
🔁 Practicing at least five times a week
The benefits of mindfulness are vast: It can lower stress and anxiety, increase your capacity to concentrate, improve your communication skills, boost your willpower, and lead to better sleep.
But you only get that payoff when you establish a habit of being mindful.
🌈 Sol Bites: 3 Steps to Getting Started
Step 1: 📆 Set your schedule
As you begin, commit to a schedule for 30 days—remember, it takes everyone a different amount of time for a behavior to become a habit. Block out time on your calendar to help you make your mindfulness practice part of your day. First, begin with five minutes for the first four days, then increase your time to 10 minutes for the next three days. You should feel ready to commit to 20 minutes on the seventh day. That gradual approach will help you quickly harness mindfulness’s primary benefits.
If you need extra help committing to your practice, use a chart or paper calendar so you can see and track your progress. When your practice is complete for the day, cross it off with a red marker. If you miss a session, count the number of days you did complete and make beating your new goal.
Step 2: 💪🏽 Engage in your practice
Find a comfortable place where you can sit comfortably or walk without interruption. Sit or walk with good posture and focus your attention on the sensation of your breath. Your only goal is to observe and notice the breathing experience without any judgment or expectation of how it should be. Eventually, you want this to feel natural and not like a chore.
Step 3: 🦸♀️ Stay the course
The biggest challenge to your mindfulness practice will be your inner critic telling you that you’re not doing it “right” or for long enough. It's essential to remember that what you’re doing is an experiment and not a competition.
The whole point of practicing mindfulness is to recognize when your thoughts have wandered, then be able to shift your attention back to the sensation of breathing. Your job is not to make the distractions go away, your job is to come back to your breath. You’re literally exercising a mental muscle every time you have to come back—so it’s a learning opportunity when the distractions come!
🎞️ Video Bite
Meet Neil Seligman - an internationally recognized expert in mindfulness, a prolific author, and the founder of The Conscious Professional. In his relentless quest for conscious solutions, Neil has harnessed the transformative power of mindfulness and conscious leadership.
In this video, Neil shares a beginner’s guide to mindfulness. He invites you to stop and drop in on the breath for a few minutes of collective calm
💡 Words of wisdom
Be mindful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words. Be mindful of your words, for your words become your actions.
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We love you,
Mona & The Sol TV Team ❤️
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