Mindful Living

What is mindful living?

Being mindful is recognizing, knowing, and seeing how your energy influences other people, and to not judge yourself or others based on their energy or actions. This may seem like a crazy concept, but take a moment and reflect on your life. Pick a recent moment and think of what your energy was like in that time and how it may have influenced others. For example I was a choir teacher, and in my classroom my students fed off of my energy a lot. If I came in super excited and ready to go, my students picked up on that and they were as well, but if I came in sad or upset then my students would be slower and less excited as well.

Tips on mindful living:

1) Take time to stop and breathe. Inhale positivity and exhale negativity, inhale things that make you happy and exhale things that are bad such as stress. For example if you’re stopped at a red light when driving that’s a great time to breathe. So many times in our society our brains are working a million miles an hour and we’re trying to do so many things at once, taking time to breathe gives you a time to slow down and focus on what’s important.

2) Be grateful for the things you have in your life. You’re alive and there are so many good things in this world and that’s so cool! Be grateful for that! Compliment others, and be grateful for them, let them know that you care about them and let them know when they’ve done something awesome. That way you’re using your positive energy and mindfulness to raise other people up.

3) Be kind to other people! Open the door for them, give them compliments, let them know if they’ve done something great! Be kind to yourself as well, don’t get down on yourself if you’ve messed something up. Look back on it, learn from it, but then go forward with the things you’ve learned and don’t be negative about yourself. Don’t look down on other people either if they’ve made a mistake, don’t judge other people. It can be hard to not judge people, but when you’re able to stop judging people it’s very freeing. Another way to spread your positivity is to do some volunteer work, help out in your community and do it happily.

4) Practice self compassion, be kind to yourself. If you’re going through a struggle, yeah that sucks, but all humans go through pain. There’s nothing wrong with you for being in pain, it’s ok, you’re human. If you made a mistake you can learn from it and grow and move on from in. Take the positive and amazing moments you’ve had with you, and take what you learned from negative moments but leave the pain from them behind.

It’s easier to be mindful through positive situations, but it is especially important through the negative situations. When you are hit with really devastating negative things, it’s a lot easier to be mindful through them if you’ve been practicing it through the positive situations as well. Just take time to breathe and be kind to people, including yourself. There are amazing things in this life, be grateful for them.