“WE HAVE ONLY NOW, ONLY THIS SINGLE ETERNAL MOMENT OPENING AND UNFOLDING BEFORE US, DAY AND NIGHT.” — JACK KORNFIELD
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is that state of mind where you’re fully aware of what’s going on inside and outside of you. It’s giving your mind a space to breathe in the comforts of silence.
By being aware, you notice every detail that you normally do on an ordinary day to day experience.
When you’re mindful, it will make the coffee that you drink tastes much good making you grateful for the people who plant coffee as well as the ones who are making possible the coffee would reach you.
If you haven’t applied the practice of mindfulness in your life yet, here are five reasons that will inspire you to start your own mindfulness journey:
1. Mindfulness helps you to use to the fullest your most valuable currency – Time.
When you’re on your way to mindfulness, you’ll begin to notice things you’ve never noticed before like:
- The gravity of the Earth that’s keeping you grounded.
- The breath that happens to you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
- The scenes along the way when you’re driving such as how blue are the skies above, or how green are the trees lined along the highway.
Mindfulness helps you keep most of your day. No one knows what tomorrow may bring. You only have today that must be lived while you still can.
2. Mindfulness is backed by scientific evidence.
One of the most interesting parts of our brain is the prefrontal cortex, which functions include:
- Emotional regulation;
- Impulse control;
- Body regulation;
- Making logical decisions;
- Empathy;
- Connectedness to others;
- Self-awareness;
However, our limbic system, the one that drives our primitive instinct to react, often overrides the prefrontal cortex. Thankfully, scientific evidence shows that a regular practice of mindfulness helps strengthen that part of our brain.
Practice mindfulness so that your prefrontal cortex functions optimally.
3. Mindfulness helps you anchor your thoughts.
You may be one of those people whose mind could think like lightning. You’re physically here, yet your mind could quickly jump up somewhere out there. It just never stops working, though you’re in the middle of something or in a conversation.
With extremely active thoughts, you may end up analyzing things in exaggeration. For example, you may greet the receptionist when you arrived at work but failed to receive a reply. Your mind would then react and makes you wonder maybe she’s mad at you or keeps you thinking what have you done wrong.
But once you practice mindfulness, your thinking would slow down. You find an anchor in focusing on your breath, clearing unnecessary thoughts in your head.
4. Mindfulness makes you deal with your emotions in a new way.
When you were a child, no one taught you that life or emotions could get so intense.
There are people whose emotions could get so strong compared with others. When sad, they get depressed. When worried, they get anxious. When angry, they get furious. When happy, they get elated. When in love, they fall head over heels.
Their emotions are tinted with intense highs and intense lows.
The Buddhists teach about how grasping can lead to suffering. You grasp an emotion whether it is positive or negative. In any case, it’s like holding onto a hot coal for far too long.
Mindfulness helps you simply notice what your emotion is and let it be exactly as it is in that moment. It’s like watching your emotions come and go without being carried away by it as if you’re watching a leaf carried away by a stream that passes before you.
By being mindful, you’re able to sit with your emotion, turn toward it and accept it. Knowing that negative emotion will eventually pass allows you to embrace it without trying to resist what you’re experiencing at that very moment.
5. Your loved ones or the people around you could benefit from your practice of mindfulness.
When you practice mindfulness regularly, you’re able to notice what others are going through, especially with their emotions. You may teach them or show them how to practice mindfulness.
Doing the practice together with a loved one is a great way to bond. You help strengthen each other on your spiritual journey and even may grow your life together exponentially.
There is no better way to grow each day than practicing mindfulness.
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