“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” – Willie Nelson.
We have all come across a time when we felt shattered and burdened with life or our work. The world is filled with people who will make you feel demotivated and drag you down. Now, it is our job to stay motivated and calm with our life and incidents. Mindfulness is an age-old practice that is beneficial to everyone around the world, at every age group.
Mindfulness is an enjoyable process that leads to self-control, objectivity, equanimity, and a flexible lifestyle. There are ample reasons to practice gratitude and mindfulness in your daily lifestyle. It increases emotional strength and provides empathy, compassion, and thus provides a better quality of life to us.
Mindfulness is a prayer of gratitude and meditation. This practice of mindfulness in your daily life helps you focus on your work so that you can lead your life easily.
Benefits of practicing mindfulness
1. It improves our mental health and decreases stress.
Practicing mindfulness helps us get a direction in our lives and helps to create peace in our minds. That’s why it affects our mental health (in a good way) and decreases anxiousness or stress. It helps us stay calm and composed during unnatural times and helps us to keep sane during problematic hours of our life.
People who meditate regularly and practice gratitude in their life, are seen to have better memory capacity and decreased anxiety levels, and a negative mindset.
2. It improves our physical health and provides the ability to fight diseases.
Mindfulness is another word for gratitude, which means it improves our feelings and controls our inner mindset. When a person has got a sound mind and healthy mental health, he/she is bound to have better physical health.
Mindfulness includes incorporating good habits in daily life, along with gratitude, thus increasing our ability to fight diseases. A healthy eating habit ensures that our immune system is stronger than any disease or harmful pollutant.
3. It keeps us calm and helps us improve as a person.
Practicing mindfulness means getting control over our minds and our actions. Once a person has successfully learned mindfulness and can practice it in their daily life, they are more focused on their work and can suppress getting distracted by unnecessary information.
They become more attentive in their work, and they are seen to have better control over their life. The science of gratitude ensures a better quality of life, and these people can foster emotional intelligence and social connectedness.
4. It helps us to concentrate better in our work.
Anyone who is not able to keep his/her concentration on their work needs to start practicing mindfulness as soon as possible. Mindfulness helps us to put better concentration in our work and helps us to be more grateful for what we have rather than asking and wanting for more.
The best thing you can do to yourself is to be present in the moment, and practicing mindfulness activities such as meditation, keeping a gratitude journal, etc., will help you stay in the moment. This increases our efficiency and will power to work better, thus increasing our productiveness and getting us more success in life.
5. Reduces work or school-related stress and psychological distress.
Practicing mindfulness helps both school and college students to improve their academic success. It also helps students be more ambitious towards their life because practicing mindfulness gives them certain goals in their life, and they are usually keeping away from bad habits such as drinking and smoking.
This effect of mindfulness in adults results in self-control and high emotional-regulation. Mindfulness and gratitude are also shown to reduced depression symptoms in children and reduces stress among school and college students.
6. It helps us to feel thankful and grateful in life.
Daily meditation and gratitude help us feel content with what we have in our lives and helps us understand that there is happiness in the small things. There are many reasons to practice gratitude in their daily life because that is what makes content with our life.
Meditation and eating mindfully add to the feeling of thankfulness and gratitude in one’s life. They provide satisfaction in relationships, work, and in one’s life and helps the person get a different outlook on their life. Practicing gratitude and mindfulness helps in the suppression of negative thoughts and thus helps one lead a life filled with thankfulness and gratitude.
7. Increases body satisfaction.
Practicing mindfulness and gratitude will teach you the difference between attitude and gratitude and thus increase your body satisfaction. Your soul will be proud of your body, and you will realize the limits and requirements of your body.
These mindful activities will help to banish negative thoughts out of your head and thus reduce anxiety and fatigue. This will help the body be fit and keep your body satisfied. Additionally, studies also say that practicing mindfulness increases the grey matter in the brain, which means greater emotional-control and a wider perspective towards life.
8. Makes progress towards weight goals.
You may have a lot of struggles in reaching your weight goals, be it be gaining or losing weight. But once you instill activities of mindfulness in your daily activities, you will gradually see a change in your weight, and you will reach your desired weight goal without having to follow any hard diet or regime.
According to clinical studies, women and men found out to be mindful while having their daily food and are found to be away and safe from stress eating or any other activities that might end to excessive weight loss or weight gain.
10 ways to practice gratitude and mindfulness
There are many ways to practice gratitude, an uncountable number of ways you can think of to practice gratitude and mindfulness in your daily life. You need to find out the ones suitable for you. Few common and easy ways to practice mindfulness –
1. Practice meditating for half an hour in the morning.
The most basic rule of practicing mindfulness in your daily life is to start your day with meditation. This will help your mind stay calm and composed throughout the day.
You do not have to meditate for a long time if you are starting with mindfulness. Start with just ten minutes every day and gradually increase the time to half-hour and then one hour.
2. Allow your emotions to flow at the moment.
Do not keep any emotion hidden for the next time. For example, if you feel insulted by someone, tell them right away what hurt you, or if you feel like thanking someone, do not wait for the right time and thank that person right away. Learn to show your emotions in an organized way.
3. Learn to cope with situations and go with the flow.
You need to accept the fact that failures will come in your life, but you need to learn from them. You need to accept failures and then turn them into a bigger success. It’s your life, and the way you will turn your failure into success is also yours.
4. Pay attention to what people say and thus be a good listener.
Being a good listener helps you be a good person in your life. Once you start understanding the different perspectives of different people, you will realize how a single problem can be solved in so many different ways. It will help you broaden your mind and help you feel grateful for what you have.
5. Learn to train your mind to stay in the present and not run back to the past or think about the future.
The present is much beautiful than the past or the future. If you try to hold your mind in the present and not worry about the future or think about the past, you will see that you can easily solve the puzzle that life has unwontedly thrown on you.
6. Learn the difference between attitude and gratitude.
Try to understand the difference between attitude and gratitude, and life will be a lot easier than it seems. You will start to preach the prayer of gratitude and start to stay away from negative attitudes and hatred because you will realize how they are only good to put you in a negative mindset.
7. Breathe.
Life will throw many unnecessary troubles at you, but you need to remain composed and fight against all the problems on your own. Keeping your breathing pattern balanced will help you to think better and remain calm.
Just close your eyes and breathe a few times just to remind yourself that you are stronger than your problems and everything shall be fine. Try to close your eyes and meditate for a while. This will help you remain calm in the worst situations as well.
8. Understand your body capabilities.
Everyone has got different body capacities and capabilities. Try to understand your body capacity and do not force yourself to go beyond your limit.
You need to understand that no one is perfect, and you too have got certain flaws. Practicing mindfulness in your daily life will help you accept your flaws and make you a better person.
9. Take a cold shower.
Sometimes, we need a cold shower to take out all the tiredness we have gained throughout the day. You could take a cold shower, make yourself ready for the day, and then start your day with a healthy mindset and a strong body. A cold shower helps all our body cells to wake up and provides strength and freshness to our bodies.
10. Maintain a gratitude journal.
You could write just one sentence every day in your gratitude journal, which starts with “I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation,” and then continue with one sentence every day. This will not take more than five minutes of your day and will provide you with a calm feeling throughout the day.
Mindfulness is a practice that one needs to keep on continuing to practice throughout their life, to live a life filled with calmness and happiness. You do not have to practice mindfulness exercises every day; you may skip one or two activities every day, but remember to keep on with the feeling of mindfulness and gratitude for the rest of your life.
Aim to practice one or the other mindfulness activity for at least six months, and after that, you will get to see the results, and you shall realize that the time and hard work you have spent on getting mastered in the act of mindfulness and gratitude is worth it.