How To Achieve Mindfulness - The Complete Guide - Self Mastery Marix

*“Life is too short not to live in the moment”*

How To Achieve Mindfulness – Intro

Throughout all my guides, mindfulness always seems to make an appearance. No matter what I’m writing about, be it flow state or addiction, mindfulness always seems to show up. It even made in appearance in my very first post ever – 7 Healthy Habits. Knowing how to achieve mindfulness is such a great skill, it shows up in many of my guides for a reason. So I’ve decided that enough is enough and that it’s finally time to crack down and do a definitive guide for mindfulness so I can have all the info in one place. Let’s get started.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a form of meditation that is quite different from regular meditation. It involves bringing your mind to the present without judgement. When someone is in a mindful state, they’re fully aware of their thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations as well as the world around them. When in a mindful state, you will not be tormented by past regrets or future worries. You will be at peace with yourself, fully absorbed in the present.

Benefits of Mindfulness

There’s a reason I’ve talked about mindfulness so much in my guides. There are so many benefits that being in a mindful state provides that I could spend hours talking about all of them. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to do that because I have to spend those hours teaching you how to practice mindfulness instead (lucky you, eh?). Instead, I’ll just pick out some of my favorite ones and list them all below:

Present-Centered Awareness: This is without a doubt the main draw of mindfulness. Too many people focus too much on the past or future without ever stopping to appreciate the present. No matter what situation they’re in, their mind is always caught up on thoughts from a different time period. Mindfulness neutralizes these thoughts and brings the mind into the present, allowing you to enjoy the moment for what it is.
Feeling of Inner Piece: When I first got into mindfulness, I realized something about the modern world. I realized just how often we’re all connected to the digital world. We’re always using social media, playing games or listening to music. And when we’re not, our minds are flooded with thoughts of the digital world. It makes our thoughts pretty crowded. When I first achieved mindfulness, this changed. My mind was quiet. I didn’t feel the chaos of the digital world, I felt the beauty of the real world. I was at peace. When you first achieve mindfulness, you too will feel this feeling.
Increased Self-Awareness: During mindfulness, thoughts will slowly drift into your mind. Due to the peace you feel, you won’t really pay much attention to them and they’ll soon leave your mind. This will give you a more neutral perspective on your own thoughts and feelings, allowing you to observe them without judgement. Observing your thoughts like this will lead to heightened self-awareness.
Enhanced Focus: Having an emptier mind will lead to enhanced focus. You’ll never be able to concentrate on your work if your mind is constantly focused on the past or the present. Enhanced focus will then lead to enhanced productivity which means that you’ll be getting more done in the same amount of time.
Improved Mental Health: Regretting the past and worrying about the future all the time will lead to anxiety and depression. It’s not good for your mental health to constantly be caught up thinking about other times. Mindfulness will get rid of those thoughts for you and allow you to be at peace living in the present. You’ll then notice that you’ll start to feel a lot less anxious and a lot more happier. You’ll start to appreciate the little things a lot more and you’ll start to feel grateful for being able to live in this world. You overall mental health improves a lot when you’re focused on the here and now.
Versatility: You need to be in extremely specific conditions to achieve most other forms of meditation. This isn’t the case with mindfulness. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you can achieve mindfulness almost anywhere. This is thanks to the many different types of mindfulness (that we will get into later). So many different forms of mindfulness allows for many different ways to achieve it, making mindfulness extremely versatile.

For me (and for many), those are the 6 main benefits of mindfulness. I’m sure by now you’ve realized just how amazing of a meditation practice it truly is. You’re probably ready to start to start learning how to do it by now. Before that though, it’s time for a bit of a history lesson.

The Foundations of Mindfulness

Mindfulness has been around for thousands and thousands of years. Its use has evolved a lot over time though, so let’s see exactly how it has changed.

Traditional Mindfulness practices

As I just mentioned, mindfulness has been around for a long time (I’m talking ancient). Its roots go all the way back to various contemplative and spiritual traditions where it is used to enhance self-awareness and deepen one’s knowledge. Let’s take a look at some of its most ancient uses.

Mindfulness and Buddhism

Mindfulness (or sati in Pali) is a core part of Buddhism and it has been that way for over 2000 years. Buddhists believe it to be the key to achieving enlightenment and inner peace. Buddhism teaches that mindfulness can be applied to almost any aspect of life, and that doing this is the key to achieving enlightenment and understanding more about reality.

Buddhism believes that there are 4 main foundations of mindfulness. These foundations are what the religion believes to be the 4 areas of focus for the practice of mindfulness. Let’s take a look at these 4 areas:

Contemplation of the Body: This involves paying attention to bodily sensations to achieve mindfulness. Sensations to pay attention to include breathing patterns, posture and body movements. Being aware of sensations like these helps to bring one’s mind to the present.
Contemplation of Feeling: Feelings are the focus of this foundation. To properly achieve mindfulness of feeling, one must be fully aware of both their positive and negative their emotions. This foundation involves observing these emotions without passing judgement or attachment. This way, they can be recognized as ever-changing.
Contemplation of Mind: This foundation is kinda similar to the previous one, except it’s about paying attention to thoughts rather than feelings. It’s not just about thoughts though, one must also pay attention to common habits their brain exhibits to fully achieve mindfulness of mind. Once again, these thoughts must be observed without judgement or attachment in order to recognize them as ever-changing.
Contemplation of Dhammas: This final foundation is a little more spiritual than the first three. The word ‘dhammas’ refers to groups of phenomena that reflect that Buddha’s teaching. From there, it gets extremely complicated so I’ll sum it up for you. This foundation basically involves recognized the interconnections of all phenomena as well as the causes of said phenomena. It’s also about being aware of the impermanence of life itself and the nature of reality itself. Pretty deep, huh?

Mindfulness in Yoga

Yoga is a practice that’s all about being in the moment, so it makes sense that mindfulness is such a core part of it. The practice uses awareness of breath and bodily sensations to achieve self-awareness, self-regulation and higher consciousness. Yoga postures are always performed mindfully. Without mindfulness, there would be no yoga. It’s such a core part of teh practice

Modern Practices of Mindfulness

As I stated earlier, the use of mindfulness has evolved a lot over time. It’s recently gained a lot of popularity and traction in areas such as psychology, healthcare, education (pretty sure we’ve all been taught about mindfulness at least once in school and most notably the self-improvement community. There’s a reason I chose to use Thorfinn for this post, he’s basically the figurehead for mindful TikTok slideshows. Well, either him or Musashi Miyamoto from Vagabond. We’ll talk more about those later though. For now, let’s check out some of these modern mindfulness uses:

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR): As you would expect, this technique involves using mindfulness to reduce stress. That was its original design at least. Nowadays, it’s being used to treat various physical and mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, chronic pain, diabetes, skin disorders and even cancer (NCBI).
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT): MBCT combines mindfulness and cognitive therapy to help individuals who have suffered from many episodes of depression. It helps the patient leave their past issues behind and live in the present while also having their cognition rewrote so they can move on. Treating depression isn’t its only use though, it also used for treating anxiety and bipolar disorders (verywellmind).
Disconnection from the Digital World: I mentioned this earlier but in this day and age, most of us are far too caught up in the realm of the internet. We spend hours upon hours on social media, playing online games, watching YouTube and browsing the internet every single day. It’s not good for anyone to stay connected to the digital world all day, so many people have taken to using mindfulness meditation as a means
Corporate Wellness: Many companies offer mindfulness programs to help reduce employee stress and better their overall well-being. These days, making employees feel validated is especially important for many corporate entities who are trying to retain high loyalty within their work force. A mindfulness program like this would show employees that their company cares about their well-being and it can help motivate workers to… work I guess?

To Sum It Up

As you can see, mindfulness has changed a lot over time. If I had to guess why, I would say that more people have become interested in it and thus, they have created many new uses for it. What’s great though is that the traditional uses for mindfulness are still around. Buddhism is still a major world religion, with over 520 million followers (according to Wikipedia that is). Yoga is also extremely popular, with over 300 million people who practice it regularly as of 2022 (According to Unwind Yoga Studio). It’s obvious that so many different people have practiced mindfulness over the years. You could say it’s timeless.

Getting Started With Mindfulness

Now that our history lesson has been wrapped up, I say it’s finally time for you to get started in learning how to achieve mindfulness (can’t exactly put that off now can I?). But before you start, we first need to do one more thing (annnnd I put it off).

Setting Clear Intentions

Before you start your mindfulness journey, it’s important to establish your intentions. By setting your intentions, you’re establishing your purpose and goals for practicing mindfulness. I obviously can’t set your goals for you, but I can offer guidance. So here’s how you can set your intentions in a few steps:

Step 1: Reflect on your motivations – You should first reflect on why you want to incorporate mindfulness into your life. Is it because you want to reduce anxiety and stress levels? Or because you want to spend less time on your phone? Maybe you wanna be more productive? Perhaps you want to find new purpose in life? Maybe a mixture of them all? Whatever your motivations are, they will serve to guide you during trying times so don’t forget them.

Step 2: Start Realistic – Ever heard the saying “Don’t run before you can walk,” (wait wasn’t it the other way around? meh, who cares)? This statement definitely applies to mindfulness. We all have huge goals and ambitions that we want to achieve, but it’s important to start off small with something like this. If you try and take on everything while knowing nothing, you’ll get crushed. So start small and set realistic goals. As you get better at mindfulness, you should then expand the scope of your goals and set your sights on those ambitions you had at the start.

Step 3: Be Open Minded – You need to approach mindfulness with an open mind. Instead of expecting specific results, you should be open to whatever arises during your mindfulness journey. It doesn’t have to go exactly the way you’ve planned it all out, you should explore all the possibilities presented to you. You should also be open to stepping outside of your comfort zone and doing things that you originally weren’t planning on doing. It’s the only way you’ll be able to achieve true success with mindfulness. If you only stick to a few mindfulness techniques, then you’ll only see limited results. So be open to possibilities and be willing to exit your comfort zone.

Creating a Mindful Space

I am fully aware that earlier in this post I mentioned that you can perform mindfulness in pretty much any location. While this is true, it takes time and practice to be able to do this. The best way to start out is to have a designated mindful space that you can use to practice mindfulness without any disturbance. Luckily for you, I’m here to guide you through the full process. Let’s do this.

Step 1: Find a Quiet Space – When starting out in mindfulness, this will be especially important. Learning mindfulness in a crowded space is almost nigh impossible. I genuinely challenge you to try and do it. The constant noise and interruptions will not make for a fun time. A quiet and secluded space will obviously not have these problems, and it will allow you to maximize your focus. You can choose any quiet space you like be it your room, a couch or that one shed we all have in our back yards. Just make sure it’s quiet and comfortable of course.

Step 2: Clear Clutter – No one like a messy room or work space (yet too many people have one). It’s not appealing to look at, it’s hard to find stuff in and it’s very easy to get distracted. It also reflects the mental state of its owner. Messy rooms often house people who don’t quite have things in check. They can also be a sign of a deteriorating mental state. That’s why it is so important to clear out clutter in your work space. It looks better, it gets rid of potential distractions and it could help your mental state out a little too.

Step 3: Personalize Your Space – It’s time to add a bit of personal flair. A mindful space shouldn’t be just a mindful space, it should be your mindful space. Personalizing your space will make you feel much more comfortable in it, allowing for a more immersive mindfulness experience. Being surrounded by objects that define your personality will make it much easier to truly feel like you’re in the moment. You can add whatever you want as well. Posters, figurines, LED lights, photos, the list goes on. Go and make a mindful space that just screams ‘you’.

Step 4: Remove Distractions – You may have chosen a mindful space that has quite a few technological devices or other distractions in it. To complete your mindful space, you’ll either have to fully remove the distractions from it or make sure that they’re turned completely off and won’t interrupt you while you’re practicing (unless your distraction is something like a vape, which you should throw straight in the garbage). Imagine how annoying it would be trying to practice mindfulness while your phone keeps buzzing, it would totally take you out of the moment. Technology is also very tempting, so it should be removed if possible.

Step 5: Consistency – The last step is to simply remain consist in using the space. Don’t just use it once or twice then forget about it like those people who join the gym on new years. Make sure you make the effort to use your space to practice mindfulness every single day. No matter how you feel, you have to do it if you’re serious about learning mindfulness. If you’re not consistent, then what’s the point in even learning mindfulness?

Mindful Breathing

You’ve reflected on your goals, you’ve created a mindful space. Now it’s finally time to learn some mindfulness. And for that we’ll have to start with the most basic form of mindfulness, mindful breathing. Okay I know it sounds boring, I promise mindful breathing isn’t that bad (I see you tryna click off there).

Mindful breathing is a core foundation of mindfulness. If you don’t learn how to do it, then you’ll have a pretty hard time learning every other aspect of mindfulness. Mindful breathing is the key to unlocking all other mindfulness techniques out there. It’s as they always say – to get to the diamonds, you first need to go through stone (that’s 2 Minecraft references in this guide so far). Luckily for you, I have a crafting recipe for a pickaxe you can use to break through that stone (okay I gotta stop with this). In normal terms, I have a technique to share with you, so let’s check it out:

Step 1: You should first find a comfortable position t sit in within your mindful space. Make sure you have a straight back too, you can’t slack on the posture man.
Step 2: Now that you’re comfortable and in position, it’s time to start taking deep breaths. Don’t rush them. Make sure they have a rhythm, they have to be consistent. Obviously breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth as well.
Step 3: Now it’s time to shift your focus to the present. To do that, draw your attention toward the sensation of your breath. Notice how it feels as the air enters through your nostrils and leaves through your mouth.
Step 4: Continue observing the sensation of your breath as it enters and leaves your body. Do not try and change your breathing pattern, just observe it without casting judgement upon it. Whenever your mind wanders, gently redirect your attention back to your breathing. Make sure you don’t do it too forcefully, it will break your rhythm.
Step 5: Practice this exercise for a few minutes before taking a rest. When you feel that you have mastered it, extend the amount of time that you practice it for.

Make sure you practice mindful breathing a lot. You need to be able to properly get it down in order to start practicing other mindfulness techniques. Speaking of those other techniques, I’d say that it’s about time to introduce them…

Practical Mindfulness Techniques

After you master mindful breathing, you’ll notice a whole world of possibilities open up to you. So many different techniques will become available to you just from learning mindful breathing, it almost makes it worth me forcing you to learn it (hey cut me some slack, I said almost). The best thing is that the possibility for new techniques is endless, so you may even come up with your own one like I have (look forward to it). For now, let’s go over some of the most practical and most popular mindfulness techniques.

The 3 Things Technique

The TTT (come on that abbreviation is fire) is a pretty simple technqiue that you’ve likely heard of before. It’s also kinda similar to mindful breathing due to the fact that it’s used in a lot of other mindfulness techniques.

The technique involve sensing 3 things with each of the 5 senses (that’s a mouthful) in any given situation. You would start off by pointing out 3 things you can see, then 3 things you can feel, then 3 things you can smell, then 3 things you can hear and then (if applicable) 3 things you can taste. It’s a simple technique but it’s very effective. If you can point out more than 3 things then by all means go for it.

if you want to excel using the TTT, then I suggest that you try and notice small details in everything. This includes random holes in objects, funny things that you can smell and extremely random sounds. When you notice these random little details, make comments about them in your mind like “Damn why is there a hole in this table”. These comments will help to enhance your immersion in the present.

Body scan

This is one of the most popular mindfulness techniques. You’ve likely done it before in class at least once with your religion teacher (I really hit a home run there didn’t I?). It involves scanning your body from head to toe while directing your attention to the sensations that each part is feeling and, say it with me, observing them without judgement (such harmony!). This technique is mainly used for relaxation. It’s a great way to ease stress and calm yourself down (definitely a better alternative to vapes that’s for sure). Let’s see how it’s done:

Step 1: Position yourself comfortably within your mindful space. Comfort is key so get ready to hear about it a lot.
Step 2: Close your eyes and execute (I couldn’t think of a better word) some mindful breathing to bring your mind into the present. You should be semi-subconsciously keeping it up throughout the whole exercise.
Step 3: After you feel that you are fully in the present (should only be a few minutes), shift your attention away from your breath and om to the top of your head. Now see if you can notice any sensations (it’s okay if you can’t). If you do, simply observe and make note of them. Do not try and change them.
Step 4: After finishing with the top of your head, slowly move down your body, Go from your head to your face, your face to your arms, your arms to your hands, your hands to your chest, your chest to your stomach, your stomach to your legs, and your legs to your feet. You can be more specific than me if you want. You can separate hands and fingers, legs and toes or even divide legs into multiple parts
Step 5: If you notice any tension in your body parts, breathe them away. I mean this quite literally, you’re gonna get rid of it with one deep breath. When you breathe in, imagine yourself sucking up all that tension (PAUSE). When you exhale, imagine yourself letting go of it. Picture it drifting away as you enter a deeper state of relaxation.
Step 6: Take your time. Do not rush the body scan, this is an activity meant for relaxation not for world record speedrunning. Working through it too fast will cause your mind to be focused on getting through the exercise instead of on what each body part feels like. Speaking of your mind, make sure to gently guide your thoughts back to your bodily sensations if it starts to wander.
Step 7: Once you’re done, draw your focus back to your breath and slowly open your eyes. You should notice that you feel a lot more relaxed and in the moment.

Congrats my guy (or gal)! You have now officially executed a body scan and you should hopefully feel a lot more relaxed regardless of the situation that you’re in. Don’t fret to use this technique if you’re ever overwhelmed or stressed, it’s highly effective if performed well. Alright, onto the next!

Mindful Eating

Yes, I also laughed the first time I heard about this one. It may seem pointless at first lance though I assure you that it’s anything but. The main purpose to this technique is to enhance the taste of your food by placing more focus upon it. Now that caught your attention didn’t it? I guess I shouldn’t waste any more time then. Let’s go.

Step 1: This exercise will be way easier if you perform some mindful breathing beforehand so go ahead and do some of that for a few minutes.
Step 2: Next up come the pre-meal preparations. Since this is a mindfulness activity, you’re not allowed to engage with any potential distractions. This means that you’ll have to sacrifice the legendary dinner x YouTube combo. You should be using no technology when practicing mindful eating.
Step 3: Before chow time starts, you should first take a moment to appreciate the visual fidelity of your food. Notice its shape, size and arrangement on your plate. If there is nothing to appreciate, then I have to question your eating habits (that’s your friendly reminder to take up healthy eating!).
Step 4: It’s finally chow time! As you eat your food, make sure you savor every single bite you take. Make sure you pay extra attention to the taste, texture and sensations of your food as you chew it. Make sure to engage all the 5 senses and use the TTT (man I can’t get over that name) while eating. Use them to enhance the experience even further.
Step 5: Something you can do to savor your food even more is put down your knife and fork in-between bites. It may seem simple but it will definitely prevent you from rushing through your meal, allowing you to enjoy it even more.
Step 6: Make sure that your mind is fully focused on eating. So if your thoughts start to wonder, make sure to gently direct them back to your food by using the 5 senses.

Bone appetite my guy (or gal)! You’ve officially completed your very first mindful meal (hey that alliteration was pretty good).Mindful eating may seem like a pretty niche technique at first but it quickly became one of my favorites and there’s a strong chance that it will soon become one of your favorites too. It always amazes me how much better your food can taste when using mindfulness.

Mindful Lifting

This technique is one I came up with myself (it’s copyrighting time!) and it’s perfect for all my gymbros out there. Mindful lifting is a great way to enhance to your gym sessions, It helps you increase your overall tolerance to the pain that comes with lifting. Increased tolerance means that you’ll easily be able to bang out a few more reps at the end of your sets. Since the final few reps matter the most, this’ll significantly enhance your progression at the gym (man am I a genius for coming up with this or what?). Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: This technique has one very important ground rule that you must follow no matter what. You must not use your phone at any point during your gym session. It will completely take you out of the moment. You are allowed to listen to music, but be aware that the effectiveness of the technique will be decreased if you choose to do so. Just no scrolling or anything, it will ruin it.
Step 2: Before your first set, do some mindful breathing to bring your mind into the present. 2-3 minutes of it should be alright.
Step 3: Now it’s time to start lifting. Make sure to complete each rep with consistent and proper form. Also make sure to maintain tension throughout the entire rep. This way you can move on to the next step.
Step 4: This step runs side by side with the previous one. You now need to incorporate the 5 senses and the TTT of course)into your lifting Specifically, you’ll want to hone in on touch and sound. Try your hardest to notice everything. That includes the grip of the bar, the tension/pain that your muscles are feeling and the sound that the machine is making. You can also use a mirror to check your from if one is available.
Step 5: During your rest periods, go back to doing some mindful breathing. This will help center your focus and get you ready for the next set. Don’t rest for too long either. Here’s my guide for rest times: Compound exercises (bench press, deadlift, squats, etc.) – 3 minutes | Regular exercises (lat pulldown, tricep pushdown, cable crossover, cable bicep curl, leg extension, shoulder press, etc.) 2 minutes 30 seconds | Focused exercises (lateral raise, front lateral raise, wrist curl, rear delt extension, dumbell fly, etc.) 2 minutes tops.
Step 6: If your mind begins to wonder, gently guide it back to your training.

Isn’t mindful lifting just the best? I know, right?! Training in general may be incredibly painful but we keep putting ourselves through that pain because we know it will make us stronger. When you add mindfulness to that, you get enhanced pain but also enhanced results. It’s more than worth it. Now happy training!

Mindful Walking

It’s often stated that going out on daily walks does wonders for your mental health, but does this statement hold any merit? I believe that it does. However, it’s kind of a huge time sink. You’re essentially wasting 30-60 minutes to do nothing except wander around and listen to music, there’s not really anything productive going on. Mindful walking fixes this problem. It allows you to get that mental health boost while also practicing mindfulness. Sounds way more productive to me, so let’s see how it’s done:

Step 1: This technique requires a little bit of pre-walk preparation that comes in the form of (you guessed it) mindful breathing. It is absolutely key that you enter a mindful state before you embark on your grand walk (dramatic much?). 5-10 minutes should be a good amount of mindful breathing.
Step 2: Now it’s time set the rules for the walk. Since this is mindfulness, you shouldn’t be using any form of technology whatsoever. That means no music (that isn’t serene, atmospheric music). I know it’s fun to listen to music on a walk, but it will limit the effectiveness of the exercise. In the brackets (woah, 4th wall break?!), I mentioned that serene and atmospheric music is fine. That kind of music is used for relaxation purposes which makes it completely okay to use. Also I shouldn’t have to say this but no using your phone.
Step 3: Now it’s actually time for the walk. The most important thing that you must do during the walk is take in your surroundings by using the TTT on steroids. What I mean is that instead of noticing 3 things, notice everything. See what can smell in different areas, try to notice how the air/wind feels, pay attention to every sound you hear (even if it’s only a small sound) and see if you can taste anything. Most importantly though, you have to use sight to take in your surroundings. Sight is the most important sense in mindful walking. You should try and point out every you see to yourself. Notice structure of buildings, the shape of any flowers you see, the texture of the ocean and the bustling nature of the city at night. Wherever you are, just take it all in.
Step 4: Keep doing this, while focusing especially hard on sight. If your mind wanders, then guide it back using sight. Make sure to properly appreciate the beauty of the world.

Congrats once again! You’ve completed your first ever mindful walk. For me, mindful walking is all about appreciating the beauty of the world around us, even in the places that we see almost every day. The world is so beautiful yet these days, it seems like that beauty isn’t getting the appreciation it deserves. Too many people are constantly absorbed in the digital world, so much so that they often overlook the real world and take it for granted. Mindful walking can erase that problem and help you appreciate the little things in life. Try it out sometime, it’ll do you wonders.

Mindful Communication

Have you ever had the feeling in a conversation that you’re just waiting for your turn to speak and you’re not really paying much attention to the person who is actually talking? Yeah that is not mindful communication. That is actually kind disrespectful in a way. What isn’t disrespectful is mindful communication, a technique that allows to both speak and listen with clarity and sharpness. Let’s see how it’s done.

Step 1: For this I’m gonna imagine that you’re in a large group conversation since many people seem to struggle with those. To start, you have to enter a mindful state. So go ahead and take a few mindful breaths You have to do this whether you’re already participating or not.
Step 2: If you’re not participating in the conversation, then just walk up to your friends and ask what’s up. If you’re already participating, then you’re already ready for the next step.
Step 3: Focus on the sense of sound. Make sure to listen carefully to the speaker and not just wait impatiently for your turn to speak. Actually pay attention to their words and take in everything that they’re saying, you’ll come up with more things to say just by doing that.
Step 4: When it is your turn to speak, make sure you do so with confidence and clarity. Don’t raise your voice too much though, raise your words instead. give your voice the boom it needs. if you speak quietly and keep stuttering, then your words will just fade out into obscurity. Try to use mindfulness to adjust your voice too. Pay attention to how your words feel as they exit your mouth and if they don’t feel loud enough, then adjust it.
Step 5: Don’t forget eye contact either, it’s very important to the delivery of your words. If you’re staring at the floor the entire time, then no one is gonna pay much attention to you. So make sure to keep eye contact distant. if your words are aimed at multiple people, then switch your gaze to someone else every once in a while.
Step 6: This step is the most important one here. Make sure you use your senses to read them room. Use sight to see people’s expressions, sound to keep on listening carefully and use that weird 6th sense to see how the air feels. Doing this will help you to think through your words carefully. That’s right, you have to use mindfulness to think before you speak. By reading the room and thinking things through, you’ll know what is and isn’t appropriate to say as well as how much you should be speaking. This will help you out in a lot of situations
Step 7: Remember this – Speak like you know what you’re doing, listen like you don’t.
Step 8: Please note that you’re not gonna dominate very single conversation that you’re in. That just sin’t gonna happen and that is completely okay. And trust me when I say that by letting go of your desire to dominate conversations and instead focusing on just have cool conversations, you will end up dominating more conversations.

And there it is, that’s mindful communication for you. It helps you listen with care and speak confidently. I feel like way too many people just focus on waiting to speak when in a conversation. Someone who does that is really easy to spot and will often end up not speaking at all. Kind ironic, huh?

Mindfulness In Daily Life

While the techniques I taught you are extremely useful, I’ve noticed that many people struggle to stay consistent using them. It isn’t rare for people to start off their first few days of mindfulness strong, only to start lagging behind after a little bit and missing a few days. Missing a few days could easily lead to you quitting without even realizing it which is not good. The best way to counter something like this is to implement mindfulness into your daily life. Doing this will allow you to practice certain techniques while still going about your daily routine.

Mindfulness at School

If you ever find yourself dozing off or zoning out at school, then you may wanna try some mindfulness to help center your attention. I personally recommend the TTT or mindful breathing. I personally thing that the TTT would work better than mindful breathing in this situation because it would be kind of annoyed to try and focus just on your breath. Plus, there are some pretty random things to be found in classrooms which really help make the TTT a good choice.

During lunch, you can use mindful eating as another means to focus more on the present. I doubt it could turn a bad school meal into a good one though (the memories of the overly chewy steaks and soggy fries are rushing back to me). What it will do is enhance your digestion, I kinda forgot to mention that earlier but yeah mindful eating does that too (another reason to try it out). Enhanced digestion will help some of those crusty meals go down a look smoother (I seriously need to stop the school meal slander).

If you’re a sporty person like myself, then your favorite class is probably P.E. I trick I used to do in my high school days was do some mindful breathing before heading out to P.E. It helped to enhance my senses which made me more alert while playing sports. This obviously gave me a significant performance boost, I was basically balling like Cell (shoutout Dragon Ball fans).

Mindfulness at Work

Another place where you can practice mindfulness technique is at work. Many often struggle with productivity and concentration issues at the workplace and it’s hard not to see why. Having a job usually involves doing a lot of mundane tasks that, in an age full of quick dopamine hits, will bore many people pretty fast. This is where mindfulness comes in. With it, your boredom will turn into focus. Let’s check out a few ways that you can use mindfulness at work.

If you’re a punctual person, then you should consider getting into work a few minutes early so you can start your day off with some mindful breathing. This’ll help clear your head of any worries that may be plaguing your mind so you can fully focus on the task at hand. It’ll set a positive tone for the day too which is way better than complaining about having to work if you ask me.

Here’s a little tip to stay more focused. Try to stick to single-tasking instead of multi-tasking. Doing multiple tasks at once and constantly switching between them will kill your focus, the quality of your work will also be negatively impacted too. Multi-tasking is just not optimal. Doing all your tasks 1 by 1 in an orderly manner is way better for your focus, which means that it’s better for staying mindful. You’ll finish a lot faster and you’ll do a way better job.

Mindfulness in Relationships

It’s important that we are fully present when spending time with that one special someone in our lives. It’ll help to make the moment feel even more special and it’ll make you appreciate your lover even more. Let’s have a look at how you should go about doing that.

The first tip I have for you is to get rid of all distractions when spending some quality time with your lover. No phone, no technology, just them. That’s all you need. Going on your phone will just take your focus away from them on onto mindless social media scrolling. Come on man, your girl didn’t get with you because you’re addicted to social media. She got with you because she loves you and thinks you’re incredible. So focus on her, not on instant gratification.

My next tip is to use mindful communication to practice empathy. A relationship isn’t easy. A couple will be faced with many challenges throughout one. They key to overcoming these problems lies in believing in your partner and listening to them. You’re her rock man, you have to listen to her problems and comfort her with empathy. This will only be achieved through mindful communication. Pay extra attention to step 6 here too, since it’ll give you a good idea of how much you should speak and what you should say.

Last paragraph, I mentioned that a couple will be faced with many challenges across their relationship. One of these challenges is conflict. Arguments can kill relationships if you don’t manage them right. When you feel one coming, make sure to use mindful breathing to calm yourself. You CANNOT let your anger get the better of you. This is the person you love, not a verbal punching bag. Use mindful communication to be as transparent as possible about conflicts, remember to stick with each other throughout everything.

Mindfulness and Stress Reduction

Stress is something that impacts all of our lives. Those who succeed in life tend to have extremely good stress reduction and stress management skills. I’d actually be willing to say that it is one of the key factors to success. That being said, why don’t we look at how you can use mindfulness to achieve stress reduction?

The most basic use for mindfulness in stress reduction is some simple mindful breathing. Whenever you start to feel that your stress levels are rising rapidly, immediately stop what you’re doing and take a few minutes to do some mindful breathing. It may be hard to focus at first but just stick at it, you will calm down eventually. Try to imagine that you’re letting go of your worries every time you exhale. Once you have regained your composure, continue with whatever you were previously doing.

Did you know that stress can sometimes manifest physically? It can cause stomach aches and other sensations of discomfort around the body. It is seriously not good for you. If you’re someone who often suffers from random aches and pains around your body, then you might be stressed out. To solve this issue, I recommend a body scan. Don’t just rush straight to where the pain is though, you still have to take your time and do it properly. If you don’t, then the pain won’t go away.

Another way to get rid of stress is by using the TTT to divert your attention away from your worries. You can even use the special descending version of the TTT. This involves naming 5 things you can see, 4 you can feel, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell and 1 you can taste. You’ll be so focused on the technique that your worries will drift away.

You know how I mentioned that mindful walking is great for your mental health (I did say that, right… ?). It also means that it’s great for stress reduction. Going on a mindful walk is like being in your own little world. It feels like nothing else matters except the beauty of the world around you (damn I can get pretty deep sometimes). So if life feels like it’s too much, then just head out on a walk to clear your mind. It’ll do you wonders.

Mindfulness for Better Sleep

One of the most common issues that our generation struggles with is a lack of sleep. many people go to bed at 3AM and wake up at 12PM every single day. Not only that, but their sleep is often interrupted. Many young people often find themselves waking up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep. It’s a problem that likely occurs from the overuse of technology. If you struggle with this, then I suggest you use mindfulness as a solution.

The first thing you should do to improve your sleep is create a definitive evening routine. This routine should be for the 2 or so hours that lead up to you going to sleep. This routine should include thing like: a technology cut off point, activities you can do to unwind, some daily reflection and some mindfulness practices of course. Feel free to include any other end of day activities you also like doing. As for how you order them, that’s entirely up to you. Just make sure that your technology cut off point is at least an hour before you go to sleep.

For the final few steps of your routine, there’s a technique you can use to help yourself fall asleep easier. It’s called mindful transition. To execute it, all you need to do is stay mindful from the moment you cut off technology to the moment you fall asleep. Doing this involves incorporating mindfulness into every activity you do from that point in. I’m not exaggerating when I say every activity either, I mean it quite literally. So go ahead and incorporate mindfulness into brushing your teeth, reading, cleaning, journaling, or any other activity you do.

One last thing I recommend that you incorporate in your routine is a body scan before you go to sleep. Doing this will put you in the perfect state to fall asleep in. Any senses of pain or tension will slowly drift away as you mindfully scan your body. Hell, you may even fall asleep halfway through the exercise. Pretty neat if you ask me.

Overcoming Mindfulness Challenges

Mindfulness is an amazing resource that can allow you to live a more peaceful and fulfilled life, but that doesn’t mean that it’ll be a cakewalk to learn. You will be faced with many challenges throughout your mindfulness journey that must be overcame if you want to master the practice. I can’t guarantee that overcoming any of these obstacles will be easy; in fact, I can guarantee you the opposite. But overcoming hardships is what makes us stronger, so let’s dive in and explore these challenges.

Challenge 1- Impatience

I’m just gonna come out and say it. Impatience is the number 1 reason why people fail at mindfulness (or any other meditation practice for that matter). It’s easy to see why. In the current age, everyone is constantly used to extremely high levels of stimulation inside their brain. This is all thanks to social media. People spend hours upon hours mindlessly scrolling through their socials. This causes their brains to get more used to those high levels of stimulation that social media offers, which makes them get bored more easily, even while on their phone.

This all happens because social media triggers the brain’s reward system, which releases dopamine inside the brain (it all comes back to dopamine, huh?). The release of dopamine then gives you a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. As I said earlier though, the brain soon gets used to these of stimulation and satisfaction which causes you to get easily bored. This makes you unable to tolerate activities that aren’t highly stimulating, one of which being mindfulness.

Luckily though, there is a solution to this. So let’s check it out:

Dopamine Detox

And that makes 3 whole guides in a row where I’m talking about dopamine detox. I’m kinda tired of talking about it but I’ll briefly go over it for your sake.

Dopamine detox is the process of mending your attention span by distancing yourself from dopamine triggers. These triggers are objects are activities that cause a high amount of dopamine to be released in your body. Here are some examples of some of the most stimulating dopamine triggers:

Basically anything to do with your phone (especially social media)
Watching TV shows or movies
Playing video games
Listening to music
Drinking alcohol
Smoking, vaping (or any nicotine product for that matter)
Another other form of drugs
Sexual intercourse and masturbation
And many more (my mind is drawing blanks)

The idea of dopamine detox is to avoid all dopamine triggers for a set period of time. This period is known as the ‘detox period’ and it lasts for the amount of time that you choose it to last. If you’re just starting out with detox, the I recommend a 3 hour period. Once you master it, you should increase the length of the detox period by at least an hour. If you’re feeling especially daring, then you could try and do it for a whole day.

If you’re wondering what to do during that period, then I have a few suggestions for you:

Read a book
Study for a little
Work hard to chase your dreams
Write in a journal (or anywhere you feel like)
Draw or paint
Practice mindfulness/meditation
Clean your room
Take a walk

Dopamine detox is seriously an amazing practice. It helps you appreciate the little things a lot more and it also helps to enhance your concentration due to your regained attestation span. I seriously suggest you try it out, I promise you won’t regret it.

Challenge 2 – Consistency

Another challenge that people often face when learning mindfulness is the inability to stay consistent. Many people start practicing mindfulness full of motivation. Their first few attempts go alright and they manage to stick it out thanks to their high levels of motivation. However, this motivation fades over time and it makes those people start to skip out on practicing mindfulness. They start to say things like “Oh, I’m busy now I’ll do it later,” but later never comes. They start to only practice it when they feel like it and they eventually quit altogether without even realizing it.

A large amount of people have fell into that trap, you can’t make yourself one of them. If you feel like you already have fallen in, then it’s not too late to climb back out of it. Here are some tips to help you stay more consistent when practicing mindfulness:

Create a Routine

The best way you can get yourself to practice mindfulness every single is to day to incorporate the practice into your daily routine. This way, you’ll eventually start doing it out of habit. I can’t tell you how to create your routine, that part is entirely up to you, but I can give you some tips:

Set a Designated Time: By setting yourself a designated time to practice mindfulness, you’ll get more used to doing it than if you were to just do it at a random time each day. If you don’t set yourself a specific time, then you could end up accidentally skipping mindfulness practice. But if you do set a designated time, then your mind will automatically think “Oh it’s 5! Time for mindfulness,” and you’ll get right into the swing of things.
Set Clear Goals: Goal setting is especially important when it comes to practicing mindfulness. Without clearly defined goals, you’ll have less of a reason to practice mindfulness. The ideal time to set your goals for each session would be at the end of the previous session so it’s in your mind and out of the way. Make sure to write them down too so you don’t forget. If you’re not sure what kind of goals to set, then you should be challenging yourself to maintain mindful states for longer periods of time.
Track your Progress: Tracking your progress is always a handy idea (I did not just say handy). Doing so will allow you to set yourself more accurate goals; goals that are based on data rather than guesses. You will also be able to recognize how much you have improved over time by logging down all your results. Such progress will be a strong reminder of your true strength and it could easily be a strong fore of motivation.
Reflection: Make sure that you reflect on your daily mindfulness sessions after you finish them. Look back on how you did that session, don’t forget to praise yourself if you did well. More importantly though, make sure that you reflect on your shortcomings. Identify all the mistakes you made during you daily mindfulness practice and ask yourself why you made them. if you don’t do this then you’ll never improve yourself.

There you have it, those are my personal tips for creating a consistent mindfulness routine. You’ll notice how easily you fall into the swing of things with a good routine, which can go a long way when trying to stay consistent.

Accountability

The other solution I have for consistency issues is to hold yourself accountable. Having nothing bad occur to you when skipping practice is likely one of the main reasons you skip practicing so much in the first place. To get rid of this reason, you have to hold yourself accountable for your own shortcomings. You could even have someone else (like your parents) punish you for skipping mindfulness practice. Speaking of punishments, here are some of the best ways you can punish yourself for not practicing mindfulness:

Detox Period: A great form of punishment is to force yourself to do a dopamine detox period. You don’t have to do a full 3 hour one though, it should only be 1-2 hours. Not being able to use any dopamine trigger for a couple hours if you skip mindfulness practice is a great way to make yourself.
Forfeits: Yes, you read that right. Yes, I’m offering forfeits as a punishment. No, this is not a 2016 YouTube video. Alright let me explain this punishment. If you skip mindfulness practice, then you have to punish yourself in the form of a challenge that you wouldn’t exactly want to do. Some examples of forfeits would be: Eating something you really don’t like, getting in an ice bath, eating a hot chip, getting egged, giving up your favorite food or game for a certain period of time and anything along those lines you can think of. Remember to not go too extreme with it. Make the forfeits severe enough that you wouldn’t want to do them but not so serious that they’ll harm you (safety is key man). This will serve as a great deterrent from skipping practice and it’ll also be a great laugh for those involved.
Exercise: This one is an extension of the previous section on forfeits, but with a more active twist. That’s right, you’re gonna do exercise as a punishment. As for them form of exercise, I suggest either push ups or sit ups. Why push ups/sit ups? They’re the most exhausting, which makes them the most effective as a form of punishment. You should punish yourself to doing 100 in the next 30-60 minute. Oh, and make sure to do them with proper form and not just some lazy half push ups.
Locking your phone: Another more simple form of punishment is to lock yourself from using your phone for a couple hours or so. It’s a simple deterrent but an effective one.

All these punishments serve as a great way to get yourself to practice mindfulness, even when you don’t feel like doing it. Remember to actually go through with the punishments as well, you can’t just let yourself off the hook or you’ll be more prone to giving in to the desire to skip. You have to punish yourself in order to make sure that entire process doesn’t happen.

Challenge 3 – Monkey Brain

I promise you that Suguru Geto did not write this part. Anyways, monkey brain is a common issue that causes many people fo give up on mindfulness. It’s a state of mind where one’s brain is restless and filled with endless thoughts. So basically, it’s the total opposite of mindfulness (I would make a terrible pun here, but I don’t have it in me to put you through that). Monkey brain can easily derail any attempts you make to achieve mindfulness by sending your mind on a long train of thought. There are a few ways around it though, so let’s take a look:

Non-Judgemental Awareness: Earlier in the guide, I made sure to hammer it home that you should not judge any thoughts that pop into your mind during mindfulness. This is exactly why I did that. Judging your thoughts can lead to monkey brain, you have to let go. So make sure you simply observe your thoughts without judgement. Doing so will allow them to exit your mind as quickly as they entered.
Label Your Thoughts: An alternative to judging your thoughts is giving them all labels like “Random thought”, “Planning” or “Core belief”. After you give them a label, just move on from them. Try not to use labels like “Comforting” or “Disgusting” that encourage judgement either. Don’t allow those thoughts to affect your state of mind during mindfulness practice. After you label your thoughts, it’s time for the final tip.
Use Your Breath As An Anchor: After labeling and observing your thoughts, you’ll need to divert your attention away from them to stop yourself from breaking your state of mindfulness. The best way to do this is to use your breath as an anchor and divert your attention back to the sensation of your breath. Make sure to do it gently though, any sudden shifts are likely to break concentration.

Monkey brain is quite the troubling issue for many different people. It can lead you on tangents of thought so easily that it’ll be too late by the time you notice. That’s why it’s key to observe, not judge. Removing your personal stake in those thoughts will give you less of a reason to pursue them. Remember that it doesn’t matter what those thoughts are, you don’t need to react to them. I can promise you that.

Mindfulness Resources

The journey to mastering mindfulness is a challenging one. It’s a path of endurance and resilience. Throughout this path, a time where you feel like you’re at your wits end will likely come. Many people have encountered this scenario and many people have quit because of it. You can’t allow yourself to fall victim to this same fate. To avoid this, you’re going to have to rely on external resources. Luckily for you, there are loads of options available to you..

Headspace

Headspace, to put it simply, is an app that teaches you how to meditate. Naturally, the app also teaches mindfulness (otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it would I?). It has so many awesome features that can help you out on your mindfulness journey. Let’s take a quick look at them:

Guided Meditation: Headspace offers a huge library full of guided meditation sessions. Each one of these sessions will guide you through a specific meditation exercise, each exercise designed to address various aspects of mental well-being. You won’t have to worry about getting lost with one of these sessions to guide you.
Mindfulness: The app also teaches users all about mindfulness. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the practice. These sessions will help you to understand mindfulness better than you already do.
Courses: Headspace offers countless meditation courses to its users. Some of these courses even span across multiple days, with allocated sessions for each days.
Sleepcasts: Sleepcasts are designed to help the user fall asleep and build a healthier nighttime routine. They will take you on a audio-guided tour of a dreamy and surreal environment. There are a large amount of environments available for you to check out and listening to any one of them is incredibly peaceful.
Progress Tracking: Headspace allows users to track their progress and see how they’re doing on their mindfulness/meditation journey. It’s a great way to observe how far you have come and it serves as a good motivator to get even better.

The best part is that those are only some of the features available on headspace. There’s so much more to discover, it’s basically the ultimate meditation hub. If that’s got you curious then here are the plans that headspace offers:

Monthly – $12.99 per month with a 7 day free trial

Annually – $69.99 per year with a 14 day free trial

If headspace seems like something that you would want to try, then check it out here (this is (sadly) not an affiliate link):

Try Headspace For Free!

Mindfulness Books

There are countless books out there that are all based around mindfulness. Reading them can give you great insight into how mindfulness works, the science behind it, tricks you can use to enhance your experience and some new techniques. Here’s a list of some of the best ones that I know of:

The Power of Letting Go – John Purkiss: The Power of Letting Go is a book that teaches readers all about… well… the power of letting go I guess. The book focuses heavily on letting go of thoughts and feelings that are holding you back and embracing the moment. Mindfulness plays a huge part in this and it’s definitely worth a read in my eyes.
Wherever You Go, There You Are – Jon Kabat-Zinn: Second mindfulness book and second one written by a John (keep it up Johns you guys are killing it!). This is a book that is aimed at both people who are brand new to mindfulness and those who are veterans at the practice. The book maps out a simple plan meant to cultivate mindfulness in one’s life. With a title like that, I was already hooked and I can say with confidence that it’s an unforgettable read (do people say that? I’m not in touch with the reading community).
Radical Acceptance – Tara Brach: This is a mindfulness book that is all about freeing yourself from feelings of doubt and insecurity and accepting yourself for who you are, hence the title. To accomplish this goal, it uses a combination of buddhist teachings, personal experiences and guided meditation practices. There’s not doubt that this book will help you on your path to inner peace

Conclusion

And that’s wraps for the mindfulness guide. Mindfulness is seriously amazing, I cannot stress it enough. It can make you feel levels of peace and satisfaction that you have. But you already know that and you’re probably fed up of hearing that. So instead, I’ll leave you with a piece of wisdom:

Your mindfulness journey may not be easy, but the hardships are more than worth it. So keep going, even when you don’t want to.