How Mindfulness Transformed My Life

by Chloe Bennet

You might wonder how being mindful changes anything really. This is the first thing people ask me when I tell them about my mindfulness journey.

This is the first thing I asked when I first heard about mindfulness. It seemed impossible to me that something so simple could change my life. I was stressed, anxious and irritable all the time. I would easily snap at anyone nearby – that’s how jittery I was.

It’s not like I didn’t try to resolve this. I tried many different stress management techniques with varying degrees of success. But stress was still a big factor in my life.

I would wake up feeling stressed. I never felt peaceful and relaxed. I never felt prepared for anything. I could barely sleep. Work felt like a nightmare for me. I’m an introvert as well, so being around people didn’t help. Every minor problem like bills, planning for holidays, cleaning or going out stressed me out more than it should have.

No matter what I did, I felt bad and scared. I felt crippled.

Then I read this article about mindfulness and it got my attention. The article told a story about an ordinary person, just like me, who managed to introduce mindfulness into her life and made just about everything much better.

The premise sounded simple enough. Just sit and focus on your breathing. But what my phone app didn’t tell me was that I could do it anywhere. At work, at home, while walking and so on.

The first obstacle I encountered was my own laziness. I didn’t feel like starting right away. Then it was my thinking that this couldn’t possibly work. Then I forgot about it.

But after a particularly hard week, I remembered what I read. And I tried it out. Gradually, I learned how to fold mindfulness into my everyday life. When I washed the dishes, I would focus on that, not letting my thoughts wander too much away from my moment to moment experience – sensations in my body, the feel of warm water on my hands, the smell of washing-up liquid…

Not that every moment was serene or blissful. Anxiety would still arise.

When I got stressed, I would take a few deep breaths and remind myself not to think about the things I can’t change right now. When I walked, I focused on my body, the sensation of the breeze on my face, my breathing…If a worry arises, I can accept it as just another thought and allow it to pass.

I didn’t always remember to be mindful. Over time I realized that the goal was not to be mindful every moment of the day. That would be an impossible undertaking. It was enough to simply notice when I was caught up in abstract thinking and bring myself back into the moment by paying attention to my experience.

I have found that it helps if I form the intention to bring mindfulness into the moment as soon as I wake up in the morning. Rather than leap straight out of bed and start making plans for the day, I spend ten minutes or so just lying there, focusing on body sensations, noticing the light in the room, the feeling of warm sunshine on my skin, being open to any feelings that arise. If thoughts about the past or the future arise, I acknowledge them and bring my attention back to the moment.

That early morning meditation sets me up for the day. From there, mindfulness can be infused in everything I do throughout the day: drinking a coffee, eating a meal, taking a shower, having a conversation – being present for all of it, or at least as much of it as I can. The more I practice, mindfulness becomes more and more a part of my life, something I do naturally, rather than have to think about and plan.

I’ve been practicing mindfulness for a year now and my life has changed so much. I rarely feel stressed, scared or uncertain anymore. Mindfulness has helped me embrace life and approach it from a different perspective – grateful, positive and welcoming to all aspects of experience.

Of course, there are bad days too. Those are unavoidable. But I’m better able to respond patiently and skillfully to situations, rather than get caught up in habitual reactions. Mindfulness has helped me understand what kind of behavioral patterns were helpful to me and what kind of habits were detrimental to my sense of well-being.

Thanks to mindfulness, I now have a far better, much more compassionate relationship with myself. These days, I’m far more able to see things just as they are, rather than how I think they should be. I still have work pressures, demanding deadlines and unpleasant situations in my life. But I see them as just that – work is just work, deadlines are just deadlines and unpleasant situations are going to happen no matter what.

What I’ve come to realize is that mindfulness is not just a collection of concepts. The concepts underpin the practice, but the practice is what it is really about. It does take practice and that involves a certain amount of daily commitment. But the rewards are innumerable. When I look back on the last year of my life, I can see very clearly the difference mindfulness has made to my life and I feel proud that I’ve stuck with it.

Chloe Bennet is a health blogger at Buy Assignments Online UK and Order Essay websites. She writes about self-improvement and education. Also, Chloe teaches grammar at Best essay writers Australia portal.