It’s no secret that most men are under a lot of stress. Between work, family, and social obligations, it often feels like there’s just not enough time in the day to get everything done. And unfortunately, all that stress can take its toll on our mental health, leading to decreased clarity of thought and increased levels of negativity.
Have you ever picked up a snow globe and shook the snow until the entire globe becomes so filled that you can barely see the object inside? I got a “fog globe” in San Francisco. Instead of white, chunky snowflakes, it’s filled with the grayish/silver dust that makes the Golden Gate Bridge inside completely disappear in a veil of fog. Pretty cool. That’s also what’s going on inside your mind.
But what if there were ways to have less stress in our lives without making significant changes? Turns out, there are. In this post, we’ll explore three simple methods for reducing stress that you can start using today. So read on and learn how you can live a more relaxed and positive life.
KEY POINTS
- Practicing mindfulness and living a more mindful life can positively impact both your mental and your physical well-being.
- Less stress, clearer thoughts, more positivity.
Mindlessness
Most likely, your typical mental state is usually the same as it is for a lot of us, virtually mindless.
What do I mean by that? Not that you are a mindless person. Rather than you can spend most of your time lost in your memories and fantasies of what you think your future should look like. You are sending texts at dinner with family/friends, texting while in a meeting. You are waiting for your turn to speak instead of listening in conversation. Multitasking, making choices that don’t truly align with who you are and what you value, etc. These are all examples of mindlessly being on autopilot.
We tend to let our minds operate on autopilot most of the time, and the result of this is that we tend to let our bodies be in one place and our minds in another.
Why don’t I feel better? How can I have less stress?
As humans, we’re constantly looking for ways to solve the causes of our suffering and uncomfortableness. Then we try to discover how we can alleviate it or make it easier to deal with the next time we encounter it.
Sooner or later, you end up asking yourself questions like: “Why don’t I feel better?” or “Is there something I can do or something that someone can prescribe to make the pain go away?”
Throughout your life, you can struggle emotionally when you experience adverse circumstances. When you don’t get what you want in life, if you suffer from significant loss or deal with things you don’t want to deal with, you are constantly seeking ways to feel better.
Enter Mindfulness
Mindfulness can give us a way of looking at things differently. It can enable us to relate to all of the experiences in our life which might be causing stress, anxiety, or uncomfortableness. It can help us identify what is preventing us from living our best life. Mindfulness, in turn, can allow us the potential to transform ourselves completely.
Mindfulness seems to be everywhere these days. You see it on bookshelves, in the magazine rack at the grocery store. Productivity coaches talk about it. Mental health professionals suggest it. Many companies are starting to offer mindfulness training and programs as part of their employee wellness programs.
With all of the hype, popularity, differing opinions, philosophies, and touted benefits, how do you make sense of it all? What does it mean to be mindful?
OK, so what does it mean to be mindful?
The clinical definition of mindfulness is “paying attention to something, in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2003.
“Paying attention” in this sense means being aware of certain things that surround you in the present place and time. “On Purpose” means you intentionally decide to pay attention. “In the Present Moment” means focusing on the here and now, ridding yourself of any past or future thoughts. “Non-judgmental” means not comparing, judging, or being critical of yourself or what arises while paying attention.
Some people believe that mindfulness is entirely about meditation. And this can sometimes be a considerable deterrent, especially if you have a hard time sitting still for any length of time. It’s not solely about meditation.
More so, mindfulness is about dismissing your distracting thoughts and learning how to incorporate meditation as a tool to assist you while practicing your mindfulness. You should develop your sense and personal understanding of what mindfulness means to you.
Why is mindfulness important?
There are several reasons why mindfulness is such a hot topic these days. Mainly, it’s due to increasing scientific evidence that mindfulness practice has substantial benefits for the brain, body, and relationships. It benefits our mental well-being, increases our ability to concentrate, bolsters our resilience, is used for successfully treating chronic pain, and enables us to become more compassionate.
Practicing mindfulness and fundamentally applying it to all aspects of your life can decrease your stress and anxiety. It can also reduce/ minimize the time you feel overwhelmed and help you appreciate each moment as it happens genuinely. In this chaotic world, mindfulness might be what you need to learn to deal with the madness.
It is for me.
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What can mindfulness do for me?
There are several benefits of practicing mindfulness and living a more mindful life. Specifically, it can positively impact both your mental and your physical well-being.
Mindfulness reduces overthinking and your ruminating mind.
Anxiety and rumination walk hand in hand. The more anxious I am about something, the more I think about it. The more I think about it, the more worried I am. It’s easy to get caught up in this “death spiral of negativity” as the mind continues to replay every bad outcome it can imagine. And, although most of us know this is unproductive and that worry about something doesn’t prevent it from happening (more often, it’s the opposite), we still do this. Studies have shown people beginning to practice mindfulness show fewer signs of rumination and anxiety.
Mindfulness helps to alleviate stress.
Stress and anger can crop in anyone’s life at any given moment. These are responses to something that is happening, which is stressful, dangerous, or threatening.
Your body is telling you that you want to fight off danger, and because of this, your heart rate can increase, your blood pressure will rise, and stress hormones will kick into high gear. Allowing your body to stay at high stress levels can be extremely dangerous in certain situations, depending on your physical makeup.
By using mindfulness exercises, you can attempt (and be successful) at lowering your stress response.
Mindfulness can improve your focus, memory, and concentration.
When you are attentive, it means that you are participating in focused awareness. That means that you are aware of what is occurring within and around you. When you participate in this “awareness,” you can begin to free yourself from mental preoccupation and difficult emotions.
Through mindfulness, you are re-training your mind to manage it. Mindfulness allows you to develop other mental qualities, including concentration, loving-kindness, ease of effort, and becoming more alert.
Numerous studies have shown correlations between mindfulness and students’ ability to pay attention, in and out of the classroom.
I find mindfulness to be an invaluable aid in dealing with my ADD.
Mindfulness helps temper your emotional reactions.
Self-control is purely emotional. If you’re angry, you’re going to have a completely different response than when you are, for instance, sad, glad, scared, or ashamed.
The responses you elicit can signal different things that need to change or the outcomes. If you’re angry about something, that can tell you that something needs to change. If you are sad because of the loss of someone close to you, your feelings are telling you that you didn’t want to lose that person you love and who has been a part of your life. Emotions provide us with information.
When you let your emotions do more than inform, when you let them override common sense, that is where the trouble lies. We can get into all sorts of trouble if we don’t keep those emotions in check.
Mindfulness can help you to regulate those emotions. Using mindfulness to be aware of and control your reactions to your feelings can help you become aware and accept those nagging emotional signals. This awareness allows you to control the behavior.
Mindfulness can help you change an attitude toward certain emotions when they arise rather than focusing on changing the feeling itself. By removing the labels of the emotion as good or bad, it allows you to have greater self-insight and observe your mind’s contents.
Various research studies have proven this out.
Mindfulness can give you more clarity.
Mindfulness is not necessarily focused on relaxation, though that could be a result. The focus is on increasing awareness of the thoughts, feelings, and actions that hinder our growth and progress. When we’re better able to do that, we can engage with those aspects within ourselves, learn to tweak, and choose how to respond.
If you don’t become more aware, accept, or place judgment, it can be hard to deal with your emotions. Adding acceptance in a much lighter sense can bring about a much softer, therapeutic mindful experience.
Acceptance isn’t resignation. Acceptance is not about allowing yourself to be powerless to your circumstance. It is not suggesting that you have no free will or adopting some nihilistic, laissez-faire, withdrawn attitude about things. Instead, acceptance is acknowledging things for what they are, as they are, and only for that. Not our perception of them or our emotional reaction to them.
It doesn’t mean our external circumstances don’t change, or we won’t have difficult, sometimes painful situations. Instead, it means that you can be at ease with anything and everything. It’s going beyond thinking or any concept of good or bad. It is the result of having the ability to be fully present and fully aware, here and now, just as you are.
Without awareness, your acceptance of or resignation to the difficulty could turn into defensive avoidance.
Life is available only in the present moment. – Thich Nhat Hanh
How do I get started?
Since mindfulness is something you can start at any time, it is just a matter of finding the time. Then making sure that you consciously think about incorporating it into your daily routine.
You have to remember that you are walking around with many thoughts swirling around in your head. You can feel as if you are unfocused, in a fog, overwhelmed. Your mind never has a chance to rest genuinely.
Mindfulness can help to declutter and clear your mind, calm your brain, and settle you down.
To get you started practicing mindfulness, use these simple exercises to get a jumpstart and overall feel for what mindfulness is and how it can help you:
- Choose something to focus your attention on.
- How will you focus: using your visual, auditory, or tactile senses,
- Focus “on purpose.”
- How are you going to stay focused on the present moment?
- How does it feel not to be “judgmental?”
- Write what your definition of mindfulness means to you.
Final thoughts
In my opinion, mindfulness is suitable for anyone who would like to feel more in control of their thoughts and emotions. Anyone who doesn’t want to be controlled by their thoughts and feelings will find mindfulness a welcomed relief. Mindfulness helps us to be alive in the present moment, here and now.
Our first step is to be the observer. We note and recognize what’s going on around us and within us. Just objectively observing as if we were a journalist reporting to our readers. The next step is to be curious and seek to understand. We do this by deepening that observation with the curiosity and objectivity of the beginner’s mind.
Purposeful, objective and non-judgmental awareness can lead to a focused effort to make changes—less stress, clearer thoughts, more positivity – Yes, please.
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This workbook will provide you with an introduction to mindfulness, including its uses and benefits in your everyday life. It will help improve your mindfulness skills to improve your mental and physical health and keep you grounded in the present.
