3 Lessons I’ve Learned Living Mindfully

For the last few years, I thought I was living a mindful life but technically I was really just thinking mindfully at times. This was a step in the right direction however I wasn’t seeing much self-growth. It wasn’t until last year that I truly started to live mindfully. I began applying mindfulness to my daily life and so much changed from day one. I have learned quite a bit in that last year that I want to share with you today. Keep reading if you want to know three lessons (out of many) that I learned living a mindful life.

The first lesson I learned living mindfully is you reduce all of the noise in the world. I don’t mean actual noise by the way – I mean all of the distractions that life may throw at us. You know things like gossip or the latest trend…little things that don’t usually have much of an impact on anyone or anything. Noise can also be moments from the past that keep creeping up and making you cringe late at night. It can also be moments that haven’t even happened but yet you still think about them. When you begin to live a more mindful life, the whole point is to live in the moment and not let the past or future, as well as those little things in life, stress you out so much. Fear, doubts, uncertainty, and even jealousy – are all considered noise too. None of these noises are bad but they tend to wane away as you live more mindfully.

Another lesson mindfulness has taught me is to be less reactive in almost any situation. In other words, emotional intelligence. How you react in the moment is so important and can either escalate or deescalate a situation. There have been many moments in the past where I have reacted instantly in anger and the situation escalated to a point of no return. Even the most mindful person will still react if provoked, but the idea isn’t that you react, its how. Emotional intelligence is something that has to be worked on every day and no one is perfect at it. Since March, I’ve been getting over somewhat of a breakup and the way I reacted was so different than how I would have in the past. Before, I would have responded with anger and hate; maybe even revenge. This time around, I responded with love – love towards the person because I believe that’s what he needs at the end of the day but more importantly love towards myself. Breakups are difficult and painful and the best thing to turn to, in my opinion, is self-love. I am still taking better care of myself these days and I won’t be going back to the “norm” any time soon.

The last and probably most important lesson I’ve learned is getting to know myself better. I know that seems weird to say but some of us don’t know ourselves very well. However, when you take more downtime just being alone you naturally become more introspective. You learn what actually works for you and what doesn’t. Even with your mindfulness journey, you may start out doing what you see on social media platforms but end up doing something completely different. That could be waking up at 7am instead of 5am or eating a paleo diet versus a vegan one. Its about what works best for you! Just remember, your mindfulness journey is going to look and feel different than someone else’s.

I hope this post may have sparked some interest in starting or continuing your mindfulness journey. I’m still new at writing and speaking about this topic, so I apologize if it was little choppy – it might take some time for me to get used to this shift. Anyway, thanks for reading! Leave a comment if you enjoyed this post.

ChelsiKay