A Quick Technique for Mindful living
By: Shreyas Nampalli
Tags: Life, Life Le, Lifehacks, Mindfulness, Self Improvement

Photo by Harley-Davidson on Unsplash

How can you keep your mind above it’s own institutionalization? Keep it from the daily habits of repetition which lead down a downward spiral? Subconsciously, your body works in the same rhythms producing the same outcomes. Breaking free of this monotonous tune requires an evaluation of your tasks throughout the day and going cold turkey on those that do not serve any valuable purpose.

This can be achieved by stopping and recognizing everything you do at first. Be mindful of what you are actually doing and how it is affecting your time. Will it bring you to any of your desired goals? Does it make you feel good? Or, is it a necessity? Writing this helps me organize my thoughts and produce something that could possibly help someone else in the future. This is valuable to me.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Like any vice, it may be extremely hard to give certain things up. Even the small act of checking your social media accounts can add up to create undesirable habits.

I realized that I am not in control of my mind if I do not attempt to be mindful of what I do. Even after evaluation of my daily tasks, interactions and figuring out which I no longer need, my subconscious mind still tries to perform those same undesirable tasks. However, now that I am in this mode of being mindful, I am able to recognize what I am about to do, take a breath and say “no”, “this is not what I should do if I want to improve my quality of life” . And even after that the temptation is there because of how deeply ingrained these habits have become. This is where forcing consciousness and thinking of your evaluation is required. Breathe, think, and move on. Substitute the undesirable task with a valuable one. Instead of scrolling through memes, fill your brain with even a small snippet of knowledge from a learning app or news aggregator. It will make you feel, and actually be more relevant socially as opposed to knowing what a distant friend ate a few hours ago. I am not attacking social media, but just using it as an example in this case, so take it with a grain of salt. If you have the discipline and thought process to see your social media feeds as a source of inspiration, then by all means scroll away. Even better, if you are using it to produce material that genuinely makes you happy or develops your skills (income producing or not) then it can be one of the best tools of expression. The same concept of “Breathe, think and move on” goes for all habits you wish to break and you can use “move forward” for those you choose to build.

The technique above is a simple one that after much self reflection I found works best for me. You may find that a different one works wonders for you but the overarching and sometimes saturated statement is “be mindful” of what you are doing. Not only does this work for physical things you do throughout the day but can also work in the way you react to things. When your brain builds its neural pathways, it associates memories,words, and other thoughts to possible outcomes so quickly that it produces an assumption of what is to come. I learned that by actually listening and evaluating each situation, in other words “being mindful” , that my reactions may not be as harsh or that I do not get as easily irritated.

By breathing and truly opening your mind to more possibilities your reactive mind becomes a receptive one. By using the same or similar technique as mentioned above repeatedly, it is possible to carve out new neural pathways and literally “open your mind”, in turn breaking off your mental limiters. If you think about your GPS in your car, you may see the route you take may be flooded with traffic, but it is the only route you know. You miss out on the hundreds of other routes that can get you to your destination while uncovering a scenic view along the way.