Women are “doers”. We pride ourselves in getting things done and juggling competing demands as we move through our days hustling from one thing to the next.
I get it, because for most of my life I spent all of my time focusing on the next thing that needed to get done and didn’t know how to enjoy my life as I was living it.
Busyness and accomplishing lot’s of “stuff” in a day became the priority. All of my productivity landed me in the doctor’s office with a lot of stress related symptoms.
It was a big surprise to me when I learned that the stress in my life was not really being caused by anything going on in my life, it was being caused by a disconnect with my soul and my true self. My busyness was something I did out of habit, because I didn’t know how to be alone with my feelings and myself. My busyness was robbing me of my relationship with the most important person in my life- myself.
All of this changed when I learned and started to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is about being fully aware of each moment in your life. Each thought, feeling, sensation and experience is accepted for what it is. There’s no battle going on in your head and heart. You are open to it ALL.
Here are 5 mindfulness tips that will help you nourish your soul:
1. Take a “best friends approach to your feelings.
One of my coaching clients recently said, “I don’t know what I’m feeling most of the time and I really don’t know how to deal with painful emotions so I find myself binge eating when I’m stressed.”
Most of us have no idea how to feel what we feel and we most definitely don’t want to embrace the uncomfortable feelings of sadness, worry, anxiety, anger and fear.
But here’s the thing. You can’t just selectively decide that you want to feel the good feelings and not the bad feelings. In order to feel joy and happiness you also have to feel sadness and pain. It’s just the way it works.
Mindfulness Tip:
Begin the practice of making friends with ALL of your feelings. The first step is to become aware of what you’re feeling. As Dan Siegel said: “Name it to tame it.”
Notice when you are “judging” your feelings as good or bad, right or wrong. Letting go of the need to judge is very powerful. It creates space for the feelings to be present without creating a story or drama around them.
Be curious about how the feeling actually feels in your body. What you’ll find is that our feelings and emotions are like clouds and they move through if we allow them to be there and don’t try and push them away.
2-Get out of your head and into your heart.
They say that the longest journey that you can make is the journey between your head and your heart. One thing I know personally from my experience is that you will never connect with your soul through your head.
When we go to battle between our head and our heart, our mind is often victorious.
Mindfulness Tip:
Whenever you find yourself worrying and feeling anxious it’s the perfect opportunity to practice getting out of your head and connecting with your heart.
The first step is noticing that you’re feeling anxious and are worrying. Take some long, slow deep breaths and as you’re doing that watch your chest rise and fall over your heart area. Spend a couple of minutes focusing on your breath and your heart and finish off with saying something kind or compassionate to yourself, as if you’re being your own best friend.
3-Become resilient to stress.
The biggest barrier to connecting with our souls is stress. We often think of stress as all of those things external to us but when we realize that stress is an inside job, we can develop a new healthier relationship with it.
When our lives are stressed and we don’t create opportunities to recharge and connect with ourselves in solitude, we go into survival mode. Survival mode and the connection with your soul cannot co-exist and in these conditions survival mode will always take priority.
Mindfulness Tip:
The quickest way to shift our bodies and minds out of the stress response is through our breath. Whenever you’re noticing that you’re feeling stressed, “take five.” Take 5 long, slow, deep, breaths in and out before resuming your day. Realize that you’re just a few breaths away from inner peace.
4-Train your mind to pay attention to the little things.
When you think about how you spend your time, let’s face it a lot of it feels mundane. We do the laundry, grocery shop, clean the house, and drive around in traffic. Most of us have a mindset that says” I’ll be happy when I get to do something exciting on my vacation or get that promotion.” We think that happiness is somewhere else at some other time.
In order to find inner peace and contentment we need to make a choice to experience the wonder and miracle in the little things in life.
Mindfulness Tip:
Make a commitment to yourself that you intent to be more mindful and focus your attention on the little things. When you’re walking pay attention to walking; when you’re driving, drive; when you’re doing the dishes, do the dishes.
Every time that you notice that your mind has drifted away and you bring it back to what you’re doing you’re becoming more mindful. And it is in the small, simple, repetitive, tasks that make up our lives that we connect with our soul.
5-Practice self-love and compassion in every moment.
The root of most of our problems in our lives can be traced back to lack of self-love and compassion. We feel we’re not good enough and that when we are having a hard time we’re often pretty hard on ourselves.
The harsh critic in our mind needs to be acknowledged and then asked to step aside so that we can be kinder and more loving with ourselves.
Mindfulness tip:
Start each day telling yourself that you love yourself and that you are “enough”. Become aware of times when your little voice is being hard on you and practice self-compassion. Self-compassion is practiced by acknowledging what you’re feeling, telling yourself you’re not alone and are human for feeling what you feel and then saying something kind to yourself.
Commit to loving yourself by spending time everyday rejuvenating your soul. Do what feels right for you. It may be a walk in nature, a bubble bath, meditating, writing in a journal, praying, or practicing gratitude. It is in these quiet moments that we connect with our souls.
