Practicing mindfulness benefits more than just your mental health- it improves your mental stamina and concentration; it provides a space for improved memory; it can even improve your relationships and listening abilities! So, practicing mindfulness isn’t just about following a trend, it’s about gaining a new skill, and hopefully a new habit, that will greatly benefit your life.
In case you’re just catching up, this is part of a series of articles about how bullet journaling can benefit your mental health. In this article, we will discuss how a combination of mindfulness and bullet journaling can be added to your daily self-care routine and how you should expect it to improve your life.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is often viewed primarily as meditation. This is somewhat true- but it also isn’t an accurate way to describe it. Meditation is a way to remove oneself from your surroundings and allow your head to spend time completely cleared of thought and concentrate only on breathing, being, etc. Mindfulness can also be practiced in virtually any situation, but it doesn’t necessarily require you to remove your mind from what you are doing. In fact, it’s arguably the opposite. With mindfulness you are concentrating solely on what is in front of you. Are you going for a walk? Think only about the pavement under your feet, the breeze in your hair, the sun on your face. If you start to think about your to-do list when you get home, simply steer your mind away from whatever is not in front of you. Do this for 30 minutes to an hour and you are on a great path to establishing a mindfulness habit.
How do you incorporate mindfulness into bullet journaling?
Plan ahead-
-the best way to make sure you do actually take the time to practice mindfulness is to plan times to do so ahead of time. Again, you can try mindfulness in any situation, but many activities do not require 30 minutes to an hour and therefore you might not be challenging your mind accordingly to establish a true habit. Plan a walk alone, or a relaxing 45 minutes sitting on your porch, or any activity that you could set aside time to do it. It will also help to plan a specific time every day to write in your bullet journal, so you don’t forget.
Ideas for what to write down-
-at the end of the day, be sure to write down exactly when you practiced the mindfulness, how long you did it, and quick thoughts on how you felt while you were doing it. Then, be sure to include your general feelings for the day, overall. Also include your affect (such as, did you feel tired, energetic, irritable, unable to concentrate, etc.) and any other quick details you want to include.
Over time, see how you’ve changed-
-it might even help to graph it out! After a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, see how your moods might have improved, gotten worse, or fluctuated throughout. Being able to analyze objectively how this new habit you’re forming is helping, or in which situations it helps more versus others can really boost your self-esteem and motivate you to continue learning new self-care skills.
In the coming weeks, we will discuss how you can expand your mind, body, and spirit in true Ayurveda fashion with new habits alongside bullet journaling. Once we’ve given you many new skills to add to your self-care and bullet journaling routine, we will be launching an awesome new printable with motivational quotes, and designed just for you!
Do you think this would help a friend? Then, sharing is caring!
