📷: Lesly Juarez
Using Mindfulness to Find More Joy
We live in a world full of technology and screens. Lights and sounds grab our attention all day. The average person spends 7.4 hours a day looking at a screen. We “zone out” looking at images and videos. Before you know it you have spent an hour scrolling through your feed! Thoughts buzz in and out of our brains. We forget things more frequently, and have more trouble falling asleep.
No my friend, you don’t have a diagnosable issue with your short attention span. You have just trained your brain to try and take in everything at once. The only problem is, you can’t. The more you multitask, the more you train your brain to jump from one thought to the next.
Research shows that the human mind was not meant to operate this way, and we are only causing ourselves harm when we can’t slow down and focus.
How do we stop the crazy train? How can we focus again?
Mindfulness
What images enter your mind when you hear the word mindfulness? Hippies? Hipsters? Millennial’s? Buddhists? Yogis?
Does it make you uncomfortable?
There is a good chance you think- nope, not me.
Hear me out. There is a different way to understand mindfulness and it might change your mind.
First, what mindfulness is not. Mindfulness is not meditation. It is not about becoming someone else, becoming enlightened, or more efficient. Nor is it about completely emptying your mind and being immune to distractions.
Instead, mindfulness is about understanding your mind better and learning how to deal with your distractions. Mindfulness is training your brain. Remember how I talked about how multitasking is training you brain to jump from one thought to the next? Mindfulness helps reverse the crazy train and helps you by strengthening the connections in your brain that allow you to focus.
Do I have your attention?
Let’s get started.
Practice mindfulness when you brush your teeth. Most likely your mind wanders while you are brushing. You may make a grocery list in your head, or mentally fill your kids backpacks with the things they will need for the next day. However, try focusing on brushing your teeth. Notice how the bristles feel on your gums, teeth and tongue. When you notice your mind has wandered (and it will!), gently bring it back to brushing. Brushing your teeth may not be very exciting, but actually experiencing your teeth brushing will get you headed in the right direction.
