The word “mindful” is thrown around quite a bit, isn’t it?
You might warn your child to be mindful of cars when they’re fetching the basketball that bounced away as they shoot hoops in the driveway.
Or you may have heard people suggest that it’s important to be mindful of negative thoughts.
You may have even heard people talk about mindful eating (more on that next week).
Manifestation coaching, in all its many forms, frequently looks at mindfulness as a useful tool in your journey to manifest the life of your dreams.
You may have even read about it on this blog – we’ve talked about using mindfulness to build a better relationship with yourself.
I’m a firm believer in using mindfulness in all areas of coaching, including:
- Confident mindset coaching
- Dating and relationship coaching
- Wellness and lifestyle coaching
- Wealth and abundance coaching
- And much more
But what actually is mindfulness?
And how can you incorporate it into your manifestation practice?
Let’s take a look.
The Tenets Of Mindfulness
The way we practice mindfulness in the modern world has its roots in Buddhism, but most spiritual practices have some element of mindfulness or another.
But you don’t have to be spiritual or religious to incorporate mindfulness into your life.
What we understand today as mindfulness comes from the work of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine and founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
It began with a simple idea – that mindfulness can bring improvements in one’s physical and mental health, as well as our attitude and the habits we form.
But what is mindfulness?
It’s a pretty simple concept.
Mindfulness is simply the practice of remaining fully present, in the moment.
It’s an awareness of where we are, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we’re doing it.
It’s easy to get swept up into whatever day to day circumstances happen to occur, reacting to what’s happening, but this can pull us away from our goals and our selves.
Just like manifestation, practicing mindfulness is something that comes naturally to us – we just need to know how to access it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn laid out several different tenets of the practice of mindfulness – let’s take a look at them below.
1. Non-judgment
The first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think; what you think next defines who you are. – Unknown
Above all, the practice of mindfulness is about non-judgment.
That means allowing experiences to happen regardless of what you think of them.
This is obviously not possible all the time, especially in situations of physical or emotional pain, but allowing life experiences to happen without judging them can help you to remain present.
Judgment, one way or another, takes you out of the moment, into extrapolating what this or that event may mean, assigning value to it, criticizing oneself or others, and losing the awareness of the present moment.
Many of the immediate reactions we have to things can be to our detriment.
For example, if you were raised by parents who used guilt as a tool for manipulation, your first reaction to events that happen around you might be a response to that conditioning.
However, it’s not in your best interest to react that way, since in most situations people are unlikely to be using guilt to manipulate you.
Learning from past relationships and experiences is important, especially when it comes to recognizing situations that may have hurt you in the past.
But it’s also important to embrace life’s inherent uncertainties – after all, we never truly know all the details of how an event will play out until it’s actually happened.
Set aside your expectations of how events may occur, and allow them to happen, free of judgment.
This can help you stay grounded and mindful.
Expectations are resentments waiting to happen – Brené Brown
2. Nonstriving
This one might come as a surprise, especially from me.
After all, manifesting the life of your dreams is all we talk about here.
We talk about things like the science behind manifesting your dream life, how to heal from emotional wounds, recognizing what your dream life actually looks like, and much more.
Doesn’t that all sound like we’re talking about striving for your dream life?
But here’s the thing – non-striving doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, or you shouldn’t work to improve yourself.
Life is an ongoing process of improving yourself.
Instead, non-striving tells us to understand that self improvement doesn’t mean fleeing from who you currently are.
Who you are right now is enough.
Embrace who you are, love yourself as who you are – because at this very moment, everything is okay.
You are enough.
This ties in with non-judgment – when you remove judgments, it includes judgments of yourself.
3. Trust And The Unfolding
Does this mean to trust everything everybody says?
No, it means to trust in your own intuitions.
As you practice mindfulness more – removing judgment from your experiences – you’ll come to better understand your needs, your beliefs, and how to act in a way that matches with them.
At the same time, understand that your life will unfold in time.
Even with all the inspired action you take toward manifesting the life of your dreams, most changes won’t happen immediately.
Sometimes things can happen really fast, but often, the process of becoming is what life is about.
This is where we find most satisfaction.
This is okay – there’s no need to rush.
Everything happens in divine timing and is perfectly orchestrated.
Allow the journey to play out, and enjoy the trip – it’s not a race.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished – Lao Tzu
4. A Beginner’s Mind
No man ever steps in the same river twice – Heraclitus
Approach each moment with the understanding that it’s a brand new experience.
There may be elements to this experience that feel familiar, and past experiences you can use to draw upon these elements in order to better understand them, but no experience is entirely familiar.
Even something as simple as eating an apple – something most of us have done hundreds of times – will be different each time.
If you’re feeling snackish, go grab an apple, and let’s walk through an exercise in mindfulness together.
What does your apple look like?
Notice its unique shape – no apple before has ever looked exactly like this one.
Notice the colour of its skin.
Notice the way the colours blend together, changing as your eyes cross it, and how the blemishes mark its surface.
Notice how the light reflects off its surface, and on the beads of water that remain on it after washing it off.
Notice the different blemishes on this apple.
Notice the weight of the apple in your hand.
Notice how the apple smells.
Now, hold the apple up to your teeth, and feel it against their surface – is it harder or softer than you expected?
Take a bite, and notice how the piece comes away – did you have to tear at it, or bite cleanly through?
How juicy is your apple?
How crunchy is your apple?
How sweet or sour is your apple?
Where do you feel the flavour most on your tongue?
How does all this change as you continue to chew?
How does the flavour change as you continue eating your apple?
Fully savour the experience of eating your apple, from beginning to end.
You’ve eaten apples before, of course, but never this specific apple.
It might be a perfectly familiar experience – but then again, it might not.
That’s a simple example, but it’s true of all experiences you may have.
Rather than assuming you’ll already know everything there is to know in any given moment, take the time to explore it more carefully, to get to know its nuances.
You’ll find there’s always something new to learn, to witness, to experience.
5. Acceptance
What is acceptance?
Is it resigned complacency?
No.
It doesn’t mean shrugging your shoulders and just taking your life as it is, regardless of what leaves you dissatisfied.
Rather, it means to recognize that things are the way they are, unclouded by judgment, biases, or past experiences.
Accept the experiences of your life, such as they are, as they happen, without judgment.
If you argue with reality, you lose – but only 100% of the time – Byron Katie
6. Letting Go
By freeing yourself of worry and fear, and instead living in the moment, you can begin to truly experience your life as it happens.
Let go of expectations, of worries, of judgments, of resentments you may harbour, of comparing yourself to others.
As you do so, you’ll begin to understand what the life of your dreams looks like and the inspired action you can take in the process of manifesting it.
Book Your FREE Connection Call With Evelina Hovich Today
Transcending one’s current circumstances requires conscious exploration.
We heal, we grow, we self actualize.
Building a mindfulness practice can help us explore our true selves, to find our true path and become one with it, to manifest the life of our dreams.
How should you navigate this path?
Where does it lead?
How can you find the path in the first place?
If you’re struggling, I can help.
Book your FREE connection call with me, Evelina Hovich, today.
If you’re feeling stuck, unfulfilled, and frustrated, it doesn’t have to be that way.
The universe has great things in store for you.
You have the capacity to live the life of your dreams, but if you’re struggling to find your way to that life, I can help.
Book your FREE connection call with me, Evelina Hovich, today