Mindfulness
Developing mindfulness helps to develop awareness of the subconscious; this helps to change thought patterns and where mindset comes into play.
Throughout your life you will have learnt things you didn’t need to know, you will have picked up on behaviours or traits that possibly make things a little harder for you. This information hasn’t been written to scare you, more so to present you with the opportunity to work on your mindset.
What we know is that our brain repeats 95% of the same thoughts as the day before, which means if we want to actively change how we think and feel it does require a pretty big commitment on your behalf.
All the tools we have shared above are your mindset, they are the tools and activities that become a daily habit or ritual for you.
Our inner critic
Our inner critic is one that likely started from childhood, it is our inner voice that sometimes creates a negative internal commentary on who we are and how we behave.
We can quieten our inner critic by practising love and kindness meditation or self-compassion meditation. By doing this we are directing love and kindness towards ourselves which slowly begins to rewire our brains.
As we begin to watch the thoughts, and accept them, this begins to bring awareness to our thoughts in our everyday life, which encourages us to turn our thoughts away from that inner critic once it has been noticed.
Another tool that we can use to help quieten our inner critic is journaling, having a daily practice of gratitude journaling can again bring us into the moment and help to elevate our negative thoughts.
Mindfulness practices
When we practice self-compassion, we extend caring, gentle, and supportive thoughts and words towards our own body and mind.
We treat ourselves with forgiveness and acceptance. We recognize our moments of pain and imperfection are shared by all of humanity.
Journal every morning or evening about 3 things you are grateful for.
This approach entails identifying the inner critic, labelling it, observing what it does without judgement, and then letting it go. When you recognise the inner critic voice using the words “ thank you inner critic”.
Your letter may be something like:
“Dear inner critic or saboteur,
I am grateful that you have gotten me this far, I hear you and see but I want to let you know that I don’t need you to continue to…”
- Looking in the mirror and repeating to yourself, I love you, I see you, I hear you.
- Embodied practices
- Talk to someone who will listen about how you’re feeling
- Mindful language. Often our inner critic loves to play games with us. Being mindful of the language we use with ourselves is a great way to practise self compassion.
Mindful language swaps:
- Swap ‘I am an idiot for doing that’ to ‘I noticed I am doing that thing again’
- Swap ‘I always fail at xyz…’ to ‘I am learning to things differently and it may take me some time to execute it’
- Swap ‘I’ll never be good enough to xyz..’ to ‘I am always growing and learning, with practice I will be able to’
- Swap ‘No wonder my partner gets annoyed with me’ to ‘I am feeling overwhelmed or frustrated and am assuming my partner is annoyed at me’
There are a few things you can do to support the connection to your why and purpose to be cognitive and embodied. Some effective practices you can try include:
- Take five minutes out of your day and find a place where you feel a sense of ease or safety
- With your eyes open or closed, based on your preference, start to take a moment to connect to your natural rhythm of breath, noticing your belly expanding on your inhale and falling on your exhale
- After a few rounds of breath starting to bring up your passion into your mind and as you’re doing that starting to notice any sensations within your own body. Note: you might or might not notice sensations.
- If you are noticing sensations, perhaps pause your awareness for a moment on the place within your body where you can locate sensations. Perhaps pause to notice its quality for example its texture, size, and temperature
- If you aren’t noticing sensations, perhaps redirecting your awareness onto your breath while continuing to bring your passion into your mind
- You can finish this practice by reconnecting to your breath for a few rounds to then open your eyes (if you had them closed) and continue with your day.
Listen to Self Compassion Meditation
This mediation is on 528hz frequency, representing love.
Join our in-house counsellor, Alma Brock, as she takes you through our 5 sense practice to boost your mindfulness.
mindset tools
- Review your inner circle
- Set clear goals
- Give back to the community
- Connect with like-minded individuals
- Practice self compassion
- Manage your time
self-doubt
Practising mindfulness can enhance prefrontal activation, which is correlated with increased well-being and reduced anxiety. When we are experiencing self-doubt these tools are a really beautiful way to reduce stress and regulate our emotions or unwanted information.
Research shows that after practising mindfulness, the grey matter in your brain’s amygdala – a region known for its role in stress – can become smaller. … an area of the brain known as the hippocampus helps your memory and learning.
This area can also become thicker after practising mindfulness. While we are on this journey we are taking in and learning an abundant amount of information, using mindfulness we can aid ourselves with a great tool.
LISTEN TO INNER CRITIC MEDITATION
This meditation is on 693hz frequency, representing peace.
mindset brain hacks
Your mindset is going to become your best friend, your little tool that will help you to achieve goals, look after your mental and emotional health.
Reward chemicals which can be released by accident. It helps to lay down memories. Set a small task to release the chemical.
Doing something of benefit for the community makes you feel valued. Think back on things that make you feel happy.
Find things that are of value to others. Giving back created a serotonin release.
Oxytocin helps people to feel bonded. It’s released when you are close to someone, or around like-minded people.
The body’s natural morphine is endorphins. When you are in pain you can get an endorphin release. A natural way to release endorphins is laughing.
GOAL SETTING
Whether your goals are combined into one big picture or you have small little goals the key here is to look at the feeling you want to create from these goals.
This feeling should stem from your values and purpose, when your goals align with what you believe in and what makes you happy it becomes easier to achieve them.
For example, if you don’t like weight training but have a goal to weight train x amount of times per week this goal is going to feel quite icky and unachievable, instead of having a feeling of elation for completing a goal you may become quite hard on yourself for not reaching it.
Creating goals that are relative to your reality and values are going to help you achieve them, when setting goals think about the bigger picture.
- How do you want to feel while you reach these goals?
- Do your goals align with what you value?
- Do your goals make you stressed?
- Are you able to work towards your goals daily?
- Is the time frame around your goals achievable?
At the end of the day your goals are meant to add to your life, naturally you will feel pressure sometimes but 90% of the time your goals should be helping you to add value to your life.
