Ready for more mindfulness tips? This week we are talking about mindfulness when you don’t have time to meditate.
We’ve talked before about mindfulness and the tremendous benefits of it– things like reduced stress and anxiety, improvement on memory and focus, and more satisfied sleep. But we’ve also talked about how difficult it can be to begin crafting your own mindfulness or meditation practice.
So why even take the time + trouble if you don’t have space in your busy life for a lengthy daily meditation?
Simply put, mindfulness, even small amounts, can help with emotional, physical, and cognitive wellness.
The benefits range from reduced anxiety, better sleep, improved brain function, and decreased symptoms of depression.
Ask yourself:
- How connected do I feel to my surroundings, my intentions, myself?
- Am I going through the motions or do I take time each day to ground + connect myself?
- How do I feel about developing a mindfulness practice?
Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment, so even if your present moment isn’t a clear schedule dedicated specifically to mindful meditation, that doesn’t mean mindfulness is incompatible with your life.
When we begin to prioritize mindfulness (especially into an already busy schedule) we give ourselves the tools to make more time for ourselves. Because with mindfulness and meditation comes productivity. When your head is clear and connected to your surroundings, you get distracted much less and are able to achieve more + better than before!
Here are a few ways you can get started with mindfulness when you don’t have time to meditate:
1). Remember a few minutes is better than none:
Maybe you don’t have an hour to dedicate to meditation. That’s okay! It’s unlikely than any of us have an hour everyday we can put aside before we’ve dipped our toes into the practice. Starting small is always the way to go! Find a period of transition in your day: maybe when you’re coming back from your lunch break, maybe when you’ve just gotten home from work. Use one to five minutes at these points to reconnect, ground yourself, and move distinctly from one part of your day to the next.
2). Set Your Alarm Early:
If you know you just won’t remember to make time for it at different points in the day, set your alarm ten minutes earlier than you wake up! Get up, drink some water, go to the bathroom, and then commit five minutes to mindfulness. Even with the missing sleep, this practice will help you prepare for the day. And, as your mindfulness practice progresses, your sleep will improve, so waking up a few minutes earlier won’t seem so terrible!
3). Lean Into Your Need to Schedule:
When you think about mindfulness or meditation, are you looking at a jam-packed calendar thinking “yeah right?” We get it! Here the problem may actually be the solution: if you need to have every task of your day on your calendar, just make a few minutes of mindfulness another thing to check off your to do list. Where is there a spare five minutes in your calendar? Fill it with scheduled mindfulness. That way your own need to schedule + plan is holding you accountable for getting started with this practice.
4). Make the most of Mindless Activities:
When you’re making your bed, when you’re brushing your teeth, when you’re doing the dishes, where is your mind? Is it wandering? Find times in the day when your brain doesn’t have to be 100% connected to the task you’re doing (so, not at work) and use it as an excuse to try a few minutes of mindfulness! What do you see, what do you feel? What do you hear smell & taste? How are you feeling? What’s going on around you? Focus on how you are interacting with your environment.
5). Try the RAIN technique: RAIN stands for:
- RECOGNIZE– recognize what’s going on around you
- ALLOW– allow yourself to simply exist within the experience, and allow the experience to simply exist as it is
- INVESTIGATE– with kindness. In other words: be curious!
- NATURAL AWARENESS– what are you becoming aware of through these steps? This is your natural awareness. Rather than prompted by you trying to find an answer or experience you like, you are allowing your awareness to come by naturally.
If you don’t know where to start with mindfulness, use the RAIN technique in the moments throughout your day when you feel your mind wandering!
