Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Written By Chor Hsien Wei, Lynus

Mindfulness has been gaining popularity. In this digital age where communication is rapid and schedules are packed, one often feels that life is just moving too fast. It is not uncommon that individuals feel frenzied, stressed and anxious, all while having to attend to the demands of the present moment. Due to this cognitive and emotional overload, one often experiences a diminished capacity to rest, physically and psychologically and accomplish goals. What is often overlooked is the glossing over of the negative psychological repercussions such hectic lifestyle brings. An individual often fails to consider how automatic their thought processes, emotional states and behaviours become. When one’s schema of the self and world go unchallenged and unedited, it will lead to emotional states going unchecked. This can gravitate towards negativity and hostility.

To break this negative feedback loop, an intervention is clearly required. But what can it be, and better still, what should it be? For some, coping mechanisms can include alcohol, excessive gaming, ‘retail therapy’, and even a wilful avoidance. However, these methods, despite being tempting and seemingly rewarding, often snowball into appalling consequences, and are rarely feasible in the long run. Instead, practising mindfulness will be a good replacement for all these avoidance coping strategies. Mindfulness entails a state of mind that is calm, grateful and compassionate towards oneself and others. 

Although many rightfully believe that mindfulness is beneficial when one is in a negative mental state, the cascading benefits of mindfulness in everyday life aid in circumstances where one is very happy, or rather neutral as well. Mindfulness contributes to a better understanding of oneself and others by establishing a calm, or at least calmer, mental state that facilitates a more rational and accurate assessment of oneself.  

The beautiful thing about the steps to mindfulness is that they cost little in time and money and vary in approaches. This makes mindfulness activities very accessible and realisable in the long term. 

Since everyday life is hectic and jam-packed with stimulation, mindfulness activities that can be conveniently incorporated into the standard day serve as timely pit stops for some unwinding. This enables such activities to be routinely exercised, comfortably situated in one’s lengthy day, and be economical timewise.  

Although many forms of mindfulness activities exist, three common and easy routines; mindful waking, mindful eating, and mindful timeouts will be shared here. These three variations are selected due to how universally they can be practised, and their effectiveness on one’s cognition.

Everyone’s day, or night, begins with waking up. However, it is common for one to still be in a daze due to the sudden change in conscious state. This state of confusion goes on to have a domino effect on the rest of our days, leaving us feeling grumpy, directionless and unmotivated. To prevent such a state of events from developing, mindfulness activities can be incorporated. Bearing in mind that one’s physiological state is interrelated with one’s psychological state, and that it is usually best to feel comfortable, get into a comfortable posture and visualise how one can exercise their personal values in the day. It also helps to have a rough idea of what one hopes to accomplish on that day, and how one can improve the day for themself and others. Lastly, one can also remind oneself to take care of themselves, as well as some steps to derive such effects.

Another good avenue to practise mindfulness in everyday life is through mindful eating. Although diets and eating routines might differ, eating serves to replenish one’s energy. However, the time spent eating can also be used to enrich one’s psychological health. While one’s responsibilities might be overwhelming, such that even the time spent for lunches and dinners, if any, are spent on social interactions, ruminating on the past and future, or catching up on entertainment programmes, dedicating more conscious senses and thoughts on how and what one eats is mindfulness. Engage in as many, and as deeply, one’s five senses on the food and drink. Comfortably examine how they smell, how they look, and how they react to your utensils. Experience the textures of your food and drink in your mouth and on your tongue, their temperatures and their taste. Hopefully one has already chosen something agreeable to eat and drink, or else some changes can be made if required. One can also consider the effort, and processes required for such food to be presented, and appreciate the people involved in this process. Experiencing one’s food more in-depth also enables one to be more conscious of what one likes and dislikes and take steps for future improvements.

Lastly, mindfulness time out serve a very powerful role in everyday life. Due to life’s many unforeseen ups and downs, mindfulness routines should not be rigidly limited to select practices but should be flexible in how and when they are conducted. If the responsibilities and personal mental clutter prove to be overbearing, one should step back and reflect on why and how they are in such a state. Mindfulness, in the form of a flexibly incorporated time out from the multitude of socialisation and mental tasks, provides an opportunity for one to distance oneself from the stressful circumstance, and take a more rational approach to evaluate past happenings, and future. Likewise, if one were to feel uncharacteristically satisfied and ecstatic about recent events, it helps to use mindfulness time outs to reflect on why one feels this way, and how best to proceed. Ideally, and generally, mindfulness time outs work best when one is physically and psychologically detached from the pressing circumstance. This could be established by altering one’s physical environment, such as changing environments, rooms, decor, or even engaging one’s senses differently, such as through temperature, smell diffusers and lighting. Nonetheless, if the physical environment cannot be altered advantageously, one can just focus on controlling one mental state. One can give themselves some deserved self-praise, understand that themselves and others can have ‘bad days’ too, and that the infinite causal relationships in one’s environment do in fact ‘unjustly’ consequence even the best intentions and actions one has. 

Mindfulness in everyday life is not only accessible and maintainable, but it pays dividends to one’s mental wellbeing, and consequently one’s functionality. While the positive effects of mindfulness might not seem consequential in the immediate future, building up this routine gives one the self-confidence to conquer life.