How to Achieve Mindfulness in Daily Life

Mindfulness is usually thought of as being a type of meditation—you know, the typical “sit comfortably… close your eyes… pay attention to your breath” and so on. It’s not unusual for people to not like meditation, and besides, you might wonder what’s the point of clearing your head for 10 minutes of the day when it’s racing for the rest of it.

You might be surprised to know that there are ways to practice mindfulness without meditation, and you can incorporate these methods into many different tasks and activities. Here we discuss how you can achieve mindfulness in daily life.

The importance of mindfulness

The word mindfulness gets thrown around a lot these days. Sometimes it can be framed as being some special ability or “higher state”, but really, mindfulness is quite simple. Being mindful means focusing your mind on your experience right now—the things you are currently seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and thinking.

The mind has an automatic tendency to wander. In fact, neurologists have even identified that mind-wandering is the brain’s “default mode”—thinking about things that are unrelated to the present moment is what the brain naturally does when it is resting. It actually takes more effort to experience what is going on right now.

Mind-wandering is not all bad. Research shows that daydreaming can be positive and constructive. However, mental health difficulties often involve fixations on the past or future. For instance, feelings of depression are usually linked with ruminations about the past, and feelings of anxiety typically involve worries about the future.

Mindfulness isn’t about forcing thoughts to stop, but to observe your thoughts as one aspect of your current experience. This can help you to identify ruminative and unhelpful thinking styles and gain mental clarity.

Since it’s not our default, mindfulness does not come easily for many people. Like many skills, it is something that improves with practice. Setting aside time to practice mindfulness can be a useful way to learn the fundamentals. But ultimately, learning to switch into a mindful state while going about normal tasks is likely to be more helpful for managing mental health challenges.

Mental skills are usually most useful when they can be applied to daily life and drawn upon right when we need them most. We can use mindfulness when we notice our thoughts getting out of hand, but also to take in more of the good moments—being more present in all types of experiences can cultivate feelings of fulfillment and appreciation of life.

Ways to practice mindfulness without meditation: Mini-mindfulness

One way to begin incorporating mindfulness throughout your day could be by practicing very brief moments of focus, or mini-mindfulness. These moments could be one-minute intervals that you plan to do at certain times, or could even be as short as 10 seconds whenever you remember, to notice what is happening right now.

To help you switch into a mindful state, you could ask yourself “What is it like to be me right now?” and observe whatever experience there is (there’s no wrong answers!) Some other strategies that you might find useful include:

Letting go… just for a sec…

While working or completing other responsibilities, have you ever noticed your to-do list playing repeatedly on a mental loop? Or maybe you find yourself constantly thinking things like “What am I going to make for dinner?”, “What am I going to say to my boss in our meeting later?”, or “How am I going to get this done in time?”

It can be easy to feel like we must think these things, otherwise we might forget something, or we won’t be prepared. And while it certainly is good to plan, too much of this thinking, without taking a break, can really wear us down.

For a few brief moments throughout the day, see if you can let these thoughts go for a few seconds. It might help to use a visualisation, like placing the thoughts on a shelf or relaxing your brain as if it were a muscle. Feel assured that those thoughts will still be there when you return to them—you won’t forget, trust me.

Moments in waiting…

There are often moments in our days where we find ourselves waiting for something—waiting for an elevator, waiting in line at the coffee shop, sitting in a waiting room for an appointment. Whatever it is, these can be ideal opportunities for mini-mindfulness.

For many of us, our instinct is often to pull out our phone and scroll through social media to kill time. Relief from boredom is one of the wonders of smartphones. But all too often, scrolling on social media fails to engage our minds in meaningful ways and doesn’t help calm the mental chatter.

Next time you’re in a moment of waiting, however brief, see if you can use the opportunity to connect with your breath, or to notice your surroundings, instead of pulling out your phone.

Engaging the senses…

Paying attention to the breath is often the focus of guided mindfulness activities. It can be helpful to focus on the breath because it is a constant and rhythmic pattern, and it helps us to get in touch with our own body.

However, the breath is not our only option, particularly when it comes to mini-mindfulness. Tuning into your senses can also be an effective way to become present. For instance, it only takes a few seconds to become aware of all the things that you can hear. If you close your eyes and focus solely on your hearing, you might be surprised at how many sounds there are.

Take a moment to try it right now—can you name 5 things that you can hear? Ask yourself, does it feel nice to pay soft attention to your experiences rather than your inner monologue? 

This can be done with any of the senses—what things can you see that you usually wouldn’t notice? What can you smell? What does your body feel like? You could even choose one body part, like a toe or hip, and plan to focus on that body part for a few seconds at regular intervals.

Once you’ve practiced mini-mindfulness for a while, you’ll likely find that it starts to come naturally. Play around with the options and see what works for you!

Mindful activities

For longer periods of mindfulness in daily life, it’s possible to become mindful during many tasks or activities. Of course, this doesn’t work so well for tasks that require a lot of thinking, but it can work for many activities, like showering, eating, doing housework, or anything that isn’t too mentally demanding.

When you’re doing these activities, see if you can pay attention to what the experience is like. What does it feel like to have the water run over you in the shower? How would you describe the smell of your food? How does it make you feel to see that dust vanish?

Even for tasks that are more mentally demanding, it can be helpful to give them your full attention. Research shows that attempting to multitask can cause poorer concentration, difficulties processing information, and lower productivity. Mindfulness, on the other hand, has the opposite effects. Practicing mindfulness can help you to focus completely on one task at a time, which can be a game changer for your work productivity.

Mindful walking

Mindful walking has become its own category of mindfulness practice, and the great thing about it is that you can do it any time you have to walk anywhere! Much like other mindful activities, mindful walking involves paying attention to the experience of walking.

For instance, you might like to focus on your body when walking—the sensation of your feet on the ground, the way your legs bend, or the way your arms swing.

You could also focus on your surroundings. Objects that we have a label for, like tree, path, bird, etc. we tend to naturally see them as a whole. Instead, see if you can notice the details of things—the colours (stark contrasts in colour can be particularly striking), the shapes, or how objects change as your position changes. Can you perceive your movement as both the world moving past you and as you moving through the world?

Mindful walking can feel a little weird or disorienting at first. It might help to start by walking very slowly, to get used to it, and then build up your practice to normal walking. To maximise your opportunities for mindful walking, you could try and leave early for things so that you don’t have to rush when walking places, and to park your car further away from entrances.

Mindful connections

Having meaningful connections with others is beneficial for our mental health in many ways. Being mindful in our interactions with others helps us to enjoy those interactions more and strengthens our relationships.

A mindful interaction involves really listening to what the other person is saying. Non-verbal behaviours like eye contact, leaning towards the other person, and nodding can enhance our listening.

Sometimes when we are having a conversation, we find ourselves focusing more on what we want to say rather than what the other person is saying, or our minds wander to other topics. To help with being more present, see if you can paraphrase what the other person has said as often as you can, and ask them questions to find out more. Even if you are having a disagreement, being mindful and showing that you are listening can lead to better outcomes and deeper connections.

Practice

Practicing being present as often as you can and in a variety of situations can help you to achieve mindfulness more and more in your daily life. The more that people practice these techniques, the more they report having higher mental focus, reduced anxiety and stress, and a higher sense of fulfillment in life.

If you are starting out, maybe you could pick one thing from our suggestions above to try out over the next week, just to see how it feels.

For extra guidance or to build on your skills, Mind Ease has several short mindfulness activities that you can try any time. Click here if you would like to find out more about the app.