16 Seconds To Change Your Day

As we approach the later part of the year, stress levels always seem to crank up. Whether it is the holidays, Q4 targets, yearly reviews, or even 2025 planning, our stress levels rise, and our focus needs to be heightened. While somewhat counter-intuitive, we can better prepare ourselves to deal with these stress events by taking time away from them - at least mentally, through meditation and mindfulness. 

We have all heard about meditation, and we all practice it in some fashion, whether we realize it or not. An open-eyed meditation is what happens when you stare out to the sea from the beach, stare into a valley from a mountain, or lose conscious awareness of where you are going when you are on a long drive or traffic-filled commute. When you lose focus on the world around you, even for a moment, you are performing a sort of meditation. Deeper forms of meditation happen when we purposely sit to meditate. Perhaps there is soft music, deep breathing, or incense—whatever we use as part of our routine to go deep into ourselves. Perhaps the most common way people describe meditation is the purposeful (or sometimes accidental) quieting of the mind. With meditation, the intervention we seek is to quiet our thoughts, letting them flow through us instead of placing awareness or meaning on them. Practiced regularly, meditation can be a profound practice for relaxation, stress relief, peacefulness, good health, insights, and improved sleep. If you don’t already, I highly recommend that you consider incorporating a form of meditation into your daily routine. 

Mindfulness is another activity of the mind that we hear about a lot. With mindfulness, instead of quieting the mind as in meditation, we are actively striving to pay attention to the mind. In mindfulness we are careful not to judge our thoughts, or to act on them, but just to be aware of them. Becoming aware of our thoughts allows us to see how our perspective can evolve. We can be aware of how we make decisions. Where meditation helps quiet our thoughts, mindfulness helps us become aware of them. 

While meditation may require you to disconnect for a time, mindfulness does not. Mindfulness  simply means being aware of what is going on around and within you. It’s like sitting on a chair and watching yourself from across the room. It sounds surprisingly simple, but in practice, our modern minds have evolved to focus on quick decisions and being hyper-focused on tasks, sometimes at the expense of this awareness. We have developed routine ways to approach our personal and work situations, under the constant barrage of stress that comes with modern life. During a typical day, the client is yelling for a report, the kids are late for practice, I forgot to get milk, and the car needs new brakes.  Modern life requires us to make immediate decisions while multi-tasking throughout the day.

Mindfulness strives to cultivate a deeper sense of awareness in the mind. Not to slow down our reactions or diminish our ability to handle stress and modern responsibilities, but to add to the way we approach such things by allowing us access to deeper levels of consciousness. Even though our modern minds are trained to react quickly, there is much more that can be accomplished if we are also operating with a more aware, mindful approach.

Mindfulness needs to be cultivated. Much like the body needs to be trained to run a marathon, our mind needs to be trained for mindfulness. Try some of the tips below to help build this capacity within yourself. Enjoy the Journey!

BECOMING MINDFUL DURING THE WORKDAY

• Breathing -  Breathing is an incredibly useful way to use neurotransformation to ease our stress. Our brain controls our breathing. We do not have to think about it. We just breathe. But, easily enough, we can tell our brain to take a break, and we can actively control our breathing.  Breathe in, to a count of four: 1, 2, 3, 4.  And hold that breath for another count of four: 1, 2, 3, 4. Now, exhale that breath, again to a count of four: 1, 2, 3, 4. Finally, hold the exhale for a count of four:. 1, 2, 3, 4.  Now that you have read that, close your eyes, and do it.  Ready, begin. That took 16 seconds -  about ¼ of one minute. Do this exercise whenever you feel stressed, or whenever you need to make an important decision. Slow down for just 16 seconds, and take control of your brain.

• Interoception - While sitting at your desk or other workspace, pay attention to bodily sensations, consciously attempting to relax and rid yourself of excess tension. Start at your big toe on your left foot, and focus your attention on your body.  From the left side toe, all the way up to your brain, and then down the right side to the other big toe. Focus on each body part. How does it feel? Can you feel it? What is it like to feel your knee? This is called interoception, and practicing this technique can have a profound impact on your well-being.  

• Reflection - Another type of mindfulness that I want to mention is an awareness of the meaning of past activities and events, what we call reflection. Focus your thoughts on what went right that day. If you have time, get in the habit of writing down your successes each day. Take 5 minutes before bed and jot down some of these small wins. If you don’t have a journal, type them in a text to yourself on your phone. Research has shown that expressive writing has clear benefits to memory and cognitive brain processing. Creating a journal provides you with a handy tool for reflection. Reflection helps turn our short-term memories into long-term memories. Dopamine is released when we have pleasurable memories, and we want to reflect and focus on our successes. So often we are buried under the stress and anxiety of the day that we miss the things that have gone well. And if you can’t find anything to write about on a given day, read about your prior success in your journal. Oscar Wilde once said: “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train!”

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