How Mindfulness Helps Stress – 4 Ways to Do It
How mindfulness helps stress and 4 ways to practice it. I discuss how mindfulness helps the brain and how to practice mindfulness meditation in everyday life. What is mindfulness meditation?
Mindfulness is simply paying attention to your environment, activities, and thoughts in a neutral and non-judgmental way. So youāre limiting your thoughts to your present situation. if other thoughts intrude on the process, you bring your attention back to the present.
Practicing mindfulness helps declutter your mind. When your mind gets cluttered, you feel stressed. This can come in the form of feeling tense, tired, overwhelmed, and irritable.
Not only does an overloaded mind affect you negatively, but it can also affect your relationships with the people most important to you. If your mind is overloaded, you can become emotionally unavailable or not fully engaged with people around you.
How do you remedy this problem when you have a busy life that you canāt change? You live each moment mindfully.
Here are four steps to start practicing mindfulness
1. Be aware. This means to be aware of everything in your environment, as well as everything youāre doing and thinking. Keep your focus on the present moment.
2. Donāt multi-task. Do one task at a time. Youāll actually be more efficient if you complete one thing at a time anyway.
3. Be intentional with mundane tasks. Be focused on the task rather than getting the task over with. So If youāre washing dishes, focus on washing each dish, and keep repeating until all the dishes are washed. If you wash the dishes while thinking about how much you hate washing the dishes, You still get the dishes washed, but if you do it mindfully, you finish with less negativity.
4. Listen when others are talking. Donāt think about your to do list or what youāre going to say next . Listen to every word the person says as if you need to repeat it back to them.
I challenge you to Spend 10 minutes each day in mindful activity. You may want to make it toward the end of the day when your mind is most full. See if it helps you unwind and relax.
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Can watching a nice movie, listening to favorite music or exercising be considered a mindfulness practice ?
The best explanation of mindfulness so far..
Thanks
Watching this while eating
Thanks šā¤š
Thank you! You summed up everything my therapist is trying to teach me. ā¤
I listen to eckhart tolly to meditate mindfully. I was sitting on my porch talking to my friend. And realized we weren’t connecting in any way. So I just stopped talking. And very smiled. I often walk in the store without buying anything at all. I would like to have more mindful conversations. Small daily tasks help me
Why does the side of my head hurt when I focus?
Thanks for the video. Great advice. I’m going to try it!!
Limiting thoughts to present situation
Bringing attention back to the present
Avoid thinking about all other concerns focus on one matter
Affects of thinking on multiple things – stress / tense
Be intentional / give purpose to every action – take in the environment (focus on one matter at a time, hand all thoughts to Allah, be purposeful)
1. Be aware of environment (avoid past and future)
2. One task a time
3. Change your reaction to the action that you dislike (I get toāmindset
As a senior bipolar with years of up and down experiences and way too much stress, Mindfulness found me about 14 year ago. Honestly, I think that every bipolar needs to incorporate this modality into their being. Once established it can break or lessen cycling…Thanks.
Wondering about listening to books on tape while I’m walking. It’s probably not a good thing, right?
Thank you for sharing this mindfulness information with us. I am subscribing today. I would like to watch this video every week until I get very good of remembering to be mindful.
Can masturbating count as mindfulness exercise too?
Dr Tracey, l really appreciate your lectures on mental health issues. Can do one about the classifications of drugs ie Antipsychotics Vs Antidepressants. Much appreciated š
WATCH NEXT – *MEDITATION VS RELAXATION FOR ANXIETY* https://youtu.be/lx8-wrUI1hA
Be the Observer!
Nice basic video on mindfulness. Good examples.
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Thank you so much for this video. I had to watch this for my communication class. Not only did it help me for class but personal too. Sometimes my mind goes 100 mph. This Omg ā¤ thank you!
Thank you so much Dr. Marks for sharing thisā¦
This was exactly what I needed to hear and learn. It all makes perfect sense and I will put these practices to work right away. I felt even calmer after listening. Thank You š
In other words: be an impressionist, spend your time as being part of an impressionist painting. Let me Tell you something funny: Agatha Christie plotted her novels while washing the dishes
Super!
Brilliant stuff! If you’re into this, thereās a like-minded book you should definitely read. "A Life Unplugged: Reclaiming Reality in a Digital Age" by Theodore Blaze
Guys i need help. My Mind is swinging back and forth. I started crying in class because i cannot focus. Am going to school to be a nurse but my mind is causing me so much trouble. How do i study for a test if i cannot focus. O lord heal me. And give me mindfulness.
I’m going through a terrible time, feeling stupid, incapable and that I failed in the profession I love most. The days are terrible and dark. Today I heard about Mindfulness. I went to YouTube and listened in Portugues, I thought it was cool, so I did a challenge, listen and read in English on this channel. I’m doubly happy; I understood everything (I’m Brazilian) and I did what the Doctor told me to do. I’m feeling a little better. Thank you from the bottom of my hear
Helpful and achievable. Thank you
I think i need to practice mindfulness more often. Thank you so much Dr Tracey.
why it seems like when we were just kids, we do mindfulness but mindlessly?
What to do of thoughts which pop up durinf mindfulness.. if u ignore it means u r giving importance to them
I like your videos. They always teach me something. Can you recommend any book that teaches mindfulness?
I am starting to be more mindful when listening to people and it is really helping my relationships. Thank you
Thanks so much Dr Marks. I have placed a bird feeder outside my window. When I work from home-or whenever I am unduly anxious- I try to remember to take a moment to watch the birds at the feeder. It calms me down, shuts off negative thoughts, and makes me laugh. When I return to my busy stressful tasks, my heart is much lighter and I can find gratitude once again.
On Mindfulness, motivation, and pleasure: a different procedure and perspective from affective neuroscience
Procedure: Consistent and periodic alternation between a resting protocol (e.g. mindfulness) and the exclusive pursuit of meaningful behavior will increase motivation and positive affect (arousal and pleasure), and by making meaningful ideation more emotionally salient, will increase productive motivation and crowd out thoughts leading to anxiety and depression.
Explanation: Resting elicits opioid activity, or feels pleasurable, and meaningful behavior, as defined as behavior that has branching novel and positive outcomes (writing that great novel or just making the bed) elicits dopamine activity which causes attentive arousal. The awareness of subsequent meaningful behavior while engaging in relaxation protocols such as mindfulness elicits a āprimingā response, namely dopamine release that enhances ongoing opioid activity, and vice versa, making meaningful behavior seem self-reinforcing or āautotelicā, with cognition less likely to transition to perseverative thought (worry, regret, distraction) that elicits tension or anxiety. In other words, arousal and pleasure (i.e., dopamine and opioid) systems when simultaneously activated by disparate stimuli are synergistic, and co-activate each other to be more than the affective sum of their parts.
Although meditative practice reduces discursive thought or mind wandering that can lead to negative ideation or perseverative thought; it does not inhibit concurrent non-conscious awareness or anticipation of behavior or events subsequent to meditation that can in turn shape or āprimeā affective responses during a meditative session. A priming response, like the salivary response that precedes food or the sexual arousal that precedes intimacy, is a preparatory response that often occurs non-consciously, and changes the affective value or āfeelingā in the moment. Similarly, relaxing due to ābeing in the momentā is pleasurable, but if we were told to expect ābadā news or āgoodā news in the near future, just the awareness of future events is enough to depress or elevate our feelings, but not altering in the slightest our āmindfulā or relaxed state. It follows that if mindfulness is paired with the awareness of subsequent positive or meaningful behavior, then rest in mindfulness will have a greater affective tone or āfeel betterā than if such a prospect or expectancy was absent. This is perhaps why āsavoringā, āloving kindnessā meditation, and āflowā experiences represent highly pleasurable and arousing experiences, as they make future positive ideation contingent to obvious or subtle pleasures (due to relaxation, eating, drinking) and contrast with a lower level of pleasure during typical states of rest that generally precede a return to meaningless discursive thinking.
A final note on mindfulness: Mindfulness is not a one-off procedure to fight stress or feel good, but should be viewed as a default mode of thinking that can be engaged most of the day to manage affect, motivation, and overall wellbeing. However, although the mindfulness procedure is invaluable, a distinctive mindfulness process does not exist, but rather reflects the cognitive manipulation of affective processes in resting or relaxed states, and is not an exceptional process but a normal way of acting and thinking that makes our lives exceptional.
From āthe book of rest, the odd psychology of doing nothingā from the open source document web site scribd
Love this! Thank you šš¼
Hello, Tracey, i write you from Roumaniaš»i love your videos and i admire, like and respect you for all the things that you doš your proper way to make things simpler (i care a lot about the clarity, i’m a teacher) and the open of your mind make me to believe that i must go further more every day with my self improve work. Thank you again and a lot! š
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Thanks i like you lovely. You have helped me with it thanks š¬š§ššfrom Lancashire England UK pendle
Can one still be mindful while listening to music? Music helps with calming for me
Mindfulness has always been a hard thing to practice. Due to the lack of understanding with emotional regulation, often times I miss the ques of when practicing mindfulness comes handy. I hate doing the dishes, so thank you of giving another insight and thought process for getting them done! I used to hate doing the litter boxes too. Make me angry every time because it’s sometimes 3-4 times a day with all the fosters. But they need it so we don’t have to expend another $2000 towards urinary obstruction. So… because I couldn’t get my mind off the anger of doing the box, I choose to see it as a health and sanitation thing for the animals and humans. Then I turned scooping the box into a game. Always imagined that I was in some sort of weird race with other participants and you could gain extra points by not only speed, but things like cleanliness and actually keeping the good wood pellets in the box, and not in the garbage bag. After changing the mindset into a game, I was then able to use mindfulness. Before I knew it, every single box in the house was done, and it felt like it didn’t take a second thought for that task. Also lowered my time by a whopping 20 mins by not procrastinating or fuming between boxes.
Thanks doc. You are as pro as you look. Also got the right energy to be listened too. Loved it. I wish you a lot of luck.
thank you so much for all the tips, very interesting, straight to the point and very enlightening!
I had to come back to present while watching this video
I’m in love with this content. I read a book with similar content, and I’m in love with it. "Mindful Mastery: Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World" by Kyle Ash
Maam I am from kashmir…..working as a psychosocial counselor I accidentally watch your veido but believe me I like this veido very much…..I need your assistance every where..thank you
Wow, you make me think on my thinking… Just amazing.
Mindfulness isn’t just a trend; it’s a necessity in our fast-paced world.
Very good video.
Very well. Thank you š