How Mindfulness Empowers Us To Make Better Choices
Grace Being Some of my followers have been asking me to explain how mindfulness empowers us. To answer your question, me and mindfulness expert Ross Edwards hopped on a quick chat together and shared our personal experiences and knowledge on how powerful mindfulness is.
Here’s a summary of what we discussed and the audio included so you can listen to our conversation together on how mindfulness empowered us in our lives:
How mindfulness empowered us in our life
Ross’s Story:
Ross Edwards is a mindfulness expert who recently founded The Great Updraft, a platform packed with information, e-books, and courses on psychology and mindfulness to help you transform into a better version of yourself.
His personal experience with mindfulness and how it empowered him in his life however goes way back. Ross tells us that he has been on a journey of self-discovery seeking for purpose and meaning in life since his early teens.
Ross got a degree in mathematics and science since he was an excellent student. Back then he was not mindful of his choices. So he followed the norm and pursued a secure career that pays well.
Everything was going well when he was studying at university. Until he had an internship and experienced what his profession would feel like. Reality hit him hard as he found himself surrounded by high earners who hated their job and felt miserable.
Ross explains that this experience marked him and led to a life crisis that lasted about five years. He started practicing mindfulness meditation which empowered him to make better life choices and create a career based on what he was passionate about with purpose and meaning.
Mindfulness empowered Ross to become aligned with his life purpose and be authentic in his work. This allowed him to create a life with purpose, fulfillment, and the freedom to be who he really is.
Grace’s Story:
I shared my experience with Ross on how mindfulness empowered me to make drastic changes and saved my life.
In my early 20’s I was a lost soul. I had no idea of who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. I followed my parent’s advice and I pursued a career in law.
This career felt very inauthentic to me and I felt like I was pretending to be someone I’m not. I didn’t know what to do and I stayed stuck in that job for eight years.
Consumed by stress and anxiety for years, I developed psychosomatic symptoms and I ended up in hospital. My relationships added to the depressive state I was in as I didn’t know who I was and ended up in abusive relationships.
After years of suffering and my health deteriorating, I realized that I could not continue on this path and I started practicing mindfulness meditation to deal with my anxiety and negative thoughts.
Mindfulness helped me realize who I really was, what makes me happy, and what I wanted out of life. It empowered me to make life choices that are aligned with who I really am and what makes me feel joyful and fulfilled.
After years of practicing mindfulness meditation, introspection and shadow work, I found my life purpose and dedicated my life to help others navigate the spiritual journey of self-discovery.
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What is mindfulness and how does it empower us?
Mindfulness allows us to see what is going on inside and around us. It’s a skill that we can all develop if we commit ourselves to the practice.
There’s several ways to practice mindfulness and we can easily incorporate mindfulness in our daily life. Mindfulness doesn’t boil down to only meditation. Mindfulness meditation does help us develop this skill, but there are other ways we can practice mindfulness.
You can start by being present from moment to moment. Whether you’re working on a task, or having a conversation, or even a tedious task like washing the dishes. When we are present, it means that we are not lost in our thoughts, dwelling about the past or speculating about the future.
Mindfulness empowers us to detach from our thoughts and create space between our thoughts which can be exhausting. We break free from the auto-pilot mode and become able to make conscious choices.
How mindfulness empowers us to manage our emotions
When we’re going through difficult emotions and situations, mindfulness allows us to perceive our thoughts and feelings as they are.
Even though it’s uncomfortable to feel unpleasant emotions, it’s even more uncomfortable to resist them. We tend to try to resist feeling dense heavy emotions as we try to avoid suffering.
In reality, we need to feel these feelings without resisting them and without judgement. Mindfulness helps you to see your thoughts and feelings for what they are and be less driven and consumed by them.
Mindfulness empowers you to take over the driver seat of your life and make conscious choices, instead of being impulsive and carried away with your thoughts and feelings.
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Open your mind to new perspectives with mindfulness
As we become more mindful of our thoughts, we are able to shed light on our limiting beliefs that hold us back from creating the life we really want to live.
Our beliefs act like a map to navigate our life journey and determines how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. Mindfulness and introspection enables you to become aware of these beliefs which are inhibiting you from living your best life.
Once we become aware of these limiting beliefs we are in a position to change them. When we start changing our beliefs, our reality shifts and we open ourselves to new possibilities, new opportunities, a new reality which we couldn’t access before.
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Different ways to practice mindfulness
There are many ways to practice mindfulness. At first it might feel challenging just like any other skill. But with practice it becomes more natural and effortless to be mindful:
- Yoga
- Mindfulness meditation
- Body scan meditation
- Being present in conversations
- Journaling your thoughts and emotions
- Working out & paying attention to how your body feels
- Meditation with music & paying attention to the sounds
- Taking mindful walks in nature & using your senses to observe the environment
These are all practices that train our minds to become more mindful and present. Here’s an article about meditation in daily life filled with different ideas to practice mindfulness that make the experience more interesting, less boring!
If you’re interested in learning more about personal development and becoming your best version of yourself, check out Ross’s course on “The Ultimate Stages of Human Growth – With Spiral Dynamics“.
I hope that you found our conversation interesting and useful. If you’d like to have a chat on how to create a life of purpose and freedom, book a free 30 mins call with me to see if I can help you achieve your goal.
FAQ
Mindfulness empowers us to make better choices in our life. It allows us to become aware of who we really are and what we want out of life. Mindfulness empowers us to take the driver seat of our life as we become aware of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and break free from auto-pilot mode.
Mindfulness means that you are aware of what’s going within you and outside of you. It’s being present from moment to moment instead of being lost in your own thoughts. Mindfulness creates space between you and your thoughts and helps you realize that you are not your thoughts, but the observer of them.
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