_______________________________________________________________________________ Don't Forget: As an Affiliate, I Earn from Qualifying Purchases. If you click on any Amazon, Chewy, Walmart, or other links on my site and make a purchase through those companies, I may receive a small percentage of that sale at no extra cost to you. This helps me pay for the upkeep and maintenance of my site. You'll also notice advertisements on my site, which help contribute to the costs of running the site. _______________________________________________________________________________

           ?Free your mind and the rest will follow?

As the old song by En Vogue goes, “Free your mind and the rest will follow“ – If you start to free your mind of unnecessary stresses and anxiety, you’re going to see a significant improvement in your day to day life.

Don’t allow intrusive thoughts to enter your mind and give them permission to put you in a negative mindset; start practicing Meditation and Mindfulness and within a few days, you should start to see improvements in your life.

At first, it’ll be hard to get your mind to settle down to meditate; but with practice you’ll become very good at it. Like they say, practice makes perfect and the more you do it, the better you become. So if at first you don’t succeed, don’t get discourage and quit; start small and work your way up.

Why does meditation and mindfulness help people with anxiety, depression, focus, health, mental stability, happiness, joy, well-being, calmness… etc? Because it gives your brain a break and allows it to get the rest it needs. If you left your car running 24/7 without doing maintenance, eventually, it’ll end up breaking down.

Your brain needs maintenance too and one of its favorite things is rest! So by meditating and practicing mindfulness, you’re giving your brain that rest it needs.

It is a common misbelief that your brain must be completely quiet and free of any thoughts; the truth is, you’re supposed to recognize those thoughts and then push them away.

One of the biggest issues with people with anxiety is that they have a lot of worrying, negative thoughts and they constantly think about them and it doesn’t allow them to think positively about other things because they’re always worried and stressed about things that haven’t happened yet.

When you meditate, you’re supposed to identify any negative thoughts, quickly acknowledge them and then push them away. As soon as you’re aware you’re having a negative thought, push it away.

The reason why you’re supposed to focus on breathing (or on a certain object) is so it can help you bring your attention back from the other thoughts you’re having and just focus on breathing.

Once you’re aware you’re having a different thought, you should automatically go “oh yeah, I’m supposed to be focusing on breathing and not that stupid thing”… and then return to breathing.

At first it will be hard to push the negative thoughts away and stay focused on one thing; but again, with time, it’ll get easier.

There are a lot of different ways to meditate and you can find a ton of information about it online; but I like to refer people to the Mayo Clinic for their articles because they are in-depth and give you a better understanding about both mediation and mindfulness.

This site for beginners and experts alike – UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center – has meditation sounds and recorded instructions on how to do them. Really good listening material!

I recommend giving Meditation and Mindfulness a try and allow yourself to free your mind of a lot of the stuff that doesn’t need to be there! Like I said earlier, it’s not easy at first so you have to practice and give it time before you write it off; but after a couple of days, you’ll be happy you did.

THE HEADSPACE GUIDE TO MEDITATION AND MINDFULNESS

-TID

theinspiringdad.com