From brushing our teeth to taking out the trash, your daily activities are the perfect place to practice mindfulness. After all, the goal of this work isn't to improve your life "on the cushion" - it is to take this practice out into the world so you can have more peace.
What would happen if you ate a meal in silence without your smartphone? If you focused on washing your car with the same joy as the day you first bought it? If you played with your children without thinking about expense reports?
- Feel your feet on the floor when you get out of bed.
- Take a few 15-second awareness breaks throughout the day to notice what you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel.
- When you notice you are lost in thought, label the experience as pleasurable, unpleasurable, or neutral.
- Pay attention to your senses as you make a meal, wash the dishes, brush your teeth, and do other mundane tasks.
- Give yourself a break from thinking, analyzing, predicting, rehashing, worrying, and all of those other things our minds do as often as you can.
Try This Informal Practice Challenge
This week, choose one mundane task that you do every day. Maybe it is something you usually do without thinking. Every day, do that task as though it were the first time. Pay attention to it and nothing else. When you get distracted or catch yourself multi-tasking, just begin again. And again. And again. Add in more tasks as you see fit.