Mindfulness Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Heart and Soul Centering To Live Your Best Life Now!

Heart and soul is a part of our bodies that we can’t see, but we can feel daily. Pizza is heart and soul food (recipe below for making a heart shaped pizza 🧡).

This sky painting over the water is heart and soul spirit in one. A daily heart and soul-centering check-in can change your life! You could be an old soul or have an old soul like some of us who remember young life before the internet.

…I remember when I first started out working and ambitiously I thought I wanted to climb the corporate ladder. It didn’t take many years before I shifted my priority to wanting better work-life balance.

And with those intentions, I career pivoted that gave me that outcome. But had I not picked my head up to see what my heart and soul was telling me (and now I know my spirit was helping me), I would’ve missed the message about finding time to work on me. Personal growth was something I had to go outside of work to find in volunteering and discovering myself.

It’s never too early to start checking in. Maybe now is a good time to set this priority in your life as you had to rethink parts of your life in 2020, along with everyone else (so you’re in good company!).

There were many external changes made affecting your life, that you had no control over, and may help you later on in ways you may not see how yet at this moment.

So for now, you can just keep going, growing, and focusing on creating the best that your life offers in abundant possibilities that you put intention to until the next step. There’s always a next step when the timing is right.

It’s better to think this optimistic way and joyfully pivot into your forming newer overall life, including work, relationships, passion, and purpose, so you can enjoy the process with greater ease (and not create unnecessary dis-ease or woes-me feelings).

That doesn’t mean you don’t have varying feelings with so many gray areas and small decisions you need to make, but that you’re finding your happier way now in the process (and possibly then seeing through a different lens than the one you may have been previously looking from).

I provide a lasting impactful way to do a heart and soul check-in, further below. ⬇️

Encouragement: Our Society, You, and Your Gained Ideas

In America, convenience is at our fingertips, and many of us started last year to positively lean into our interests, curiosities, and skills development.

You may have learned how to grocery shop differently, cook meals, bake your own bread, and learn new digital skills as a way to communicate with the rest of our virtual world and the local community.

You picked up other life skills that everyone needs so you could stay relevant.

You may have even discovered or rediscovered a few passions and hobbies, and read more books than you sought out originally to do. Those were some of the common gains for many of us.

All was not lost in our home life, and more has been gained (and is being gained) in our overall lives if we choose to focus on the higher lens way of living.

It’s helpful for you to reflect and personally remind yourself of the progress over perfection you’ve made, so you can stay feeling uplifted in your spirit. It’s too easy to get sourly influenced in our culture.

You can be less on guard, open up to your authentic self and reap the benefits in a new era where we’re all finding our way in many ways.

Over the past year especially, you may have changed some lifestyle habits or behaviors that you like, that work better, and that you decide to keep forever.

And you may have gained clarity about what you want in the next chapter of your life. Even though you wouldn’t have done this if you weren’t challenged to do so. But you can use your situation to your good advantage!

You may even have found the better way, and experienced that good changes in your life can show up as a combination of thinking, doing, and feeling what is right for you. You get internal clues and they can help you find your second or next act.

If you took or take your connect-the-dot lessons one step further, you can reflect on how you felt about what you first thought about specific ideas. You can then take another brave leap of action so you can try and replicate best practices and discover even more new ways, as our world is evolving. This creates innovation and gives you a better way of doing things.

For example, you’re inspired to try a new recipe and that seemed to work out and made you happy, so the next time you tweak the recipe and create something new and different that you enjoy. This works the same with a new workout, new route, or a new passion project you’re developing. Variety and innovation keep you making progress!

And that’s how personal growth attitudes and creative progress are fed and can seep into every fiber of your life if you’re open to new ways and ideas.

New ideas can take time to form in the process and as you start dabbling with curiosity, you can become less intimidated to make mistakes. That’s how you grow and learn.

In this forming introspective way of life, you can also dig deeper into yourself to find what gives you more meaning and joy than what you previously found made you happy, as you become more of who you are and will become.

You can also reach higher levels of contentment and then feel fewer emotional ups and downs.

Many positive changes can be happening all at once in this complex life, with yourself and your life.

You may have even re-thought your life’s retirement plans and this year’s optimistic and realistic plans. And you’ve probably learned to be more grounded in reality and to get back to simple basics, focusing on what actually is happening to you and around you.

As a global society, we’re still not able to freely travel and create safe, live events. From these changes, new ways have been born and are birthing, such as the newer apps where you’re entering live global event conversations safely and without travel hassles.

You could use the saved travel time and energy to work on your life, to double down on a new purposeful trajectory, or seek a new mission in your life.

Just one idea can change your life and if you have an extra few minutes, that could be the difference-maker in your life.

So where would you spend those extra minutes? Here’s what I do and what I suggest.

Prioritize a Daily Heart and Soul Check-in

Especially as we’re all distracted, prioritizing a heart and soul check-in can be the best way to (re)focus on your life.

Below you can be reminded or learn to take a specific step for long-term impact and to find your daily heart and soul-filled joy, peace, and balance. Continue reading “Heart and Soul Centering To Live Your Best Life Now!”

Stress Relief and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

I think many people need overall stress relief these days. I’ll share some of my insight on how you can become aware with mindfulness.

People walk around seemingly unaffected but underneath their skin, they are stressed out, anxious, annoyed, or irritated. You know that because of the stress statistics, and because you have shared and felt those same feelings at some point. That makes us human. And, if you live in a city or busy, suburban area around people, you probably know that all too well.

Living chronically stressed is one of the worst things you can do for your health (it’s a slow form of dying as I think settling into retirement is, but that’s another story for another day).

You may know stress is linked to 6 of the leading causes of death and probably more as our society is growing even more complex and filled with daily stressors. The saddest result from stress is if a person tragically considers ending their life or lives on anxiety medication. Inside of each of us, there are healthy alternative solutions, and that is the answer to life.

Jon Kabat -Zinn is known for his mindfulness and meditation work and writing. He worked on a study where employees practiced a mindfulness technique for 30 minutes a day for 8 weeks. Their brains were scanned before and after. Following the mindful 8 weeks, the participants had more activity in the left side of their front brain that showed enthusiasm and joy.

The study is an example of how we can affect our stress and daily lives by our thoughts. Most adults carry some out-of-control problems and walk around with varying levels of burden or worry in the mind-body construction we’re given.

Often, we don’t know what we can do to fix our immediate problems or we’ve already tried without a definitive solution, so we just accept that’s just how it is, at least for this season. And the season can be lifelong if never addressed again or if giving up or coping is the way of being.

That’s this life. It’s what you do with your thoughts and making them positive in some way, that makes all the difference in the world.

If you’re a natural Vata-Pitta type and live in a city environment, like I am and do, you’re highly susceptible to stress-related health issues. You can get warning signs initially showing up as acute or chronic anxiety, strong judgment, inflammation, aches, or pains that you can’t pinpoint the exact cause of. Over time these stress symptoms wear down your mental health and you can suddenly one day no longer get excited about your work, even though it was a gradual accrual.

So I starting making stress relief and work-life balance a priority in my late 20’s. I knew my health and appearance would suffer if I didn’t make changes.

We all want to live actively, and full of energy now and especially in our older years. Plus we have our individual desires like I want to look 20 years younger than my real age… and, I know I’m not alone in those wants.

Looking back in my young adult life, I had put my health on auto-pilot, prioritizing goals to climb the corporate ladder. And then I had small health situations, one after another, that made me question if my work lifestyle was contributing.

I took my job more seriously than my own health. Like, one time I had a panic attack and just went on with the day as though nothing had happened. I never forgot about it though.

Another time, I ignored the initial call to walking pneumonia. Not until the CEO of the company I worked for, urged me to go see the doctor, did I actually prioritize health over my job. I was lucky to get the encouragement and luckily I went to get medical help.

Those were warnings. They may have panned out okay for a healthy 20-something-year-old, but even a few years later makes a difference in the aging process as I started to notice my health more as I got more balance in my life.

I had accumulated stress in my body-mind for many years before I noticed or took any positive action. The body keeps score.

The stress I accumulated had started years before.

I grew up in a house with struggling immigrant parents. There was a lack of daily consistency. There was weekly household expressed anxiety-anger that got recorded in my young brain. And, I suppressed my emotions. As an adult, to become whole and healed, I needed to let out and process post-trauma still living actively in my old child’s brain and affecting my new adult decisions.

I didn’t know mindfulness could be an even better cure (than therapy). Back then in my 20’s, I didn’t know I had an issue, until I started learning more and getting aware (in our pre-vulnerable sharing society days we live in today).

As a young adult, I was just trying to put a roof over my head. That led to a panic attack incident from accumulated stress building up from a prior work victimization situation, then-current toxic management issues, and also working 55 plus grueling work hour weeks.

Different situations, but those are the types of multiple, complicated layers that many adults walk around with daily, that’s running in their mind-bodies. And they hold it all in instead of finding a healthy, sustainable solution that’s readily available (like I found).

In my case and so many others, my brain had recorded current stress-filled situations and mixed them with past emotional childhood trauma that was never healed. The body can then snap.

Our regular healthy bodies are naturally resilient but they can only take so much before there’s a breakdown, and that’s what happened in my case.

Most people live like that, unconscious and unaware about the damage carried around in the cell memories of the mind-bodies. Getting stress relief awareness is life and investment in your future health.

Continue reading “Stress Relief and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction”

Don’t Worry Be Happy and 8 Ways to Worry Less

“Don’t worry be happy” is not just a song made famous by Bobby McFerrin. Your thoughts can try to make you worry and overthink. You have a better choice that helps you calm worry.

Worry less is something you can transform even if you’re born a worry wart (aka Vata mind). I know because I did. And if I can do it, you can too!

8 ways to get calm (and don’t worry be happy):

1. Don’t focus on what could happen, focus on what is.

When awake, your mind doesn’t naturally silence. When your mind gets ahead of itself or starts to attach a fantastical made up story line to your thoughts, that’s when you have a chance to take a pause, get present or distracted and busy.

How does that old saying go?… “the past has already happened, the future hasn’t occurred, and all we have is now.”

If only we could stay focused on the present moment (not the past or future).

If you’re multi-tasking, you can miss it and let worry settle in. Mindfulness brings your awareness back (and you’re doing just fine if you let go of the past and future uncertainty).

2. Lower your standards to worry less.

We all have an idea as to what life should be and how we should be. Our expectations create a set of worries and disappointments when we face a setback.

There is not a perfect human on this planet. Accept that progress is made through your getting things done.

Who’s measuring perfection anyway? No one except the critic inside you, or a parent or school teacher’s voice that no longer serves you (or runs your life). Continue reading “Don’t Worry Be Happy and 8 Ways to Worry Less”

Anxious vs. Irritated Feelings in Your Mind and Body

First of all, why care if you’re feeling anxious vs. irritated?

Because you will use different healthy ways to combat and soothe each.

Anxiety can be based on fear, worry, feeling (or being) attacked, threatened, stuck, or overwhelmed.

Irritation can come from situations you encounter or people who do things that offend you. Or if you’re in an environment that frustrates you.

The easiest way to tell the difference if you’re anxious or irritated is by your bodily functions. The body tells the story truth. It expresses with your being balanced or imbalanced.

The Body – Are you anxious vs. irritated?

One of the easiest ways to examine if your body feels anxious is if you’re constipated. I know that’s a strange way to start a topic, but many anxious people suffer from this regularly. Continue reading “Anxious vs. Irritated Feelings in Your Mind and Body”