Mindful Break Healthy List Ideas

Mindful thinking can break you out of your stuck shell areas. And taking a mindful break can provide a simple solution to some of your life’s biggest challenges.

You can take a break with this banana-Greek yogurt bowl with cherry and berries. It’s not only a happy sweet, but a healthy snack loaded with prebiotic-probiotics.

The sundae puts a sun to my day ☀️ And the healthy to my happy joy.

Can you make a list of ordinary mindful 5-minute micro-moments that bring you happy and healthy joy daily? I’m sure you can!

In the past, I would have dismissed the smaller items on my list below as I only saw the bigger happenings worth noting, but that was missing the point of mindful micro-moments.

Our brains are wired to sometimes focus on what we don’t have which only makes for souring the day. So when I focused on little life joys, I noticed the outcome and outlook of the day changed for the better.

And when you adopt good lessons you’ve learned from your life experiences, focusing on what you DO HAVE, then you too appreciate simple and ordinary day things. And, appreciation for small things makes a big difference.

How?…

For one, you’re less disappointed about expectations that didn’t happen. You get off the life roller coaster you can’t always control, and where you’re relying on your situations to bring happiness.

Secondly, you find internal happiness and peace with yourself. You silence the unhelpful noise and have the opportunity to learn to drown out and replace negative mind chatter.

Then you experience more meaning about what this life can grow into for you that’s different than what you started out thinking it would be.

That can happen by changing and developing more loving attitudes that affect your feelings and moods… and make bigger waves in you, than in the situations you experience.

So on that note, this is a page from my daily inspired healthy, and joyfully mindful minutes:

Daily, I check on my avo-plants that came from delicious avocados. They’re daily living organisms that don’t need any type of green thumb. They remind me of living more eco-friendly and #earthday every day.

These plants have food names based on the flavor of the Oui glass they started their roots from. That’s too cute (or nerdy), right? …That was the only way I could keep their starting growth dates straight as I had multiple seeds growing at the same time. “Lemon” was the first one I started in 2020.

The naming exercise helped me keep track of dates as 2020 was an off-year for all of us (but not the avocados). The seeds grew despite the major world happenings. Plus, it didn’t need any kid-glove attention. So, I grew out of the date recordkeeping stage and just started enjoying their presence.

And that’s a good lesson on how our lives could be: more mindful focusing on the enjoyment of the moment, and less on detailed minutiae facts that won’t matter in years to come or even tomorrow.

Most of our memories fade and what you do on most days, you forget. And that’s why the only time that really matters is now. You appreciate and let the present moment pass through you.

And if you don’t want a memory to fade, you could take photos, or make journal entries and share posts– as great memory reminders.

So, now I’ll remember these plants for years to come. 🥑

…And then sitting next to the indoor plants are a table humidifier that’s another mindful break.

Filling room humidifiers with clean water is another way to appreciate the moment. 

When I pour fresh water from a reusable water bottle, I stay mindful that clean water gives our bodies and our planet, LIFE.

Water is a source for regeneration: if we had more water to support healthy soil and plants, then we’d help keep new carbon in the ground.

Moisture from the plants and trees would allow more humidity into our air and help lower our climate temperature. Just like the small room humidifier does, but on a much grander scale.

And since I’m on the sustainability topic and #stopfoodwasteday is tomorrow, consuming and buying organic foods from farms that don’t use harmful pesticides helps our health and the planet. Or better yet, grow your own.

Thankfully we’re starting to take this seriously. And as consumers, we have a say and can live out our part.

Another mindful ritual is taking daily supplements.

Like the yogurt photo above, which has healthy fats (almond butter and nuts),  I combine the meal with Vit D and A vitamins so they’re better absorbed. There’s an order that matters.

And I make sure I have filling lunch food in my belly before having a multi-vitamin as a general rule, but mostly just to keep a daily routine reminder (i.e. habit stacking).

Then later I take my magnesium (which has an optimized ratio of calcium and zinc) with my mid-day “red wine.”

…It’s actually a pure cranberry-tart cherry blend, water, or water spritzer blend. But, I had you there for a second in case you were mindfully drifting off! 😉

And, I know there’s so much controversy today about vitamins. For them to work they have to be absorbed by the body or else they become expensive pee.

I see and use them as a backup plan and a supplement to prevention. They don’t hurt in approved low doses, but they can help. So they’re worth time and money.

A good multi-vitamin to take is a prenatal vitamin with extra B-vitamins (we all need a lot of B-vitamins to run properly).

And adaptogens that are the rage these days, like a ‘shroom complex to support wellness, immunity, and to help fight off environmental stressors to our bodies.

So now I’m done describing these quick healthy rituals, and moving on to daily writing…

Writing, of course. …Oh yes, duh, that’s a no-brainer on the list. And there’s nothing quick about writing. It’s not a 5-minute ritual. It’s also a labor of love that takes energy and passion. And why a robot can’t replace me (at least not today). 🤖

Robots also don’t have moods, so they wouldn’t want to sing along with me to music tunes like Sam Smith’s version of “Time After Time,” which is a 5-minute break.

You probably have a different jam or song you hum to.

Finding a personal way to express yourself by singing or in another outlet you enjoy, breaks up the day.

Even if this is spending 5 minutes looking out the window. Those few minutes get remembered more than the hour you spent doing any unrewarding jobs you don’t look forward to.

And maybe you have a deeper side passion you spend more time with like dancing, exercising, yoga, playing an instrument or sport, cooking, drawing, or painting, to name a few ideas. The list of possibilities is endless.

These are all good mindful breaks you can build into your balanced and reshuffled day.

Doing your preferred activity helps you bypass the negative emotions, thoughts, or worries at any moment, and can break you out of any ego-mind drama that definitely doesn’t serve you.

What does serve you is feeling better as one of your daily goals.

I can pull together ingredients for a lazy recipe in 5-minutes and that pulls me away from a lazy Kapha mood.

Baking and coming up with baking ideas is one of my fun weekly leisure activities, plus keeping up with a community that does also. You could probably guess my favorite flavor is healthy bakes. And that leads me to the last mindful activity on my list…

Feeding my sourdough. Are you part of the sourdough cult (I mean culture) that came out in 2020?  

I can’t exactly say that I am. And I’m glad that it only takes less than 5 minutes to make a starter from scratch.

I kinda have a love-hate relationship with sourdough (even though I don’t like the word hate for anything).

I love the healthy baked dough that benefits the gut (and have even researched/written in well-known healthy pubs about the health benefits).

The problem is I don’t prefer the sour “gone bad” aroma that lingers in the air. It’s strong and irks the Pitta body out of balance.

Pitta is the fire dosha in us. If you learned about Ayurveda or have read other posts I’ve written about using balance to improve life, then you know that you and I can shift in and out of Vata, Pitta, and/or Kapha imbalances at any time.

But back to the homemade sourdough starter… it’s a healthy reminder of bacteria living among us as a breathing organism that’s omnipresent in the air (and plus our bodies are mostly made of bacteria).

So, the “newish” sourdough bread idea can take a bit of adjustment, especially growing up in an ideal germ-free society.

The sourdough plan is to adjust and make enriched doughs like in a sourdough brioche.

And to continue to make my weekly sourdough on demand and not grow a starter pet in the fridge. No reminders are needed.