How can you stay mindful all day?

To stay mindful all day, we need to use our cognitive muscles more regularly on ourselves. A quick check-in every few hours with a question- "How am I travelling now on a scale of 1-10 (10 being at my best)?" Just by asking, you would have brought a lot of self-awareness. The second question to ask is, what practice will take me 1 notch higher? We all are aware of various mindfulness practices; follow what your heart and gut say at that time. It could be breathing, taking a break, stretching, or whatever works for you.

When you pick up your phone first thing, you're letting other people set the tone for your day. Give yourself a few minutes to just breathe and define how you want to be today. Curious? Open? Calm? Patient? Kind (to yourself and others)? Choose a focus and commit to it. When you notice your body tensing up that's your cue to center yourself back on your intention. There's no need to judge or berate yourself, simply take a deep breathe and refocus.

Conscious focus on breathing is the most under-rated experience - My day starts with just focussing on breathing and listening to the inner peace before the noise of the day takes over - I have always encouraged one task vs multi-tasking - focus vs fragmented focus.

You are sick of autopiloted life? There is a doorway for awake, aware, fully alive life in each present moment. It's called mindfulness. It’s a blessing to be aware of your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and surroundings in the present moment. Take your time to savor your morning coffee or tea, focus on your breath during showering, or simply appreciate the sunrise. Practice mindful breathing regularly. Do deep, slow breaths or simply observe your breath as it naturally occurs. Pay attention to what you eat. Savor the flavors, textures, and smells of your food. Avoid distractions. Take short breaks to check in with yourself. Pause for a minute or two to notice your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations.

It is best to start the day with a few minutes of mindfulness, and wearable devices like the Apple Watch or Fitbit have specific features that can help. Often 4 to 5 minutes of mindfulness is all it takes to get your breathing back in the right frame of mind. It's even more helpful to start the day with a workout, depending on your style, or even yoga for both the muscles and the mind.

If you're a high-achiever focused on productivity you're probably missing out on cues from your body. Start paying more attention to signs of a stress response - hunched shoulders, clenched jaw, tightness in your forehead, churning in your stomach - learn yours and tune into them. Your body has a built-in alert system and your feelings are your GPS. Listen up.

During the day, especially during busy times when we are very focused, we can ignore some good practices to stay centered or otherwise healthy. In this sense, all those devices that often distract us can come to our aid: - Setting timers to get up after 30/45 minutes of sitting (and using the standing desk if we have it) - Setting limits on distracting applications like social media (assuming we're not using them for work) - Set alerts to give ourselves those 30 minutes in the sun, which helps with mood and vitamin D - Set a reminder to drink water

Personally I struggled with "let me first just finish this-itis" and though not a medically recognized disease, it still affects my health, mood and stamina. Though I know of a Harvard study that found moving just 5 minutes every hour can give significant health benefits, I struggle with maintaining. So now, I've linked taking a walk with a daily habit, specifically after lunch. And, I learned to be kind with myself when my 'finish this first' disease is flaring up and so I don't kill the new habit cause I missed a day or 2... actually let me get up and walk now ;-)

Sometimes going old school and using a sticky note (or multiple!) to remind us not only to stand up or drink water, but to boost our mood with a positive affirmation or quote. A little positivity can help re-enter our thinking, give us a little boost and maybe spark a little creativity.

When the alarm goes off, stop tapping the snooze button. Welcome the day with intention that you are going to some special today and be aware of the opportunities. Make a goal that inspires you for an energetic morning, such as finishing your workout or nailing that presentation. Your personal fanfare, the sound of your alarm in the morning, heralds the start of your time to shine.

Embracing a mindful approach to eating is a wonderful opportunity for nurturing mindfulness, and it also nourishes your body and soul. Keep in mind to deliberately chew each piece as you enjoy every bite of food. This focused exercise will not only improve your digestion and natural control over overeating, but it will also improve your enjoyment of eating overall.

Time is your biggest asset! Instead of taking the time to cook a meal from scratch, simplify your meals! Less is more. Eat the same meal several times a week, make your meals colorful, and pay attention to your eating patterns. If you're a woman, don't guilt yourself for feeling the need to "eat, eat, eat" a particular week of the month and also become mindful of what is most nutritious at different times.

I’ve started practicing intermittent 16:8 fasting and I’ve noticed that fasting from food really empties the mind x body of one major preoccupation. It really helps me to be more focused in that first part of the day before I break fast around lunch time and makes me mindful about what I am choosing to eat and what else I want to savour in the 8 hour window I have.

Tips for Mindful Eating: Breathe deeply, and sit still for a few moments before making a food choice. Check in with yourself, and decide without judgement about which foods you are craving and why Evaluate your hunger level, and be aware if it is physical or emotional hunger. Choose foods accordingly, and enjoy them in a peaceful, or happy setting. Enjoy your food with all your senses. Pay attention to the thoughts and sensations that arise when evaluating a food choice, and change any guilty feelings you may have

Make food with love (only purchase food from those who cook from the heart), give thanks for the sustenance you are about to ingest, chew slowly, savouring the meal. Stop eating when you burp. According to Ayurveda, the means you are full, your mind just hasn't registered this yet.

All the beeps, flickers and notifications of our devices keep our nervous systems on high alert and make it difficult to focus on one thing at a time. Make it easier on yourself by building focus time into your calendar. Think you don't have the time for that? I challenge you to get curious about all the time you're losing to distractions, interruptions and getting your brain back to the task at hand.

Focusing on just one thing can make a big difference. Instead of juggling many balls at once, just juggle one. You're less likely to drop it. By giving all your attention to one task, you'll finish it faster and do it better. It's like enjoying one flavor at a time instead of mixing them all up. When we truly focus, everything becomes clearer and simpler. To make it easier, prioritize tasks by starting your day by listing what needs to be done. Choose the most important task and give it your full attention.And set a timer for a specific duration (like 25 minutes) to work on one task. After the time is up, take a short break and then reset the timer for the next task. And what I love- declutter your space :-)

Don’t be seduced by the fantasy of multitasking. It’s what we call a fake friend. Doing various tasks, whether urgent or essential, requires connecting with the job thinking originally, adding self-worth to be memorable, and, above all, projecting respect and value for that task and those involved in it. Mindfulness makes us authentic and original and, above all, allows us to seduce, engage, and engage our colleagues, allies, and audience. Tune in to the present moment, enjoy the pleasure of the real connection, and enjoy the world in front of you, next to you, around you.

Our brain is indeed not made for multi-tasking, but our performance oriented culture made us believe exactly that we can do many things at once. So we start making mistakes and feel bad about ourselves if we do not manage to do it. When with people (grown ups or children) always try to give your attention only to the person in front of you. Your capability to actually listen will increase and the connections to these people too!

I personally do not believe "multi-tasking" is a thing and have allowed others to make me feel guilty for feeling the need to focus on only one thing. If you're like me, honor that you want to give one task your undivided attention. give yourself a daily timeline of "this comes before that" and you'll be golden. Let's humanize our brain and be more gracious with ourselves!

If you are able to, use part of your lunch break to take a short mindful walk. You can use apps like Calm or Headspace to help. Try to really tune into your surroundings paying attention to the colors, sounds, smells, etc.

Simple things can have a profound impact. It takes some courage to make time to rest and refocus your mind but the payoff is powerful. You may be surprised to find you're actually more productive overall, and in a more meaningful and valuable way, when you respect your human need for periodic breaks.

Take time for you. As a yoga therapist, I find some people do not know how to breathe. They are so busy that they aren't breathing properly. When you wake up, breath work. At break time, at about 10:30am, breathe work again. Before you arrive home, again, ground, breathe so that you can leave the work stuff at work. Insight Timer is an app I use often. There are certain teachers and types of meditation I like. You can choose and bookmark what works for you.

Being intentional with breaks is so important. Reminding yourself that this break is for you and not to complete miscellaneous tasks is so liberating and impactful. Just a few intentional minutes of redirected thought can be profoundly relaxing

What you can do is using your lunch break for 'coming to your senses' . Smell the fresh air, feel the sun in your face, the wind in your hair, enjoying all the schades of green. This calms your nervous system, refreshes your brain and releases tension. This is what coming to your senses realy means.

Our minds naturally have a negativity bias. It's overly protective in this safer modern age. You can retrain your brain to see the good things in life. Make your gratitude practice more impactful by finding three new things you're grateful for each day. The purpose of looking for new things each day is that it'll teach your mind to look for things throughout the day. Gratitude is a special kind of mindfulness and a key to contentment.

Gratitude can be towards things that didn't go well too, many times things that don't go well are the ones that either motivate us to do better or give us a whole new perspective to something.

I like doing at least 20 min of uninterrupted quiet reflective writing using a prompt of the day . On top of that, I like answering for my work day: What did I learn today? What did I initiate today? Who did I help today? What did I enjoy today? What did I do for my own well-being?

I have found it helpful to begin and end each day with a gratitude meditation. It helps to reflect on and appreciate all that you have, and all that will be.

Where focus goes, energy flows. Focus on the good things and more good things will follow. Gratitude is also often seen as being satisfied with what you have, but instead be grateful for what you have and keep striving for more!

Often, in the evening, just when we are relaxing and about to fall asleep, different thoughts come to mind about the past day and things to do the next day. Like in the meme where a girl is sleeping, the brain says something, so you can no longer sleep. A good method is to keep a (physical) notebook and a pen by the bed and jot them down when we have some thoughts. This allows us to "download" the thoughts and delegate them to paper. One can put them in order the next day and on one's to-do list. It is useful to use precisely a physical medium so that we are not disturbed by the phone, its light, and any notifications that might distract us from our moment to rest.

And to put everything into perspective. No one can stay mindful all day. If you have this expectation than you might want to readjust it, to something like, I get better in staying mindful throughout the day. You got this!

*Our 15 hours out of work determines the 9 hours of mindful work hours* We can't deliberately be 9 hours mindful straightaway as we want to or wish to..it takes extremely alot of practices to control the mind. To FOCUS,we have to let go UNNECESSARY multiple tasks especially Out of office ;major example using mobile while driving,temptations to reply or watch out for SM postings. I personally sense this the BIGGEST issue to manage the colleagues' concentration that affects the flow..even in meetings . These are many sharings on how to be FOCUS.(meditation the best-simple but not easy) MINDFUL also means you are compassionate thus ..Balancing it at office proves your skillset .

The ability to access our mindfulness, like all cognition, perspective, and functionality, is state-specific. Many of us are trying to push a rope up a hill, white-knuckling our presence, and our mindfulness, and our zen, because we are not attending to our brain states. When we know how to work with our states, then focus, attention, connection, awareness, insight, and understanding – even contentment, curiosity, and calm – are just byproducts of that work. When we *aren't* in a state that does mindfulness (like a Survival or Emotional state), then we might as well not even bother trying to be, until we can get back to the state that does it. We don't even have to try to be mindful when we're in the brain state for it.

Responding instead of reacting to anything around you is a great way to practice mindfulness. This is especially helpful in managing stress. Responding need not necessarily mean talking, it can mean not talking at all too.