How to Use Mindfulness to Improve Decision Making

You’ve likely heard of mindfulness by now, but are you able to define it?

Mindfulness is about focusing on one thing in this present moment.

It’s about slowing down, quieting the chatter in your mind, and avoiding multi-tasking.

Now it sounds simple yet it’s also incredibly elusive.

I want to be clear –

Every single person has a busy thinking mind.

Experts estimate the average person thinks between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts per day.

It can feel nearly impossible to quiet the incessant chatter.

To begin practicing mindfulness, the first step is to simply notice your thoughts.

Notice if they’re busy, analytical, judgmental, loving, self-doubting, resentful, excited, proud, fearful, or one of the million other types of thoughts we experience each day.

There are four places our minds will go when they leave the present moment:

?? Future – anticipating something that hasn’t happened yet

?? Past – thinking back to something that’s already happened (and cannot be changed)

?? Other – thinking about another person

?? Self – thinking about oneself and something you haven’t done, need to do, should have done differently, etc.

Whenever we leave the present moment and focus in one of the above directions, we lose the ability to have clear focus.

Think of the last time you really felt in the Flow.

Maybe you were doing something creative or working on a project at work that you are very passionate about. It may have felt as if time seemed to stand still – in the moment you had no concept of time but one hour passed in what felt like a few minutes. You likely felt a deep sense of joy and contentment.

This is because when you are focused on the present moment, you’re able to tune into an innate sense of calm, clarity and peacefulness that always exist behind the busy thoughts that are simply a distraction.

While being in the Flow you may have also experienced an answer to a complex problem. Is there a time in your life where you were trying to work out a solution to a complex problem, and not matter how hard you thought about it at work or even waking up in the middle of the night, the solution was unclear? But as soon as you stopped focusing so heavily on finding the solution, the perfect answer simply popped into your mind?

This is because when you redirect your attention from your busy mind onto an activity where you feel more relaxed and present in the moment, you create space for your gut instinct to come through, which provides you with creative in-the-moment solutions.

Your gut instinct is always available to you except when the mind is busy and noisy, it clouds the connection.

By clearing your mind and using mindfulness, you can access your gut instinct which provides in-the-moment advice.

A question I’m often asked is, “Why should I quiet my mind if I need my thoughts to remind me of everything I’m working on to help me stay on track?”

My answer is always that there is a difference between useful and not useful thoughts.

Useful thoughts help you remember important tasks and solve problems.

Not useful thoughts are a continuous ramble of revisiting past events, judgement or irritation of others, self doubt and worry for the future, etc.

When you spend time in the present moment, useful thoughts still come through in perfect timing.

Yet the not useful thoughts lose their power to distract you.

And perhaps the best result of using mindfulness to be in the present moment?

You experience a deep sense of calm, peace and contentment for yourself and the world.

So how do you get started?

Pick a simple task such as washing the dishes or brushing your teeth and focus your attention only on the task at hand. Inevitably thoughts will arise! It’s unrealistic to assume that they will not. However when they do, the practice of mindfulness is about simply noticing the thoughts that come into your awareness without judging them or attaching yourself to them.

If you if you yourself thinking about what to make for dinner later or regretting something you said the day before, simply notice the thought without making it ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and then re-direct your attention back to the task at hand.

That’s it!

From this starting point, mindfulness becomes a continuous practice of noticing your thoughts, not attaching to them, and returning yourself to the present moment.

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Last week I held my first LinkedIn live where I shared more about mindfulness. If you missed it you can watch the replay recording here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/tracey-gazel_successsecrets-neurosciencehacks-mindsetshift-ugcPost-6965747348668833792-TUyl