Some of the most successful people in the world practice meditation and mindfulness as part of their daily routine.
Little wonder as meditation reduces anxiety, improves your mood, heightens productivity, promotes deeper sleep and helps you foster happier relationships.
By learning how to use mediation in our daily life we can nurture our capacity to be more present with what is happening around us, gain a new perspective, strengthen the connection between our mind and body, and move through stressful situations with more ease and grace.
Gathered below are a few techniques you can introduce into your meditation practice that will cultivate calmness and balance within.
Dealing with Difficult Situations and Challenging Emotions?
If you find yourself in the throes of strong negative emotions or dealing with a particularly challenging emotion, incorporate the RAIN technique into your meditation practice for the day. RAIN stands for recognise, allow, investigate and nurture.
This practice helps you to meditate on challenging emotions or situations and helps you to process and move through the perceived difficulty. This practice provides excellent support if you are dealing with issues of fear, doubt, heartbreak and grief by providing the clarity needed to get through tough times.
Step 1: Recognise
Recognise what is happening, take a moment to identify exactly what it is that you’re feeling. Label the dominant emotion. Is it stress, anger, sadness, confusion, etc.?
Step 2: Allow
Now that you’ve identified the dominant feeling, the next step is to allow it to be there. Remember that the aim of practicing mindfulness is not to push the difficult situation or feeling out of your mind. Make peace with what it is that you’re feeling and just allow it to be there.
Step 3: Investigate
Now, spend a moment investigating the thoughts and feelings themselves as they are happening, as well as the effects they have on the mind and body. Try and do this without judgement, simply observe.
Step 4: Nurture
The final step of this mindfulness practice is to nurture the emotions and feelings. Try and meet them with warmth, understanding, compassion and kindness. Allow yourself not to take them so personally. This technique helps you realise that emotions and feelings about a challenging situation are very much like the weather. They come and go, sometimes they linger but eventually they move on.
Feeling Anxious and Stressed Out?
If you’re feeling like it’s all getting a bit too much or you are struggling to relax and place sound wagers when enjoying the online betting has to offer, try out the STOP technique. Stop. Take a deep breath. Observe. Proceed. Many people struggle with anxiety and modern life can often leave one feeling overwhelmed. When this happens, the STOP technique helps you to take a moment to ground yourself, take in what is happening and gives you the opportunity to proceed with wisdom and more awareness. This is an excellent mindfulness practice that assists you in redirecting how you are going to respond and mitigates a knee-jerk response.
This is an immediate intervention that can be achieved in four simple steps.
Step 1:
Stop whatever it is you are doing.
Step 2:
Take a deep breath.
Step 3:
Observe what is happening in your mind, body as well as your surroundings. Quietly take note of the sensations of your body and the thoughts that are occupying your mind.
Draw your attention to any impulses you have that are leading you into reaction instead of taking a moment to mindfully respond.
Step 4:
Proceed with a mindful response that results from this pause.
