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You want to know how to be mindful. But what does being mindful mean to you?

Is it being still? Are you conscious of what’s going on around you? Are you present with your family and friends? Are you able to spend more time on the things that are important to you?

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I want you to stop and think about what being mindful means to you and what are the results that you’re trying to get out of being mindful.

Being mindful to me is being intentional with your time. Really thinking about your actions before you take them. Being present mentally with your family or friends when you are spending time with them.

Being mindful can mean so many things but if you know what your end result is you can achieve it much quicker.

Here are some things that you can do to start living a more mindful life

How To Be Mindful With Your Calendar

The biggest thing that most people struggle with is being mindful with their time. There is so much going on and so much that we want to do but we just don’t have time for everything.

You have to be mindful with the time you have and use it wisely whether you have a family or it’s just you and the dog. I want you to mark down on a piece of paper everything that you are currently doing that takes up physical time in your calendar. Even the things that you regularly do without thinking write it down. Once you’ve done that I want you to right next to each thing how many hours it takes you, from getting ready to the drive home if it is out of your house. If it is easier for you to see the weekly layout, you can start by writing your schedule down right in the online tool or on your paper planner that has the hours marked down.

Now I want you to do something that is called time blocking. You can do this by hand on a piece of paper, or if you have a calendar that shows the hours. You can also do it in your electronic calendar which would have the hours marked out and you can see that in the screenshot below.

I want you to mark down everything that you do in this calendar so you can see how full your schedule really is. If you look at this scheduled and realize your time is so full how are you going to make space for things you enjoy?
Maybe you want to build a business or start doing crafts. Maybe you want more time to read or just look at a magazine you enjoy. If your calendar is so full you don’t have time for the things you enjoy. Some things are going to have to go.

I want you to look at the things you’re doing and decide if you enjoy them or not. some things are obligations and I understand that, but sometimes you have to cut things out to live a happy and peaceful life. Use this time to get a clear picture of what your calendar looks like.

How To Be Mentally Present

Being mentally present in both work and fun is important. But to be mentally present when you are spending time with family or during what we would call a “recreation” you have to learn to clear your mental space. Whether that means writing things down on paper or putting them in a digital tool it is totally up to you.

Whatever the case it often takes a lot of practice to get good at clearing your mind. You just have to learn how your mind works and what it’s going to take to make your mind leave work at work.

But on the same note, you also need to know what it takes for you to be ready to dive right into work and get things done. A lot of the times the reason we are distracted is that we feel like there is a lot to do. so the more productive you can be the smaller your task list will be leaving your mind so much clearer.

Using Tools To Be Mindful

Tools are something that people are very different when it comes to what they want to use. For me I am very Hands-On so I need to write things down to remember or feel organized so I might have already written that task in my task management software but if I have not handwritten the task or the thing I want to remember my mind and not flush it out. That leaves the task floating around in my mind.

You have to know how you work whether you prefer paper or digital.

But we are also a digitally focused culture and so we have to have a way for all of our tasks and information to be used across devices and or digitally. I am not going to type in my password every time if I can use something like Last Pass to remember it for me.

Tools I Am Using

For me even if I have to write down a task I also have a digital way for to store all of my to-do’s so I write them currently in Asana which I like much better than Trello at the moment because it’s much cleaner. I used Trello for quite a long time and I still love it but I feel like it is a messy program in the sense that it’s not in a list format and it doesn’t appear clean it feels very messy to me. There are tons of different task management software and the list of tools is growing by the minute. You are just going to have to play with them and see what works.

I also tried Click-Up and it works very much like Asana but it is a very slow website it takes forever to load and honestly when you’re trying to manage tasks it is a big drawback.

Know what your mind needs to work. Try them out and find something new if it does not feel right.

Use The Word No

Saying no is something that is so hard for many people and whether it’s because they feel guilty for not being there for other people or having to tell people that they love they can’t do something is very hard and causes a lot of guilt.

But when you become comfortable with saying no. That enables you to have a freed schedule and mind. It also enables you to say yes to the things you want to. This is why understanding your calendar and the tasks that you fill your life with is so important and why the exercise we did earlier matters.

How to be mindful in the areas that matter to you.

It’s not enough to know how to clear your schedule or to give yourself enough time to be somewhere. You also have to know how to say yes to the right things.
I want you to get out a sheet of paper and write down the areas of life that are most important to you. It could be things like.

1. Family
2. Health
3. Faith
4. Fun and Recreation
5. Personal growth
6. Connections of other people you want to meet.

The different areas that you want to get better at in life and setting them as a priority. So if something does not enable you to do one of those priorities it’s a no or different time.

Even the little things matter. Maybe you want to start crafting more or calling a friend. Reaching out to people on social media, whatever it is it really doesn’t matter it’s totally up to you because you are creating the life you want to live not a life for someone else.

So if something comes up and it doesn’t fit into either of those categories then really think about it before you say yes.

Being mindful is a daily practice. It won’t happen overnight. You need to continually work at it. Anytime you find yourself slipping. Just stop and ask yourself why. Pull your mind back to where it should be and keep moving forward. Don’t beat yourself up because you are not great at being mindful the first time you tried. It’s a practice.

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