(Re)Building Your Mindfulness Routine
Moving to a new location offers a great opportunity to establish new habits. Many times our routines are associated with a certain place. We all have our routines when we are home. Our treadmills, coffee machines, mobile phones, and pets serve as reminders to exercise, caffeinate, communicate, and walk our dogs. It is easy to see how, if you stay in the same place, you can establish very strong habits.
This is why, when we go on vacation, it’s easier to start doing new things. Without your usual coffee setup, you have the opportunity to walk down the block for a latte, make tea or abstain from caffeine altogether. So, when gearing up to make positive changes, it’s wise to plan those changes for a time when you are in a new place.
As with everything, the Taoist Yin Yang is also relevant. There is a bad side to the good. While being in a new place is an opportunity to eliminate malicious habits it can also rock your good habits. That’s right. Oftentimes, the word “bad” comes before the word “habit” in our conversations. But, not all of our habits are bad. Many of them are pretty beneficial. Our habits of exercise, eating vegetables, sleeping enough, connecting with people socially, and, of course, meditating can also suffer.
The purpose of this piece is not to say that changing locations is always good and that it always results in positive changes. What I am saying is that changing locations can disrupt all of your routines and that we should take care to make sure that the disruption ends up making your life better, not worse.
Recently, my own change in location challenged me to maintain my routines. I had developed these processes for years and, at the time of the disruption, I had been living in a habitual nirvana. I had been firing on all cylinders. It was great. I was seeing continual improvement in my state, my skills, and in my happiness. So, when the disruption happened, I immediately made a plan for how I would re-establish that positive routine.
Here are my top focuses in re-building my mindfulness practice:
Win the Morning
When we first wake up, our brains are still moving slowly. When sleeping our brains run in slow Delta and Theta waves. When we are fully awake (like you reading this), our brains speed up to Beta waves. However, there is an in-between: Alpha waves. When in Alpha, the brain is relaxed and calm. In Alpha is when we find epiphanies. Alpha is where we can best influence our minds.
So, what we consume and think when in Alpha waves is very important. Most people wake up and immediately click on their usual influences: their text messages, their social media, and the news. All three of those sources can cause anxiety, especially the news. And when you pour worry into your Alpha wave mind, those worries reach the deepest part of your psyche.
With my plan, We do the opposite. It’s best to take great care in what we do in our first few minutes awake. Obviously, meditation at this time is ideal. This is also a great time to practice generating the feeling of gratitude. At a minimum, we should try to keep our minds quiet for a while when we wake up. I, myself, only use my mobile phone to check the weather until after I have meditated. I recommend the same to you.
Meditate Every Day
You knew it was coming. I cannot stress the importance of meditation enough. It has changed my life and, I am convinced that, one cannot reach their fullest potential for success and happiness without including meditation in their life. I will write (and have written) countless pages about the practice.
“Meditation is a type of mind-body medicine.” - The Mayo Clinic
Nurture the Best Thoughts
Positive thoughts are beneficial. Negative thoughts are damaging. It’s important to try to avoid negative thoughts and focus on positive ones. This is another key to my lifestyle. It’s not always easy. It’s actually never easy. Our Monkey Mind’s natural tendency to make us worry provides continuous resistance in our quest to stay positive.
When our routines are disturbed, we can be more negative than usual. That’s why another one of my steps in the process is the act of aggressively trying to think positive thoughts and avoiding negative thoughts.
Love
When we are not feeling ourselves it’s best to resort to love. The loving emotion is the best emotion. Thinking loving thoughts has the opposite effect as thinking fearful thoughts. A loving state of mind protects you. I make everything ok.
Thinking loving thoughts is also a strategy. When in doubt, respond to things with love. Try to feel love for everyone you encounter. Try to feel love all throughout the day.
Gratitude
In addition to meditation, I credit my gratitude practice for being the cornerstone of my philosophy. If you can’t feel love in the moment, feel gratitude. Once you have practiced, it is very easy to do.
We are all very lucky. Our modern world offers a lot for us to feel thankful for. Never has a generation more easily found food, clean water, information, communication, or medical care. If you can’t find things to be thankful for, just try to think about how much someone from 100 years ago would appreciate your current life. Envision yourself going to the Outhouse in the cold and it will be easy to feel grateful.
Gratitude is magic.
"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough." -- Oprah Winfrey
Reestablish Your Goals
Since you’ve changed places there is a chance that your goals have changed. Is your new location connected with achieving a past goal? Was your goal to buy a new house and now your routine is disrupted since you’ve moved in?
This is your opportunity to set new goals. By having a focus, it will be easier to know what you’re supposed to be doing minute by minute. So, if you feel lost in your new environment, you can just resort back to the steps of your goal to make progress, even if you’re not feeling like yourself at the time.
Being in a new place definitely changes things. This is usually not optional. The change in location changes our routines. If left untended, those changes could create a life you hadn’t intended. But, with a plan and some patience, this change can be nurtured to create the best result for you.
Burak Uzun is an award-winning writer and a Certified Meditation Teacher.
Burak Uzun also co-wrote a feature film called Team Marco, which was featured in over fifty film festivals around the globe and was distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
Please feel free to reach out to Burak here.
Learn more about SOCA LLC and Burak’s classes here.