Encouraging others spreads an umbrella that extends to cover encouraging yourself! Through encouraging others you become more optimistic, determined and focused yourself...
What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is awareness. By learning to observe your thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations in the present moment, you cultivate a new way of living your life; skillfully responding to stress stimuli, as opposed to reacting to it.
While practicing awareness may seem a simple concept, it's far from simple. Our conditioned ways of being in our outer and inner worlds have us either dwelling on past events or worrying about future threats that may never come to be. Very seldom do we find ourselves residing in the now - which of course, is all we really ever have. The practice of mindfulness is unlearning the habitual patterns that fuel our stress and reactivity. It involves deliberately slowing down to notice, acknowledge and be with our selves and our situations as they are, right now, without judgment and the need to change things in order to be happy. Mindfulness is living life consciously, one moment at a time. |