Today’s #MindfulnessMonday Tip: Regaining focus and concentration can help reduce stress and overload while increasing joy in your life.

In today’s society where everyone is practically ruled by our devices, multi-tasking has turned into a major stress inducer for most people. Mindfulness can help to strengthen your ability to stay focused on one task at a time, allowing you to be more efficient and effective than multi-tasking ever could.

So the real question is how to pull ourselves away from our smart phones and gain a deeper focus and concentration on the really important things in life.

Three things you can do to help regain focus and concentration:

1. Try meditation – Just by learning a simple, one-minute, breathing exercise you can start to take control of your wondering mind. Whenever you start to feel your focus drifting away, take 60 seconds (just one minute) to pull that focus back to where you need it to be with a quick breathing exercise.
2. Practice simplicity – By reducing the clutter in your life, you will also reduce the distractions. Try donating or recycling unneeded possessions, adding your phone number and address to Do Not Call and Do Not Mail lists, stop checking those social media accounts that are no longer providing you joy and happiness.
3. Focus on the people around you – Don’t allow distractions to pull you away from conversations with loved ones. One way to do this is putting your phone away whenever eating, or better yet put them on the table when eating out, whoever picks up their phone first gets to pay the bill.

Today’s Mindfulness Exercise:

60-Second Breathing Meditation

Your breath is a great took to help train your mind to focus your thoughts and increase concentration. Whenever you start to feel your mind wander or become overloaded use this two-step meditation to bring you back to the present.

Step 1 – Notice your breathing. Pay attention to the sensation of the air around you; how it feels as it enters your nose then travels down into your lungs. Pay attention to the rise and fall of your chest and abdomen as the air moves in and out of your body. Don’t change the way you breathe, let the air move in and out as it normally would, just be aware of the sensations involved with the act of breathing.

Step 2 – Count your breaths. The first breath in and out is 1, the next breath in and out is 2, continue until you reach a full ten to fifteen breaths. As you relax, your breaths will get longer and ten to fifteen relaxed breaths should take you close to a minute.

Mindfulness Journaling Prompt: How did the 60-Second Breathing Meditation make you feel? Did your mind wander during your breathing? If so, what were you thinking about? How many times did it wander? Were you easily able to return your focus to your breathing once you realized your mind had wandered?

Mindfulness journaling can be very private. However, I would love to invite you to comment below and share your experiences with this short 60-Second Breathing Mediation.

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Check out my #MindfulnessMonday YouTube Series and don’t forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode!

EPISODE 23 ~ Stress Is a 6 Letter Word

EPISODE 22 ~ Mindfulness Myths

EPISODE 21 ~ Mindfulness Isn’t MAGIC

EPISODE 20 ~ Eat Cake

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