You already know how to be mindful. Anytime you’ve been really engrossed in something and forgotten everything else you’ve been mindful, whether that’s happened while reading a book, watching a beautiful sunset, shopping, walking the dog, making love, etc. it makes no difference, the same principle of mind is at play.  Any activity can inadvertently create mindfulness.

The difference when you develop a mindfulness practice is that you deliberately cultivate this experience whenever you want to. Our recommendation would be to try to be mindful all the time. In the world of meditation and mindfulness, there is no such thing as too much of a good thing, the more the merrier!

Since mindfulness is not an activity that you do separately from everything else, you literally have all day to work on it, and the more you do it, the better you get at it.

So how do you do it?  You simply notice what’s going through your mind. You notice when you are not in the present moment, or when your mind wanders to anything irrelevant. You gently bring your awareness back to the task at hand. If you notice your thoughts becoming sad, angry, dark, or negative, you notice that and redirect your focus to the task at hand and to more positive and productive thoughts.  If you find yourself becoming involved in the past or future or mental activity that is not relevant to the task at hand, you step back from that mental activity, just observing it and realizing that these are just thoughts that don’t represent inherent reality. Once you have recognized this, gently return to the task at hand. Eventually your mind will do this without you even trying. Really! 

A daily meditation practice is what gives you the mental strength to do this.  Please read the rest of the series to dive deeper into mindfulness practice.