Mindful Living:  How this allowed Me-Time Therapies to Flourish and Grow

Since I have introduced living in a Mindful way, my business Me-Time Therapies has become more successful. The definition of Mindfulness is ‘being aware of what is happening as it is happening’.  It is not another thing to add to our already busy day. Mindfulness is a specific way of living your life.

Unlike Meditation, I can practice Mindfulness anytime and anywhere and can apply it to any situation or task throughout my day. Meditation is setting time aside each day to sit alone for at least 20 minutes to help quieten the mind and be aware of our body sensations.

Mindful Living: Focusing on one task at a time rather than Multitasking

I feel Mindfulness helps me keep my full attention on the task that I am working on. I am better now at being able to focus on the task and ignore distractions around me. I feel more contented when I complete a task fully rather than switching backward and forward to different tasks. I find multitasking causes my mind to become too busy and results in me feeling anxious and a feeling of a sense of failure.

I also find using Mindfulness helps me overcome procrastination when I am faced with a task that is causing me worry and stress. Previously, I would let my mind wander off into negative thinking causing more anxiety. By putting off a task, I realised I was wasting time and energy and unable to relax. I now implement Mindfulness techniques by breaking down the task into stages. I start with the most important part of the task that needs action in order for me to complete the larger overall task.

As I complete each task, I pause and congratulate myself for achieving this. This is helping replace my harsh Inner Critic voice who previously would berate me and I would have this sense of not being ‘good enough’.

At the end of each day, I now reflect on the day and look back on what happened throughout the day that I was grateful for. Rick Hanson, author of The Buddha’s Brain calls this ‘taking in the good’. This helps rewire the neurons in our brains and also releases ‘feel-good’ hormones into our bodies.

This is a much better way to get off to sleep. Previously I would ruminate over something that caused me to feel stressed. This also resulted in releasing more adrenaline into my body which would further inhibit sleep.

Mindful Living: Setting goals in alignment with my values.

By living in a Mindful way, I now pause when asked to do a piece of work. I check in with myself to see if the request is in alignment with my values and if it will be moving my business in the direction that I am focusing on. I can now comfortably say ‘No’ to work that moves me away from the long-term goals of my business. This also results in me having more ‘Me-Time’ as I am no longer over-stretching myself. In the past, this has caused me to feel resentful and also close to burnout.

Mindful Living:  Meditations help to quieten my mind

By practising regular Mindfulness Meditation, it has helped me train my mind to be calmer. This has resulted in moments of insight and inspiration. My most successful business projects have come to me in this way.

Since training in Mindfulness and Self Compassion, I have successfully added a product range to Me-Time Therapies.  I had wanted to create and sell products for so many years but lacked belief in myself.