We push ourselves to go the extra mile. We strive for excellence and higher performance. This type of mindset improves your confidence, sparks willpower based habits, and ultimately a healthy well-being. But what happens when you come to realize you don’t have those things? In the uncomfortable silence, your mindfulness is tapped to reveal natural gaps.
Your next thought identifies a present gap at the office. A gap in helping your family. A gap in securing future finances. A gap here. A gap there. It becomes destructive. Yet the biggest gap of all isn’t on the outside; it’s not others. It is within us. This gap is our inner narrative that play around with our emotions. It is your responsibility, followed by an action that improves your mind, body, and surroundings.
A large trend in “mindfulness” has exploded. This notion helps to tackle anything from habitual eating, to addiction, to athletic visualization, to simply finding our sanity in this hectic world. Using mindfulness to curb the destructive emotions and improve concentration is the tip of the iceberg. Scientific evidence illustrates via MRI scans that after 8-weeks of mindfulness practice (e.g. visualization, mediation, or autogenic training) the amygdala shrinks. When the amygdala decreases, the thickness of the prefrontal cortex increases – the headquarters for awareness, decision-making, and concentration.
Author, Joy Rains states that “Meditation is not a practice of stopping thoughts but a practice of being aware of them.” You first need to manage your expectations as newcomers to “mindfulness” often get frustrated when trying to silence the swirling of our mind’s thoughts. Simple attention training and breath work, much of what athletes do day in and out, is essential and don’t require a large amounts of our time.
No one can make you be aware; other than yourself. No one can force you to change; only yourself. No one can promise you things will be better; only you can. When you start to take back control of your narrative and mindset, you start to make inner changes. Work to close the inner gaps for a better, higher performing you.
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