In this section, we're going to go over the topic of mindfulness. A lot of people think that to be mindful, you need to be meditating. And that is simply not the case. I want to share this quote from Buddha, where he states that be where you are, otherwise you will miss your life. I think we are all guilty of being somewhere else in our lives, especially when we have a huge amount of stress. And we have so much to do on our to do list that we don't even realize that we're not being present and in the moment, and mindfulness is the tool that we can use to bring us back into the present moment and really, truly enjoy ourselves.

So the definition of mindfulness means maintaining a moment by moment awareness of our thoughts, our feelings, our sensations, our surroundings. Through a gentle nurturing lens. So what that basically means is don't beat yourself up if you find yourself, you know, caught in a thought or you know, on a rampage of all the things that you need to do, and you didn't even realize like how crazy your mind gets. It's looking at our life in a very gentle way and not beating ourselves up for being human. You know, our thoughts are never going to stop. But we can control our minds and we can have a little bit of power as to where our energy goes.

And mindfulness is such a great tool to bring in to our lives. So I want to go over three different exercises that you can do any single day, wherever you are, just to bring you back to the present moment. So the first mindfulness exercise is really just becoming a Queensland excuse me, well acquainted with your surroundings, right? If you find yourself stressing or feeling anxious or just needing to be in the present moment, just ask yourself some questions. You know, just say, Where am I? What is today?

What is the date? What's the month? What's the year? What's the weather? Like? How old am I?

What season? Is it? You know, don't think of the, you know, don't try to go into like, oh, what do I have to do today? Don't do that. That's going into the future. Just, you know, look around and orient yourself in the present.

Are you in your car? Are you at your job? Are you at home? Are you online at the grocery store? This is a really, really simple tool. And I do it often, especially when, for some reason I'm always doing it at Target.

I don't know why but I always catch myself like at Target, you know, looking at all this stuff and And I realized, like, you know, my mind is going a mile a minute because I'm, you know, looking at all the stuff in my grocery grocery cart that you know, is gonna add up and then I just realized, you know what? It's okay. And and I asked myself these questions and it really brings me back to the present moment. So another mindfulness exercise that you can use is, you know, obviously, you don't want to do this one with, you know, if you're driving or needing to focus on something, because it you have to drive so, you want to keep your eyes open, but you want to look around the room and notice your surroundings, or any of the details. So are you in your office? Are you you know, what kind of walls are in your office?

Do you have artwork on the walls? Are you in a doctor? office are their cabinets in the doctor's office, hold a pillow or a stuffed animal or ball, you know, allow yourself to feel, you know, how does that pillow feel? Is it soft? Is it hard? Is it squishy?

Is it warm, you know, place a cool cloth on your forehead and hold something cold. This is something that really helps me like in the morning, to be mindful and to you know, bring mindfulness into my everyday life. What I'll do is when I have my cup of coffee in the morning, I won't be on my phone. I won't have the TV on I will literally sit there with my cup of coffee, and I will just feel it. You know, feel how hot it is feel how it feels on my hands. You want to listen to soothing music.

That's also a great way and really be in the moment when you're listening to that music. Another great way to stay mindful is keeping your feet firmly on the ground. I don't know why this works, but it works. Because you're connecting to the energy of the earth. It really does help. And another great way is if you're having a conversation with someone focus in on their breath, do they have a high pitch?

Do they have a I'm sorry, their breath, I mean, focused on their voice, focus on their voice. So you know, listen to their voice, do they have a cough? Do they have an itch in their throat? Are they do they have a high pitch, a low pitch. That's another great exercise to use. So last but not least, this one is great if you struggle with anxiety, or you might feel nervous or worried about something.

This is a great mindfulness exercise. If you're about to, you know, if you're if you're panicking or, you know, you're starting to feel the effects of anxiety This is a very simple and effective sensory grounding exercise that can help you really quickly get grounded and ease that anxiety or panic. So it's I call it the 543 to one method, and what it is, is you want to name five things you see in the room with you, you want to name four things you can feel, you want to name three things you can hear right now, name two things you can smell. And then you need to say name one good thing that is about yourself. And when you go through all of these, it brings you into a state of awareness and allows your mind to kind of reroute that negative thought pattern that's happening. So those are some really simple, really powerful mindfulness exercises that you can incorporate into your life with or without a meditation practice.