Mindfulness is a practice that we can all benefit from. It occurs when we are aware of our surroundings and ourselves, which sounds simple, but it has a powerhouse of benefits involved with it. Being aware of the present moment sounds easy, but it actually takes some practice, which is why a mindfulness challenge is such a good idea. It allows you to consistently work on being mindful until it becomes a natural habit in your life.
Top 5 Reasons To Take A Mindfulness Challenge
1. Cultivate A More Positive Mindset
I would say that this should be enough of a reason to want to be more mindful. Negativity makes you feel bad, both mentally and physically.
Studies have shown that mindfulness plays a part in reducing the amount of ruminating people do. It allows you to get unstuck from that negative loop in your mind and move past it.
2. Makes You More Proactive As Opposed To Reactive
Mindfulness has been shown to decrease emotional reactivity. This means that instead of flying off the handle when someone makes you upset or sad and then going down a rabbit hole of misery, you will be able to recognize that they have made you upset without reacting to it inappropriately. Instead, you will be able to choose how to move forward and have an active role in deciding how the situation is going to impact your day.
If you are prone to letting people, circumstances, and news ruin your day, then this will be a huge benefit of mindfulness for you.
3. Develop More Focus
Without all the thoughts and reactions causing you to be distracted from what you are doing, you will find that you are more focused. Focused on what you want. Focused on good things. Focused on doing what you need to do. All of this will lead to more happiness and success.
4. Better Relationships
Being more mindful will help you in every relationship you have.
Mindfulness will help you listen better, have more compassion, and be more present with someone when they need you to be there for them.
It will help you appreciate your time with others and get the most out of it that you can.
If you are prone to letting your mind be elsewhere when you are with someone important, this should be an enticing benefit for you to take a mindfulness challenge. Becoming more mindful will help you experience more time with them and create better, stronger memories because you are so present and aware of what’s going on.
5. Enhanced Flexibility
When you are less reactive and more positive, you are able to handle situations better. Instead of being rigid when issues or unexpected problems arise, you will be more likely to go with the flow and make decisions that are beneficial to moving forward quickly.
The ability to be more flexible will benefit your happiness, success, relationships, and health.
Other Reasons To Take A Mindfulness Challenge
There are so many reasons to take a mindfulness challenge that it would be a waste not to try it. These are mostly subsets of the benefits above. And you can see how these could even branch out to more benefits as you go along with your mindfulness journey.
- Boost resilience.
- Protect against or decrease depression.
- Help you cope with other people better.
- Help you cope with illness better.
- Improve your success in academics and in business.
- Improve overall health.
- Help you recover faster.
- Enhance self-insight.
- Promote intuition.
- Increase self-compassion.
- Benefit irritable bowel syndrome.
- May reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
- May decrease cognitive decline.
- May improve your immune response.
- May reduce cell aging.
30-Day Mindfulness Challenge
This mindfulness challenge is all laid out for you. All you need to do is follow the calendar for the next 30 days and do what it says on each day.
For example, on day 3 you are going to sit quietly for 10-20 minutes without watching TV, talking to someone, or doing anything else!
All of these tasks are things that will help you work on your ability to be more mindful and adopt it into your life.
Note: You can find a downloadable PDF of the image above here.
