Using Mindfulness Meditation to Create a Positive Reality

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Winston Churchill

Mindfulness meditation provides you with a specific time to acknowledge your feelings in a nonjudgmental way, offering a safe mental space to explore your emotions. Clearing busy thoughts can be difficult with the pace of today’s world and the outside stressors all people face. Still, mindfulness meditation can help process negative feelings to allow you to create a more positive reality.

How Mindfulness Meditation Pushes Out Negativity

Mindfulness meditation is about narrowing your awareness to focus on your breath, physical sensations, emotions, or thoughts as they are, in the present moment. This calm and focused state of being allows you to create the mental space needed for allowing your experience, investigating it with curiosity and then nurturing yourself.

Let’s look at a few ways how:

• Recognize what you are thinking. When an upsetting or negative thought comes to mind, simply recognize that the idea has formed. With curiosity, look inward to understand why the negative thought exists. Understanding where a thought came from can help put it into perspective.
• Relax your body to help ease your mind. Negative thoughts and emotions can make your body feel tense or clench up. Notice this reaction as it happens and make a conscious effort to relax and ease your breathing. Imagine negative thoughts leaving your body with each exhale you take.
• Finally, think about something positive in your life. What has gone right lately, and what are you thankful for? What achievements are you working toward? These positive thoughts can inspire you, and meditation can bring you ease and peace.
• This is a playlist of all of our mindfulness meditation practices to help you get started.

Creating a New Positive Reality

The idea is not to ignore negative or challenging things in life, but rather to not obsess over them in a harmful way. For example, take time to recognize small acts of kindness you may experience throughout the day and try to return them, or be mindful and present in favorable situations and embrace the best parts of your day. When a set back does come, process what happened and look for potential benefits that can come as a result.

Mindfulness meditation also allows us to shift our thinking. Too often, when something negative happens, it can spur a sense of dread. We not only think about what happened and the potential consequences, but we sometimes use it as an excuse to beat ourselves up, which only adds stress. While you have the mental space, think of the advice you may give to a friend experiencing the same thoughts and remember you deserve compassion and grace just like your friend would.

Mindfulness in Positive Psychology

The act of mindfulness is part of the larger discipline of positive psychology, which focuses on positivity, particularly on individual and societal health. The idea is that finding positivity both inside ourselves and the outside world can provide mental health benefits and can be applied at any time. It can be used for self-care during stressful times or as a coping method and relaxation strategy.

Mindfulness can help you focus on your own personal strengths, taking time to recognize what you are good at and seeking opportunities that maximize these skills. It can improve memory as you spend more time “in the moment” and improve physical health.

Because our minds are programed to keep us alive and safe, we naturally have a negativity bias to see potential threats.  Therefore, it takes extra work and focus to see the positive and make an imprint in your mind so that you can begin to shift towards a positivity bias.  A daily practice of gratitude is a step towards making this shift.  You can start by writing down 3 things you are grateful for every day and reading this list as a reminder.

Practice Mindfulness Meditation with The Mindful Movement

Here are some resources to help get you started:

• Starting your Meditation Practice
• Creating a Meditation Space that will Call you to Practice
• Staying Mindful in the Midst of Challenging Times

The Mindful Movement is an oasis that allows you to tap into inner peace, a positive mindset and your ability for healing. If you are interested in practicing meditation, our Members Oasis is the perfect place to get started with hundreds of practices to choose from, a monthly live class, as well as a wonderfully supportive community to lean on for motivation.

Additional Resources:

If you are looking to dive into the world of meditation in 2020, a great starting point is our 4-Day Meditation Journey. This free program is a great resource for beginners and those looking to step back into the practice of meditation.

Additionally, here are a few other practices to help you get started or develop a more consistent routine:

Ultimately, Les and I at the Mindful Movement really want to offer resources and support possible to help you.  Let us know how we can help.  Please feel to leave a comment with any other suggestions, comments, or questions for the community!

With love and gratitude,

Sara and Les

The Mindful Movement