Mindfulness is the practice of cultivating awareness in your life. It brings you back to the present moment inviting you to notice how you feel vs what you’re thinking. This awareness helps you notice when you feel more tense, rigid and stressed, or calm, present and relaxed. Over time, your Mindfulness practice can help to soothe your racing thoughts and relax your turbulent feelings. Unfortunately, as easy as it may sound, practicing mindfulness is not for the faint of heart.
As someone who practices mindful living, it can be painful and challenging to feel it all vs. suppress and numb out how you feel. It is also tricky to focus the mind… We may be physically present in one place, but our minds are in another. That’s just how our little brains are wired! That said…
Mindfulness is something that we can all practice – with more ease and enjoyment – if we focus on consistency, not perfection.
With mindfulness, perfection is not important. As a matter of fact, it should not even be the end goal of the practice. No one is perfect, and no one can be. Hence, it is best to let go of that notion so that you can practice mindfulness the best way possible.
Practice makes perfect does not apply in mindfulness, but consistency does.
Practice vs perfection is most important. Consistency with your practice helps you build a habit, which is needed for living a more mindful life. If you desire to be perfect, this can impact your mindfulness practice… Perfectionism often leads to failure as you tend to feel awful after one thing goes wrong… no matter how minuscule that thing may be. And this awful feeling can have a negative impact on being more mindful.
Consistency is different. When something goes wrong, you don’t have to necessarily feel bad over it. Instead, you still show up exactly as you are that day and practice from a lense of curosity and compassion – not expectations and judgment.
Consistency allows you to have more freedom from imperfections + more freedom to adapt to new things and challenges without overwhelming yourself with the thought that everything should be perfect.
For example, mindfulness requires us to focus on the present moment. Perfectionism will dictate that your mind should not – and never – wander off during your mindfulness practice. But that’s definitely hard to do, and this will only bring frustration to the practitioner.
Consistency, on the other hand, reminds you to show up as you are – with no expections for the practice: if your mind wanders off for a bit, you accept it and greet yourself with gratitude + compassion for recognizing that your mind has wandered, and then bring it back to the present moment.
By practicing mindfulness consistently, it becomes the foundation for how you move through life. Awareness leads to acceptance of who we are now, accountability for the life we live and actions we choose to take. Being more mindful leads to deeper connections, greater resilience and more joy.
For more information about Mindfulness practices – like Yoga, Meditation + Breathwork, please reach out via the contact page.