The Importance of Living a Mindful and Conscious Life

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

In today’s world, many of us are going, going, going all the time.

We’re packing our days with impossible to-do lists or working long hours to get things done. We’re running around from one event to another with no breaks between.

But this kind of lifestyle isn’t healthy for us. 

Why? Because we go through each day with no awareness of our thoughts, our feelings, or even those around us. We’re not truly connected to ourselves and others. 

So how do we change this?

This is where the importance of living a mindful life comes in. It’s the best way to slow down and stop the cycle of living on autopilot.

Practicing mindfulness in our everyday lives has so many benefits. We can increase our self-awareness, improve our relationships, and feel happier.

What Does It Mean to Live a Mindful or Conscious Life?

Living mindfully and consciously involves three essential elements: 

1. Self-awareness

2. Staying present in the moment

3. Being intentional

I tell my clients that awareness starts with you — your thoughts, feelings, and the needs of your body and mind. You want to focus inwards and listen to yourself. 

Once you’ve mastered that you can expand your awareness outwards — to others, your relationships, and your experiences. This opens your mind to what you need in relation to the world around you.

This new awareness helps you stay present because you won’t focus on past or future events. As Dr. Carla Shuman from Psychology Today suggests:

“While it is healthy and realistic to set goals and look forward to the future, we don’t want to wish life away. We also don’t want to get so caught up in being busy that we don’t take time to savor the moments that will one day be memories.”¹

As your awareness increases and you stay present in each moment, you can become more intentional with your actions and choices. You can observe moments and experience them, rather than go through your day on autopilot.

And after a while, you’ll notice a richness in your life you may not have felt before.

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Is Mindful Living Hard to Learn?

Mindful living isn’t something that comes naturally to us.

Why? Because of the battle between our conscious and unconscious minds.²

Our conscious mind has only been around for the last 250,000 years. You might call this our “evolved” mind or the part of our brains we use to make intentional decisions.

Compare this to our unconscious mind which has been around for 3.5 billion years. It’s the “primitive” part of our brain that focuses on survival. So it developed three forces to help us deal with the stress of living: 

• Primitive instincts which come online when we’re in a stressful situation. An example of this is our fight or flight response.

• Emotional baggage that we carry around so we don’t forget past experiences. For example, you might automatically distrust a specific person because of your history.

• Ingrained habits we developed so we can react quicker and protect ourselves in the future. An example is always reacting in fear to a specific situation.²

These factors heavily influence our behavior, actions, and choices. 

So to live a mindful life, you have to do things differently. You have to make a conscious effort to “battle” your unconscious mind or you’ll do things like you always have.

Then you have to keep choosing to live consciously. Like with any other skill, you have to practice it over and over until it becomes a new habit. It will feel uncomfortable at first, but you can change how you live your life. 

The Benefits of Mindful Living

Besides tapping into your evolved mind, why is mindful living so important? 

This is a great question that many of my clients ask me. I always tell them there are many benefits to mindfulness — some of which can have unseen ripple effects throughout your life.

Here are five benefits that can improve your mental health and your relationships:

1. Feel more fulfilled. When you’re mindful of each moment, you’ll feel a richness in your experiences that you hadn’t felt before. This intention leads to greater fulfillment with each choice and a sense of purpose that may have been lacking in your life.

2. Increase your happiness. As you feel more fulfilled, you’ll start to notice an increase in your positive emotions like gratitude, excitement, silliness, or joy. This overall improvement will lead to greater happiness over time.

3. Feel calmer. With increased positivity and satisfaction in your life, you’ll feel more capable of handling stressful situations than before. You might even be able to bounce back quicker from those negative experiences too. 

4. Increase your resilience. As this cycle continues (feeling capable and bouncing back from stressful events), you’ll only strengthen your resilience. Why? Because you’re taking the time to process each experience, in the moment, as it happens, with self-awareness.¹

5. Improve your communication. Your new self-awareness and conscious living also helps you communicate better with others. As you become more in tune with your body, mind, and emotions, you can better understand your wants and needs. With that knowledge, you can communicate exactly what you need in your relationship to your partner (or parent, friend, sibling, etc.). 

Photo by Annushka Ahuja

How to Be Mindful and Live In the Moment

Now that you know the importance of living a mindful and conscious life, what can you do in your everyday life to get there?

Here are a few things to get you started:

• Be intentional with your words, thoughts, actions, and behavior.

• Slow down and take in each moment as it happens.

• Practice mindfulness in smaller doses with a few minutes of meditation or by attending a yoga class.

• Reflect on your life and the choices you’ve made by considering what you like and don’t like, what you’re doing every day, and who you’re spending time with.

• Find gratitude and appreciation each day in the small moments.

• Don’t let “your mind steal time from you” by focusing on the future too much or wishing time would move faster/slower.³

You don’t have to do all these at once — start with one or two that you’re comfortable with. As you practice and incorporate these techniques into your daily routine, you’ll get better at living mindfully.

You Can Live a Mindful Life

So many of us go about our day-to-day lives unaware and disconnected from the world around us. This isn’t a healthy way to live and I can’t stress enough the importance of living a mindful life. 

It isn’t something that’s easy to do, but you can add mindfulness to your life. With a bit of practice and a willingness to do things differently, you can live a more mindful and conscious life. The changes you’ll see will lead to great happiness and more fulfillment. 

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You’re ready to live a more mindful and conscious life. But you’re struggling with your emotional baggage and ingrained habits from your unconscious mind. 

That’s where I come in — I can help you work through your thoughts, feelings, and past events. If you’re ready to start living mindfully, reach out to me to set up a consultation.

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Sources:

1. “Mindful Living Increases Happiness and Resilience.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trial-triumph/202105/mindful-living-increases-happiness-and-resilience. 

2. “Our Unconscious and Conscious Minds Do Battle Daily.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/202202/our-unconscious-and-conscious-minds-do-battle-daily. 

3. “Mindfulness and Being Present in the Moment.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trauma-and-hope/201801/mindfulness-and-being-present-in-the-moment.