What is Mindfulness? Discover its benefits and how it can change your life

Mindfulness is an English word that does not have an exact translation, the best known are "mindfulness" or "mindfulness".. The use of the word "full" means that we will be present in body, mind and soul and at the same time, we will not judge what happens; we will accept what happens to us as it happens, when it is happening.

And you will tell me, "if I know what is happening" … then I ask you and I wonder: How many times do we find ourselves 100% immersed in what is happening at that precise moment and also do not judge what is happening?

My answer is: very few. Because most of the time we live on automatic pilot, We think, feel and act automatically because our mind feeds mostly on our memories (past) and worries about what is going to happen (future) coloring our way of feeling and acting, since we generally act from what we consider we already know and on the other hand, we are afraid of what will happen in the future. So we are constantly judging each thing, situation that happens to us and each person that appears.

(Keep reading: Return to your center: resources to navigate anxiety and anguish)

The good news is that all of this can change and that's where Mindfulness comes in: With each and every one of its practices, we will seek to be present, to be aware of what is happening to us when it is happening; This at first may take just a few minutes to get into the habit of being more and more connected with ourselves, with what we live and with other beings.

Here it is wonderful to see and feel how new ways of seeing and living life open up for us, how we can change, transform, modify our actions because we can become observers of our thoughts, of our way of acting in a curious and friendly way, reaching the depth of our interior, where only you can reach; knowing you, respecting you, distinguishing and learning your potentialities and strengths but also your limits and shadows, recognizing yourself as a human being living your own experience, being the protagonist of your life.

In my personal experience, Mindfulness allows me, among many other benefits, to know myself better; accept me; accept, without over-dimensioning, as I did before, what happens or happens to me and that there are things or situations that do not depend on what I want or desire, releasing them.

In addition, I learn every day not to get entangled in my own thoughts, to treat myself kindly and treat others better, realizing that just as difficult moments or situations happen to me, it can also happen to others, thus becoming a person. more empathetic.

Other learnings are, being able to connect with my body and notice that it wants to communicate with me and in this way work on my health since I had deposited all my anguish, my fears and concerns, producing some functional imbalances in it; the need to connect with my being, with my essence, doing and looking for what I am passionate about, what I love to do and that I am achieving in my daily work because one of the great differences in the quality of life and well-being makes it being connected to oneself, being coherent between what we think, feel and do; This gives us freedom and inner peace, keys to living better and that I believed only existed in self-help books. It is possible to find new ways and solutions to feel better.

The experience, the experience is unique and personal, nobody better than you to know what makes you feel full, you just have to be brave to cheer yourself up.

* By María Daniela Plinio, Graduate in Psychology, Mindfulness Specialist and Director in Argentina of We Chill Out.