MINDFULNESS & ME - MY 5 TIPS FOR LIVING MINDFULLY

If you've been reading my blog from the start or since last year you'll know I previously wrote a tell all truths blog post about my battle with Mental Heath, Depression and Anxiety about my diagnosis with Bipolar Disorder.

See Blog Post here.

Since then I wrote another blog post about How I Stay Positive, Happy and Relaxed.

See Blog Post here.

Continuing my journey to happiness and sharing it with you all I thought I'd share with you how I deal with daily struggles, staying positive and being mindful.

Mindfulness is very, very important to me and something that can I can say is the main thing that has helped me sculpt the positive and open minded attitude I'm now lucky enough - after my exhausting journey - to say I'm in.

There are several Mindful things I do in my daily life to prepare myself for everything I may panic about, worry about, get anxious or stressed about that keep me calm and collected when certain occasions arrive I may have previously struggled with.

I thought I'd share with you 5 Tips and Tricks for Living Mindfully.

1. Take Each Day with a Fresh Mind
Something I always used to struggle with was carrying over my worries, troubles and concerns from the previous day or week.
My New Mindful Attitude has taught me that once I wake in the morning it really is a New Day with New Findings and New Experiences, don't mix that with worries that are in the past and they don't need to be carried over.
Start the day by filing those concerns in your Mindful Filing Cabinet in the 'In The Past' File.

2. Don't chase Happiness. Live it.
For years and years since being diagnosed with Bipolar I've chased Happiness.
Thinking 'Now I have the medication and the diagnosis, all I need now is the happiness and I'll be fine.' Well this was a lot more difficult than 14 Year Old me initially though.
Happiness wasn't waiting for me in some long lost abandoned cave by it's last owner and it didn't need chasing.
I just needed to let myself live it.
I spent too many years thinking I would stumble upon Happiness or it would finally find me like a Hogwarts Wizards Owl until I finally realised I just needed to accept that I could, and was allowed to be Happy.
Do what you love, spend time with who you love and give yourself some credit (because you're pretty awesome too you know!) and Live Happiness.

3. Be Creative
By creative I don't mean dig out your childhood paints and got wild with several canvas' in the garden - although that would be awesome and if you do please hola at me so I can join in - Unless that's how you generally spends your weekends then go for it!
I mean, let you mind be creative.
Do things you wouldn't normally do, Suggest thing you wouldn't normally suggest and Try new things you'd normally completely ignore.
I'm naturally a creative person. I can think of nothing better than spending an afternoon letting myself loose on Photoshop downloading new fonts and creating new designs or going on Holiday and spending more time with my Camera than with any of my friends or family.
But living mindfully has shown me new ways to be creative and have fun doing it.
If you struggle to get your creative juices flowing as an adult - as it was all so much easier when you were a child in primary school with nothing else to do than let your imagination go wild and be as creative as humanly possible - May I suggest you invest in An Adult Colouring Book.
I recently bought the Mindfulness Colouring Book for adults that has the most amazing selection of 100's of patterns from mandala's and tea cups to cabbages and it's so great for getting in to a creative and mentally healthy zone that my Boyfriend & my Mum who suffer from Stress and Anxiety have both invested in Adult Colouring Books and love them!

4. Give yourself Me Time
I used to try my best to plan and cram up all of my spare time so I wasn't alone and always had someone with me as one of my worst fears with my stress and anxiety was  being alone as I always felt more vulnerable and unsafe with my thoughts.
However, since practising being Mindful in the past few years I've come to cherish my Me Time.
It's the time where I become a version of myself I'd not seen in a while where I get creative, positive, motivated and calm.
I now try and have as much Me Time as possible in my spare time.
This isn't on my Weekends which I spend with my Family or my Boyfriend this is when I'm off work, or on those rare occasions where my boyfriend is away for the night or on a job.
I now adore my Me Time.
I mostly have my Blogging to thank for my changing in thoughts on being along, as for the past year it's meant I've needed to be alone to work on posts. Then once I'd finished a post I'd have more Me Time with my fresh and accepting mind from being creative writing my posts feeling so motivated.
In the past year using my Me Time I've created a Blog, YouTube Channel, Silhouette Signs Company and made more time for my Photography Jobs!

5. Challenge & Experiment
This is something I touched on in my How I Stay Positive, Happy and Relaxed Blog Post where I regularly challenge myself with things I'd normally struggle with.
Well with Living Mindfully I Challenge all the time.
Even yesterday during my Me Time instead of spending the next hour watching YouTube Videos with all of my jobs completed, I decided to take myself to my car and travel to a destination which I normally have anxiety issues with (which is only a shop in a town I struggle visiting. So to some of you this may sound  utterly ridiculous, or some of you who suffer with anxiety may be able to relate) on my own to do some shopping for the evening.
Normally I'd only go with my boyfriend and even on a good day would I go in with him, otherwise I'd stay in the car in my comfort zone.
But after I'd done this I felt so accomplished and proud of myself.
Anxiety it's challenging in itself as you don't know when it's going to spring upon you but you start to notice the things that trigger it.
So adapting a Mindful Life is amazing for you if you suffer from anxiety as it allows you to thing differently and from new perspectives about certain situations.

Being Mindful and Experimenting in every day life is another Top Tip I would recommend.

Try Random New Things such as:
• Take a new route home from work.
• Grab some random ingredients from the fridge and create a new meal.
• Doodle with no intention of an outcome.
• Take a walk exploring with no final destination.
• Have a hour away from you phone and social media. (you'll be surprised)
• Type a random 3 Digit Number into your Sky Remote and watch a program you've never heard off.
• Take a Baking Book off your book shelf and stop on a random page and baking something new.
• Go into a Book shop or onto Amazon and pick up/order a random book and take a read.
• Spend a weekend off in the sun driving in a direction and stumble across a destination to spend the day at;

Try new things, experiment, explore and find a version of you you didn't know before.
Maybe you watch a new TV Channel and educate yourself about something you didn't know or find a love for watching gymnastics. Maybe you take a different route home from work and stumble across as restaurant or shop on the way you didn't know existed and a new place to visit over the weekend.
All the things help calm, free and find yourself into a new way of things helping you change your mindset into an accepting and experimental mind.



Being Mindful is fabulous.
Try it.



Books I'd Recommend:
The Calm Book
Buy Here
The Mindfulness Colouring Book
Buy Here
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying
Buy Here
Life with a Sprinkle of Glitter
Buy Here
Get The Glow
Buy Here
Nourish: Mind, Body & Soul
Buy Here


I hope this post has either inspired, motivated or educated you to something either you didn't know about, were nervous to try or something you were curious about.
Either way, I hope it helped!
Please leave me a comment with your thoughts.



Thanks for reading!

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