The practice of mindfulness can happen in the little moments. Discover what it means to "punctuate your day with mindfulness." It can help you be mindful throughout your day. This is a concept introduced to me by Sam Harris who created the Waking Up app.
To me, this concept of punctuating your day with mindfulness is about the little things throughout the day. Rather than thinking of mindfulness as being this big huge concept, like how can I be mindful all day long, let go of that and just be mindful in moments.
It can be overwhelming to feel as though you have to be mindful in every moment. So much so, that you can start to feel like a failure if you’re NOT mindful in every moment.
But to punctuate your day with mindfulness means to recognize the value in the little moments that can happen throughout your day. Mindful moments can happen at a yoga class or when you make time to sit in meditation.
But it can also happen in moments when you're eating a meal or just before you have a conversation with a friend or any time you get a quiet moment by yourself. This moment can be when you get in your car, it can be the moment before you start your car, when there's a moment of stillness and quiet.
Just have these little moments throughout the day where you stop, maybe you take a breath. This moment can be five seconds or maybe as long as a minute. The length of time doesn’t matter.
As you begin to punctuate your day with mindfulness, as you bring these little moments of awareness throughout our day, they grow and build into greater moments of mindfulness which have a cumulative effect. It’s like the moments of mindfulness go into a bank, they get stored, to help you to be more in tune, to function better, to be in the flow.
These little moments of mindfulness help you to feel better throughout your day.