Learn How to Cultivate A Mindfulness Practice in Your Life

Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present and aware of where you are and what you are doing. It's so easy to get distracted and overwhelmed with the chaos around us but practicing mindfulness may just be the hidden gem to happiness!

In this podcast, you will learn the research behind mindfulness and gain an understanding of how mindfulness can benefit you in four key areas- Mind, Brain, Body, and Behaviors.

Listen to today's episode to learn ways to apply mindfulness to your everyday life, start dealing with your emotions, be present, and disconnect from distractions.

Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships

Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

Website: www.PIESUniversity.com

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Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes @pies_university

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Mentioned: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1533210108329862

You’ll Learn

• What mindfulness is
• A quick mindfulness practice
• 5 Ways to integrate mindfulness into your everyday life
• How mindfulness affects your mind, body, brain, and behaviors
• How mindfulness helps with PIES

Episode 92 - Learn How to Cultivate A Mindfulness Practice in Your Life with Kimberly Beam Holmes

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Transcript

Kimberly Beam Holmes: 0:30

Mindfulness has been touted as being one of the best things that a person can do in order to decrease anxiety, increase focus and concentration and have an overall better mental capacity. There are a lot of great things that mindfulness can do. And in this episode, I'm going to show you the research of what mindfulness can do and how to actually cultivate a mindfulness practice into your life. But right now, real briefly, I'm going to share with you what mindfulness has done for me. When I am good about having those periods of silence thankfulness and mindfulness during my day, I noticed that I am calmer, that I am better able to really identify what it is I need to work on and let other things fall to the wayside, as well as more intentionally cultivate positive relationships in my life. So just this morning, as I was ending one of my yoga practices, and I was ending in that minute of savasana, I realized how I haven't had that time that two to three minutes, even during a day, to really clear my mind from all of the stressful things, and focus intentionally on the good things. And so I really spent that time thinking back to yesterday, I actually took last week's podcast episode on gratitude, which I really listened to too, just to let all of you know. So I hope none of you listen to that one, go back and do it. But in my mindfulness practice, I focused on the things I was grateful for. I focused on specifically what had happened already that morning, being able to wake up, snuggle up in this new chair that I got, it's one of those cute egg chairs, you ladies probably know what I'm talking about. I was able to cuddle up in that do my Bible reading, drink my non coffee, hot drink because I gave up coffee for Lent. And just spend that time in quiet. In thinking I was thinking about how grateful I was for that I was thinking about how grateful I was helped last night, my son crawled up into my lap, and asked for Cuddles, which was something that I had mentioned actually on last week's gratitude podcast. How that had happened the night before when I recorded that episode. And so I spent my mindfulness time being aware not only of my breath, of my bodily sensations, but even being aware of what are the positive things that I'm putting into my mind right now. I hope you listen to this entire podcast and includes a mindfulness practice. Towards the end, I give you some prompts that you can follow along with, in really, I hope that this simplifies the practice of mindfulness to make it something accessible to you, that you can put in your toolbox and use on a daily basis. And even if it's not a daily basis, even a weekly basis, or even just the days when all crap hits the fan and you need to do something to reset. mindfulness can help you do that. Let's dive in to today's episode.

Unknown: 3:42

There's a process to falling in love. And it starts with attraction. Join Kimberly beam homes and our special guests as they discuss how to become the most attractive you can be physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, or as we refer to it, working on your pies will teach you how to have better relationships and become more attracted to others, and maybe more importantly, to yourself. It starts with attraction, and it starts now.

Marriage Helper: 4:14

Let's start by talking about what is mindfulness. I think it's one of those things that can be really scary to some people because they feel like it might be a religious practice. They don't know what they're doing. All they can think of is a bunch of people in India sitting and meditating with a bunch of Hindu gods around them. And I have to tell you that that couldn't be further from what the practice of mindfulness is. To put it simply, mindfulness is the ability and practice of becoming acutely aware of your present moment. Now there's a difference in mindfulness and meditation. Although some people use those two words interchangeably, they're typically a little bit different. When we talk about the word meditation, we're moreso talking about a practice of silence and solitude, a time where you find a quiet location where you sit and you close your eyes typically, and focus on something whether it be your breath or a word or a mantra, and you hold that state of being for a period of time, five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 24 hours for some some of the Guru's in that area. do things like that. That's typically what we refer to as meditation. That's not what I'm talking about necessarily in today's episode. Instead, I'm specifically talking about mindfulness. Now, mindfulness, again, is being acutely aware of your present moment. So this can be done as you are doing other activities, you can practice mindfulness. When you're cooking. You can practice mindfulness when you're walking. When you're eating. There's a ton of different ways which we'll talk about. At the end of the episode, I'll give you five specific ways you can practice mindfulness in your daily life starting today. But first of all, I want you to understand why mindfulness is so important and what it actually does for your body. So let's look at some of the research that's out there on mindfulness. In 2008, Dr. Jeffrey Greeson, decided that he would do a what is titled A mindfulness research update. But basically what that is, is he has taken a meta analysis where he has reviewed 52 Journal studies of empirical and theoretical work that were selected for review to be published in two different journals and magazines of actual scholarly research. So he took 52 different studies that different researchers, different schools had done on the practice of mindfulness. And he put it into what is called a meta analysis, where he's taking all of these putting them together and kind of making a collaborative piece of work that summarizes all of these other hundreds of pages of research in to one space, it's a really great way to look at research because you're getting the best bang for your buck when you're looking at meta analyses. But this was published in Sage Publications in the complementary health practice review, in January 2009. He took all of this research from the decade before, and amazing results came from it, he broke it down into four different areas of what mindfulness does for you into how it affects your mind, how it affects your brain, how it affects your body and how it affects your behavior. Let's just dive real deep into this right now. So for the mind, mindfulness was shown to help increase attention span, awareness, and acceptance of situations that people were going through circumstances they found themselves in through having a meditation practice. And it also was associated with having lower levels of psychological distress, which basically means people who had anxiety had less anxiety, people who are experiencing depression, began to see relief from their depression, anger and worry, both of those began to subside as well in coordination with a mindfulness practice. And there was one study that he even highlighted in this part, talking about how it affects the mind where he talks about a group of students that for four weeks went through a mindfulness meditation training. And on the other side of that mindfulness training had reduced distress by decreasing rumination, a cognitive process associated with depression and other mood disorders. Basically, what that means is before they tested these students, and these students were experiencing distress the way they were experiencing distress in their lives, because that's a very vague term was by having constant ruminating thoughts. So negative thoughts that continued to present themselves over and over again, in their minds, which I know many of you are experiencing as well. I've experienced it in my own life. But I recently did a survey of PI's followers people on the email list and one of the number one things that kept coming up when I asked the question, where are you stuck in your life, more people said, I need to get control of my thoughts in stop thinking about the things that I have been thinking about so much. So for all of you that struggle with that, listen up, this whole episode is for you. But basically, what they found was mindfulness started decreasing those ruminating thoughts. There was another clinical study that was done in 2004. And it was for eight weeks, and again, showed the same thing, a significant reduction in ruminative thinking with people who had a history of depression. So basically, putting it all together and summarizing it, it's really interesting to see that this practice of mindfulness can actually it appears, seem to start reshaping the way that our thoughts come into our brains. And all we're doing is the kinds of things we were doing at the very beginning of this episode. But I'm not done. There's still so much more to talk about in this study. So another one was that a mindfulness scale development research or the mindfulness skill development research has found that people with higher natural levels of mindfulness. So they have been doing this in their daily life, they have a practice of it in some way, whether it's formal or not, they started to feel less stressed, less anxious, less, less depressed, were more joyful, inspired, grateful, hopeful, content, vital and satisfied with life. I don't know about you, but I want all of those things. I love all of that in What's really amazing about this one is it saying it didn't even have to be something that was professionally given. There are different types of therapists and counselors that actually use mindfulness guided tactics and in sessions that they guide their clients through, but it's saying it didn't matter if the people were having it done by their therapist, or if they went through any kind of formal training on their own, so that they could be mindful on their own later. Even if you're just a newbie or a rookie, like me, then doing these things in your life can begin to make a difference. In it's so easy and free. We'll talk more about it in a minute. But in addition to the mental health benefits of meditation and the mindfulness practice, and cultivating, as Dr. Greeson says, the mindful awareness and daily life, simply being in a mindful state momentarily, is associated with a greater sense of well being from a study that was done in 2006. We see that Dr. Grayson goes on to say that research further suggests that people with higher levels of mindfulness are able to regulate their sense of well being and have a greater emotional awareness, they have a better understanding of themselves and of the people around them, they have a better acceptance of situations they've gone through, and situations that other people in their life are currently going through. And just emotional wellness overall, this is huge in thinking about how to become a more emotionally attractive person. So when we think about mindfulness, it falls under the eye, the intellectual part of attraction, when we think about it, in terms of our physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual attraction, it can have a foot in every one of these doors, but it's really all about controlling your thoughts, which falls right under that intellectual attraction, wanting to not only be the kind of person that other people want to talk to, but being able to live with my own mind, inside of my mind, being the kind of person that I want to hear from myself. In my mind, when I talk to myself, these ruminating thoughts, like we talked about, that falls right under this. But what's really fascinating is that as you begin to create a practice of being mindful, it seeps over into these other areas of your life. And I have a theory on to why I'll get to that in just a minute. But here is the way that mindfulness can affect your brain. There's a number of studies that have showed how mindfulness and meditation practices in people who aren't professionals, can influence areas of the brain in regulating attention, awareness, and emotion. So again, we keep seeing some of the same themes here, in 2007, an experimental study that was done that found that compared with control groups, basically these people went through a five day meditation and mindfulness program, there was a significant improvement in the efficiency of executive attention during different computerized attention test. So not only is it affecting our emotional well being, helping us control our thoughts, helping anxiety, depression, anger, but it's also helping our mental ability, our creativity, it's helping us to be more attentive in the different things that we're doing helping us do better on tests when we have to perform on things. Another key element of mindfulness is it helps us to recognize and label our emotions a little bit better. So there was some brain imaging that was done on some participants who did one mindfulness, training and study that they were a part of. And it appeared that they had a greater ability to control emotional reactions in the middle part of the brain where the amygdala is, which controls the emotions by engaging the front part of the brain. So they actually got their brain to work with other areas of the brain, so that they could better regulate their emotion, identify what emotions they had. And, again, going back to it helped regulate their attention and their concentration. And so all of these things just showed in the brain when f MRIs and MRIs were done on it that this, this practice of mindfulness actually started making a difference in the way that their brains began firing. It started to change some of the neural pathways that were happening. Even those ruminating thoughts could begin to stop ruminate. Because the neural pathways of the brain that usually would fire to lead to thoughts like that, they began to change the neural pathways by just doing a mindfulness practice. And then the benefits that happen on the body in practicing mindfulness is it can help stress related medical conditions, like fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, add type two diabetes, psoriasis, so many of those things, because the beneficial physical effects of mindfulness are helping you to better cope with the stress of daily life. And I love this, this is quoted by Dr. Greece. And he says, and to remember that there's usually more right with the body than wrong. So much of what we experience in our bodies, in sickness and in pains and in different things that happen. It's amazing how much of it relates back to stress. I heard a couple of months ago about how stress is actually the number one disease, so to say, because it is the underlying condition of so many of the health problems that we have. And we get stressed when we're always on, we're always thinking we're always doing, we're always running from one thing to the next. It's not the way we were meant to be or the way we were meant to live. So in beginning to stop that cycle, we begin to decrease the stress. And therefore, the stress related conditions that we have in our body can begin to heal. Mindfulness plays a huge part in that Dr. Greasing continues by saying there's promising findings from behavioral research that suggests that mindfulness training may help people experience stress and negative emotions, without acting impulsively and self destructively, by doing things to attempt to self soothe. So another way, and this relates to how it affects our behavior as well. Another way that mindfulness has a positive effect on us, when we do it is that we begin to be able to stop self destructive behavior, the way that we act out when we feel overwhelmed, or we feel not good enough. And then we turn to food or drugs, or sex, or things that we know we shouldn't, because we're trying to overcome the pain that we feel inside. We don't want to feel it. In mindfulness, though, we begin to become comfortable with hearing our own thoughts with being alone. And with identifying what our emotions are, that can stop that cycle. Mindfulness may also promote better health by improving sleep quality, which we know is typically disrupted by things like stress, anxiety, and difficulty turning off the mind, which mindfulness is able to help all of those things. You guys, this is the research 5253 studies that we're all summarized here, amazing results. So I think the biggest question here is, why are all of us not doing a mindfulness practice on a day to day basis? And you know, it's even interesting to me, because when I actually stop and think about what mindfulness is, it's just being present. There's nothing weird about it. There's nothing mind blowing about it. There's nothing really that's rocket science or neuroscience about it. It's something that's accessible to us, literally right now, wherever we are. So why do we not do it more? I feel like this is probably what people in like the 1700s or 1600s, or 1800s did, when they were doing whatever they were doing. They didn't have the distractions of TV, Google homes, iPhone, a car to have to go everywhere in the world to when they were doing their cooking in their reading in their being with their family. They had to be present. Now, of course, there's a part of mindfulness that doesn't necessarily have to do with technology. But I do believe that in our current world, and the way that we're used to living, we are used to distractions. It's so easy. A couple of years ago, I went on a silent retreat. I went to a monastery for three days. And at the monastery, it was it was a silent monastery. You didn't talk, no one talked and I thought this is going to be great. It's going to be so relaxing. I can't wait just tie me alone, just to be able to think and pray and write and do everything. So I get there unload and start to settle in. And it was so quiet. And I know that sounds ridiculous because I went to a quiet retreat. But I mean, there was no background noise There was no TV that I could turn on, I made a vow to myself that I wasn't going to turn on my cell phone. Actually, at that point in my life, I had a flip phone. So I didn't even have the ability to turn on my cell phone and use it as a way as a crux as something to lean on. And what I found was, it was the most uncomfortable I had ever been being alone with my own thoughts. I didn't realize just how much I actually put around me in my day to day lives to avoid thinking about things I didn't want to think about. And when I was face to face with nowhere to hide, nowhere to go, it honestly terrified me. I'm glad I did it, I want to do it again. Because it's something I want to grow in and become more comfortable with being alone with my thoughts like that. But it really brought to light for me just how much I depended on my phone, or TV, or even the distraction of my husband sometimes. And that's not to say that my relationship with them is not a good thing it is. But how often do I try and cover up things that I actually need to deal with by saying, Hey, babe, like, let's just watch Parks and Rec, or whatever it might be. Now, the thing is, I wanted to be mindful when I was on my silent retreat. What made it difficult for me to be in the present moment, as I was there was that all of these emotions and feelings and thoughts and stories, I was telling myself about myself that I had never dealt with kept coming up. That's why it was so hard for me to be present. And mindful and aware, while I was there. Now the practice of mindfulness is to get us to get in a rhythm of being aware of our here and now in such a daily rhythm, that we're able to deal with the emotions that come and the stories that we tell ourselves in real time. So they don't have to accumulate for weeks or months or years, till you get to the point where when everything is silent, and everything else is shut out, that it's all coming up at once, that was very difficult. So doing it in this way, where you're taking 510 20 minutes a day, whatever you can actually do and commit to to fit into your schedule, will begin making a difference in all of the things that the research talks about, in your attention span in your ability to regulate emotions, identify your own emotions, work through them, dealing and managing anxious thoughts, the list goes on, because you're teaching yourself to be present. And in the moment, to stop the cycle of picking up your phone, have constantly checking social media or email or your to do list or feeling like you have to give and give and give of yourself until you're completely empty. And then you don't know how to fill yourself up. Again, mindfulness is putting you in a practice of filling yourself up. That way, you're better able to give to others when needed, but you can't neglect yourself. So you don't even have to do the extreme of going on a three day silent retreat. Because we can get the benefits of what something like that can do for us by having a daily mindfulness practice. But here are the things that you need to be aware of first, because I don't want you to try to put in this mindfulness practice you get so excited about and then you're blindsided about how difficult it actually is. So the struggle is to stay in the present moment. And again, we'll talk about examples of exactly what this looks like. But in mindfulness, it's different than meditation. So don't think that you're having to carve out this room in your house and put a bunch of candles in it and sit there and just be completely silent for two hours on end. That's not what this is. But no, even if you're doing something cooking, walking, whatever it might be, we'll get more examples in a minute, the struggle is still going to be staying in the present moment, thoughts of yesterday or your childhood, or your to do list or that's something that you regret from 10 years ago, those things are going to pop into your mind. I don't know if it's just me, but I will be doing the most random thing and all of a sudden, I will remember about something I said to someone 15 years ago that I still feel bad about. Or I'll remember something that happened to me that I'm embarrassed about or shameful of. And it just comes at the strangest times. And they will definitely come when you're trying to be silent. But mindfulness is Creating a gentle practice of training your brain to let go of those thoughts and come back to the present, to not get stuck there. And then start telling yourself a story about how maybe you're not good enough, because of that thought that you had. If you tell yourself don't think that, then you won't be able to stop thinking about it. We're getting into a practice of allowing ourselves to have the thoughts, but not dwelling on the thoughts. When I was going through yoga teacher training, one of the things that we learn, of course, is this practice of mindfulness. And meditation, yoga is a very mindful activity that you can do. And so one of the things that one of the teachers would say, if any thought comes into your mind of, you know what you have to get at the grocery store later, or the fight that you had with your husband last night, or whatever it might be, just picture it as a cloud that's just floating by, it's not a fly that you're trying to swat out of your mind. But instead, you're just lying on the grass, and it's one of the clouds that just floating by, and just allow it and watch it as it continues on. I don't know if that's something that might help you or work for you. But one thing that I started doing was instead, when I would have those thoughts, I would just thank my mind for trying to be helpful. But I would tell my mind, I don't need that thought right now. Thank you for trying to help me out about reminding me what I need to get. Thank you for trying to help me work through what happened to me five years ago. But I don't need that reminder right now. We can talk about it later. That might sound crazy. It's something that works for me. Or you could just simply let the thought pass. This is why at least for me, mindfulness is more accessible than meditation because I can be doing something, as I'm doing my mindfulness practice, it can be very difficult for me to sit there or lie there closing my eyes trying to focus, because that's when the thoughts I feel come the most. Mindfulness is more accessible as I could be out for a walk, or I could be taking a shower. And I'm simply focusing on exactly what I'm doing in that moment, I can be doing any activity. And the goal is to be aware of everything I'm doing. How does my body feel? What do I see around me? What do I hear? How do I feel right now emotionally? What's going on in my present life, it's all about giving yourself permission to feel the way you feel without judgment, and learning how to accept it, and learning how to accept yourself. So without further ado, here are the five ways that I recommend that you start trying your mindfulness practice, or as I like to call it being mindful Paes style. Now, here are the rules for mindfulness in this, you have to disconnect. This is my number one rule, and you absolutely have to do it, leave your phone, or, you know, turn it off and put it in your back pocket if you don't want to be without it because of safety issues. But get disconnected, turn off the noise, stop the scrolling, put the phone away, whatever you're doing, and do everything you can to find some inner quiet. So if you need to start off your mindfulness practice by doing some jumping jacks or doing something to just get some energy out of you, so that you can feel a little calmer and less jittery as you're trying to be mindful. Great, do it. And if you want to time it, because you're saying, I don't know how to do this, I don't know what it's gonna be like, then just set a timer for two minutes and tell yourself you will not go over two minutes, and then increase it one minute, every time. Start with something that is accessible to you. But you have to disconnect first. So you're like, how do I disconnect and put a timer on get a sand timer do to do a microwave timer? I don't care, just not your phone or your computer? If you can. So those are the rules here. Are there ways that you can be mindful in your daily life starting today? The first way is physically and specifically by moving and by eating. So think about the last time that you actually moved outside or inside just whatever if you were working out or whatever it might be, and you were paying attention to what you were doing. When you went on a walk Were you on your phone the whole time talking to someone scrolling whatever it might be, or were you disconnected and looking at the world around you. There's some interesting studies that came out of a journal called mindful about how there are so many benefits of practicing mindfulness outdoors, there was a review that they did. And it showed that having the experience of a natural environment calls your attention more than being in your garage or in your house. And it lessens the tendency for your mind to wander, and to remain in the present. It's helps you in your mindfulness practice, when you're able to be out in nature, on a hike or at a park. And being mindful practicing mindfulness, maybe on a walk, or a hike, or run whatever it might be, when you're outside. Now, there's a ton of other benefits of being outside the sunlight, the fresh air, all of the things that go along with that, there's some interesting research about how being connected to nature can just decrease our stress levels just by being in nature. So all of these things are so good. So consider moving and being mindful when you move, maybe once a week, you decide to go to a new park, or a park that you love, or on a new hiking trail, and you disconnect, and you just walk. Now I recommend you be safe. So I recommend you do take your phone if you're going to be on your own while you're walking outside, but just don't be on it. And instead focus on what you see what you hear, what you taste in the air, how the wind feels on your skin, focus on all of those things. The other way that you can be present mindfully is by eating. So many of us eat on a rush, right? We are just trying to chow it down before bed or before we run out the door for work. Or we're just so hungry. By the time we eat that we scarf it down. That is me 100% I don't think I chew 20 times, you're supposed to chew like 40 times. It's been a real struggle for me. I love food. I love the taste of food. And I want it all in my stomach right now. But being mindful when we eat is another great way to practice this. Because there's so many sensations that you can focus on that can keep your attention on it. So even the process of making the food and loving springtime summertime with the farmers market open. I start this process. When I think about it, I start this process by going to the farmers market and I just make it an experience from start to finish. I go I focus on all the vegetables, I have them put it in the bag for me because I can't touch them. And I just see all the beautiful colors. I'm focusing on what I'm seeing on the things I'm smelling. And I'm in the moment. I take them home and then I put out my cutting board. I grab my favorite knife and I start chopping up my veggies, my cherry tomatoes, Ooh, there's so beautiful in orange. And if they're multicolored, that's even better. My bell peppers, my arugula, lettuce, oh, all of these things. I just start chopping them up and I focus on what I'm doing. And even the repetitive nature of the chopping. I put it all together into a big bowl, I'm looking at all these colors, I'm smelling all of these things. I add my favorite olive oil and vinegar, I add a protein on top of it. I take it I go outside because I love being outside. And before I even eat this is hard you guys I stopped in make myself just look at it. Take a deep breath in and just focus on what's in front of me and then slowly eat it. savoring each bite. I'll never forget one time when I bought a bar of chocolate, it was a very expensive bar of chocolate. And when I opened it, the inside of it said here's how to eat this bar of chocolate. Number one, take off a small piece to place it on your tongue. Three, let it melt for close your eyes and experience everything you taste as it's melted. Savor this bar of chocolate, you're worth it. Honestly, I was like I just want the whole bar chocolate. I tried it this way. And I enjoyed it so much more. It lasted longer. I didn't over eat it because I was so focused on everything that and how it felt in the moment. It was an amazing thing to do. So physically, there's two ways you can do it by moving out especially outdoors or by being mindful when you eat. The third way that you can practice mindfulness is in the intellectual area by actually doing more of a standard practice of mindfulness and take it into meditation. So find a room in your house or a place outside, sit, lay down, get in a comfortable position. And just allow yourself to be present in the moment, by just allowing yourself to be with your thoughts. letting those thoughts pass, focusing on the present, allowing yourself to focus on yourself, how you feel, how your muscles feel, how your joints feel, how your mind and your brain and your feelings are. All of those things, you can set a timer for five minutes and just do what's called a body scan. Or you're scanning from head to toe, finding the places even where you're clenching. Or you're holding pressure or tension in your body, and allow yourself to release those things. The fourth way that you can practice mindfulness is emotionally. And this one's going to be a little bit different than the others. But I believe that it is something that we should all do. And that's being mindful in our conversations with others, putting down the phone, listening to every word they're saying, and not thinking about what they just said, what you want to say, what happened yesterday, what you think that they mean by what they're saying, simply listen to what they're saying, and have a conversation with them. When they're done talking, then assess what you want to say back in that moment. It's okay, if there's a pause, and then focus on what you're saying back being intentional with your words. I believe that this can lead to greater areas of self awareness, and emotional awareness in the relationships that we have with the people in our lives. Because how often do we respond out of fear or anger or pain? Or, honestly, because we're hungry? And we're not actually focused on the present moment, we're not focused on what the other person is saying? We're not looking at them in the eyes when they're speaking? I mean, how often do we miss that in our conversations. So I want to encourage you to be mindful in your conversations. And then the fifth way is spiritually being mindful. Now this can look like being mindful in prayer, just focusing on pouring out everything that's in you in that moment in that present moment. And then having a time of silence where you're able to just see how you feel after releasing all of those yearnings, desires, worries, fears. Now, I am a Christian, but you can do this in whatever religion that you are. But for me, when I am able to give God, everything that is going through me, my all of the things, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I typically don't leave time to just sit and be with God and hear what he might want to say back to me after that. Allowing that time here is a great way to be mindful. You can also do this with again, the more traditional meditation by using scripture, and maybe you have a certain word or verse that's on your heart. And that is what you stay focused and present on in the moment. Or maybe you have a positive saying or mantra that you want to focus on. During that time as you're trying to connect with a greater purpose for your life, above and beyond yourself. Those are the five ways that you can use your pies to practice this mindfulness and I believe it will make a huge difference when you begin implementing it in your life. So here is the key PI's takeaway from today's episode. Pick one way to integrate mindfulness into your life today. One way it can be one that I mentioned or you can come up with one yourself. If you do, I would love to hear what it is. You can post about it in the free working on my pious Facebook group share with everyone what are some of the ways that you decided to practice mindfulness or send me an email I'd really want to hear the way that you practice this and what difference it makes in your life. Friends, I hope you enjoyed today's show. Remember to follow it starts with attraction anywhere you listen to podcast and leave us a review. The more positive reviews we get, the more positive change we can make for relationships and for individuals around the world for shownotes updates and the opportunity to join our email list for encouraging weekly strategies for you to become the best that you can be in all areas of your pies. Go to pies university.com Again, that is pies university.com Come keep working on your pies and always remember, it starts with attraction