Rengganis Rizka Prasanti For many, the beginning of a new year is synonymous with a fresh start, a blank slate to start good habits. Some may focus on starting a healthy diet, an exercise routine, or a new hobby. However, people seem to focus on new habits for the mind less often.
As mental health issues are starting to be in the spotlight, so is the topic of mindfulness. However, mindfulness is much more than just a buzzword. What is mindfulness and its benefits? Is it really as great as it seems? Let’s take a look at what mindfulness is and why it’s a good habit to practice.
What is Mindfulness?
The state of mindfulness refers to a state of mind where you focus on what’s going on at the present.
We often find ourselves going about our day thinking about the past or the future. As you go on your morning commute, you worry and ruminate about the next meeting with a client next Wednesday. While showering, you cringe at the thoughts of an awkward encounter you had with a schoolmate months ago.
Unknowingly to us, these small moments can pile up over time. You may find yourself getting anxious for no reason or noticing that you start to get tense more easily. Ultimately, this can even influence your physical health. It’s well known that stress can lead to many physical ailments, from weakened immune system, headaches, to insomnia.
Mindfulness reverts your mind back to a resting state as you focus your attention on the present: your senses and your emotions.
Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness
Mindfulness is known to have lots of benefits, from the obvious like helping with stress relief to an improvement in relationships. Here are some of them.
1. Reduces stress
Mindfulness exercises have been proven to reduce stress and clinical mental issues, such as anxiety and depression. Research by Hofmann et al. (2010) on mindfulness-based therapy shows that clients undergoing this type of therapy show improvement in their anxiety, depression, and mood symptoms.
While research focuses on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, practicing mindfulness in your everyday life may also help you deal with stress better.
Mindfulness exercises, such as meditation, can help you regulate your emotions better. People who meditate are shown to be able to process their emotions in a way that they’re less prone to feeling depressed when they experience negative emotions, such as sadness. (Farb et. al, 2010).
2. Improves memory and focus
Practicing mindfulness is also shown to influence your ability to focus and reduce forgetfulness. We may often find ourselves forgetting small things, like whether or not we’ve locked our front door before leaving the house or forgetting where we’ve put our car keys.
These memory problems are often caused by distraction or our inability to pay attention to what we were doing at one moment. Mindfulness exercises are aimed to help you focus on the present. In a study that compares people who practice mindfulness meditation regularly and those with no meditation experience, the group that practices meditation is shown to have better performance on attention measures (Moore and Malinowski, 2009).
3. Better relationship with others
While most of the benefits are for yourself, practicing mindfulness can improve how you connect with others as well. A study by Kappen et al. (2018) has shown that by practicing mindfulness, we also tend to accept others better for who they are. Acceptance and better understanding of others will improve our relationship with them.
Mindfulness will also help us sail through conflicts more smoothly, reducing the negative impact these conflicts have on our emotions (Barnes et al., 2007). As mindfulness exercises improve our ability to regulate emotions, they also help us deal with the stressful emotions that come with conflicts, thus helping us resolve the conflict in a healthier way.
Starting a new habit may not be easy, but any new habit that will help us improve and become a better version of ourselves is always worth the try. Are you ready to start your mindfulness journey this year?
References:
Barnes, S., Brown, K. W., Krusemark, E., Campbell, W. K., & Rogge, R. D. (2007). The role of mindfulness in romantic relationship satisfaction and responses to relationship stress. Journal of marital and family therapy, 33(4), 482-500.
Cherry, K. (2021, October 15). Benefits of Mindfulness . Retrieved from Verywell Mind: https://www.verywellmind.com/the-benefits-of-mindfulness-5205137
Farb, N. A. S., Anderson, A. K., Mayberg, H., Bean, J., McKeon, D., & Segal, Z. V. (2010). “Minding one’s emotions: Mindfulness training alters the neural expression of sadness”: Correction to Farb et al (2010). Emotion, 10(2), 215. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019263
Hofmann, S. G., Sawyer, A. T., Witt, A. A., & Oh, D. (2010). The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 169–183. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018555
Kappen G, Karremans JC, Burk WJ, Buyukcan-Tetik A. On the association between mindfulness and romantic relationship satisfaction: the role of partner acceptance. Mindfulness (N Y). 2018;9(5):1543-1556. doi:10.1007/s12671-018-0902-7
Moore, A., & Malinowski, P. (2009). Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility. Consciousness and cognition, 18(1), 176-186.
Psychology Today. (n.d.). Mindfulness. Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/mindfulness
