Mindfulness is a completely subjective state, and fully dependent on the experience of a given individual. It is a “feel” of being more aware and mindful of your current state that leads to more involvement in your reality.

Benefits of mindfulness have been shared for thousands of years, and recent studies have provided further validity to the positive impact it can have on your life. In particular, we have found four distinct ways mindfulness benefits our growth.

 

Higher Sensitivity to your Environment

Increased awareness in your life extends to better awareness of your surroundings. Taking in what’s around you leads to seeing more of what’s around you.

Just because something is present, does not mean it is recognized by you. It only enters your reality when you extend your perspective to allow it in.

Awareness of your surroundings also helps with finding the connection you share with everything around you. You begin to see the role you play in your environment. This newfound way of relating to what’s around you can lead to new ways of thinking about what is within and without.

 

 

Openness to new perspectives and information

When we are not mindful, we can have a habit of living in our own bubble. When in this bubble, we only take in and consume things that match what we already experience and believe in. Social media algorithms have been built to reinforce your bubble by recommending similar content to what you consume.

Mindfulness helps you break out of this bubble by highlighting your own thought process. It shows where the limitations of your thinking are, and helps you to see what lies beyond it.

Becoming open to new perspectives leads to you expanding your own. Instead of information passing you by, you are actively engaged and analyze everything that is near. This will help you discern the difference between your opinion and another’s, as well as recognize there is an objective truth of every interaction.

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Expanding your Mindset

The brain’s plasticity allows you to change the connections made in your mind to bring in new trains of thought. This means that we are capable of reshaping our way of thinking.

Mindfulness acts as a tool in reshaping your thought process. These changes highlight how changing your world starts from within. Increased awareness of your actions, thoughts, and surroundings helps you form new categories within your perception. These new categories impact your mindset and, in the process, alter your reality.

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Improved critical thinking

As already covered, mindfulness leads to heightened awareness of your surroundings and your thought process. These changes in turn affect your mindset and creates new categories for how you process information.

Mindfulness also improves your problem solving skills. All of the new stimulus activates your mind to analyze it and determine what you think about it. Increased awareness leads to increased engagement and mental processing of the incoming information.

Practicing mindfulness leads to asking yourself more questions of what is happening around you, why it is happening, and how you feel about it. As with everything, practice makes perfect and the continued practice of mindfulness continues to increase your critical thinking and overall mental processes.

 

More Mindfulness Benefits

Aside from these 4 mental benefits, studies also found that increased mindfulness helps rid people of excessive boredom, as boredom is a symptom of mindlessness. Similarly, days blending together and time passing you by also ceases when you take in every moment around you. It can also help with misunderstandings and misperceptions in conversations.

Mindfulness benefits your life by altering your way of thinking and can allow a healthier perspective to grow. Give yourself time to try it out and see how it changes your way of viewing and interacting with the world.

 

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Moldoveanu, M., Langer, E. (2000). The Construct of Mindfulness. Journal of Social Issues, 56(1), 1-9.