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As a kid, I’d spend my summer mornings lobbing a tennis ball onto the roof and catching it as it rolled back down. I liked to hear the fuzz crackling like static on the rough asphalt shingles. Sometimes the ball would pop in and out of the gutter with a clang before it would arc back into my waiting hands. As the sun climbed higher, sweat would bead on the back of my neck, and the grass under my sneakers began to smell less like dew and more like hay.
There are no rules as to what a mindfulness practice looks like. It can be anything that brings you a moment of peace. Following are some simple ways to be mindful that you can try throughout your day, with little or no additional time or effort.
12 Simple Ways to Be Mindful in Everyday Life
Try a few. See what happens.
1. Just Listen
Follow any sound to its completion. It could be music, birds, laughter from the playground—whatever you happen to experience. If you overhear a conversation, listen to the quality of the voices rather than react mentally to the words.
Stay with the sound until it dissolves back into the silence. Notice the stillness between the sounds and the pervasive peace beneath it all. As jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie is rumored to have said, “Music is silence. The reason we have the notes is to emphasize the silence.”
2. Brush Your Teeth With Warm Water
Focus on how your teeth and gums feel as you brush rather than rushing to be done with it. This is a helpful practice for interrupting habitual behavior and staying present. While you’re at it, hold the toothbrush in your nondominant hand.
3. Take Your Shoes Off
Whenever you feel restless and itching to be elsewhere or doing something else, remove your shoes. If that’s not practical, recall the feeling of doing so and the relaxation it brings. Feel the contentment and belonging, not just in your feet but in your entire body and in your mind as well.
4. Put Away the Crayons
Without realizing it, we often color our own experiences with all kinds of thoughts, beliefs, expectations, memories and emotions. When you notice yourself doing this, put away the crayons. Refrain from creating a story or interpretation and see the situation or person as-is, based solely on facts or sensory input.
5. How’s Your Ice Cream?
Sometimes our minds and bodies are in two different places. We might be eating ice cream but thinking about scheduling an oil change. When you notice your mind wandering off, bring it back by asking yourself, How’s your ice cream?
6. Don’t Wake the Baby
Practice walking, closing doors, eating potato chips or whatever you’re doing as quietly as possible. Imagine a baby sleeping nearby. Be patient and gentle with everything, including your own thoughts. As you establish yourself in non-aggression, notice if hostility dissolves in your presence.
7. Blow Bubbles
Pick up a bottle of children’s soap bubbles at the dollar store and blow about five bubbles a day. Make each bubble as big as possible using long, slow exhalations. Notice if this practice affects your capacity for patience.
8. It’s Not Important
Whenever someone or something irritates you, say to yourself, It’s not important. Put all opinions aside, including your own. Remember that everyone is suffering, including you. Exchange being right for being kind, and notice how that feels in your body.
7. Make No Waves
This one’s for the bathtub, the pool, or any calm body of water. Ease yourself in and let your breath get quiet and smooth. Disturb the water as little as possible. Relax similarly into all situations, especially the ones that you can’t change.
8. Make Misstakes
When the Navajo weave a rug, they deliberately leave imperfections. This is an act of humility, to acknowledge our humanness and invite a higher power into the process. Make one mistake each day. Overcook an egg, put on a shirt inside out, deliberately send a text with a typo. Good for type A personalities and control enthusiasts.
9. Don’t Look for Anything
When a pickpocket looks at a saint, all he can see are the pockets. Set aside your desires and expectations, and be open to what’s already right in front of you.
10. Sue Everyone!
Notice every time you complain, verbally or mentally, and imagine filing a lawsuit against a person each time. Keep it personal: You vs. Them. What’s the charge? They didn’t use their blinker? Interrupted you while you were talking? Sue the bastards! Get ridiculous with it. See if it helps you put things in perspective.
11. Feel the Speed Bumps
Take each bump you encounter as slowly as possible. Imagine you have a cup of hot tea balanced on the top of your head. Feel everything, from the tires all the way up your spine. Apply this degree of patience to the mental and emotional speed bumps that inevitably come up in everyday life.
Last but not least on our list of ways to be mindful, there’s this one…
12. Don’t Practice Anything
The next time you’re in a challenging situation, refrain from the mantra, the deep breath, whatever your go-to technique may be. Simply let yourself relate to the circumstance and your thoughts and feelings about it.
As you commit to staying present, mindfulness practices of your own may arise. Everything you do is an opportunity to connect with yourself and the world around you. Your whole life can be a meditation.
