Mindful Mondays: 3 tips for practising mindfulness while working from home

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Written by Trisha Bhullar

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Work is stressful enough as it is, but working from home can be a whole other ball game. This sudden transition into a new working lifestyle usually means that we lose all sense of work-life balance, and are at risk of abandoning our own free time. More often than not, a sudden lifestyle switch means that habits, like practising mindfulness, end up taking a backseat. That doesn’t have to be the case, though. Today, we’ll cover 3 easy tips for practising mindfulness while working from home. 

Why does practising mindfulness matter while you work from home? 

It may seem silly to value self-care tips and routines during a pandemic. There is so much change and so many sacrifices you’ve made — what’s one more? That’s where many people are wrong. Mindfulness isn’t a leisure activity and it’s more important to practice it now more than ever. Being cooped up at home is the perfect catalyst for anxiety, stress and depression to arise. We’ve lost the leisure activities we pursue to add happiness to our days, from hitting the gym to going out for a movie. Mindfulness, however, can act as this platform for you to realise all your negative emotions. It helps you objectively assess your emotions and remove negativity from your thoughts. Besides this, mindfulness promotes calm, tranquillity and focus. All of this from the comfort of your home! 

Tip #1 Schedule your time 

People “don’t have time” for mindfulness because they don’t set aside time for it in advance. Treat mindfulness as a serious task in your day, akin to a meeting or workout session. This reduces the likelihood of you putting off your mindfulness exercises all day. 

Tip #2 Use meal times for mindfulness 

What if you really don’t have time to spare? Then incorporate mindfulness into activities you already have scheduled in. That includes mealtimes. Instead of binging your favourite TV show during lunch (and ending lunch late because of “one more episode”), use meals for mindfulness. Focus on the act of eating and let your mind wander. Acknowledge your chattering thoughts as they arise. Then slowly, as your thoughts quieten, simply focus on the act of eating. 

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Tip #3 Keep a mindfulness journal 

Mindfulness journals are whatever you’d like them to be: bullet journals, a journal app, or even scribbled down thoughts in your phone’s Notes app. The beauty of a mindfulness journal is thus in its flexibility. You can customise it to what you desire, and use it as often as you like. In general, a mindfulness journal would contain a log of the mindfulness exercises you’ve practised and your thoughts on how well you’ve completed them, as well as any further constructive insights. You can further add elements like expressing gratitude to the positives in your day, and create a “work in progress” section for things you did in the day that you’d like to work on. At its core, your thoughts should display a form of objective awareness of your actions, and a desire to constructively move forward. That’s all a mindfulness journal is about. 

Start small! 

Start small and pick 1 tip to work with first. No matter how challenging working from home may be, you should always keep an open mind to tips and tricks that will better your experience. Mindfulness is all that, and more.