Benefits of Mindfulness in Retirement
Mindfulness has proven health benefits in retirement. You can improve your life and benefit from mindfulness.
Mindfulness is meta-awareness, where you are aware that you are aware. It is intentional and non-judgmental awareness of the moment.
Do you remember how long days used to seem when you were a kid? That’s because you were mindful. It is time to partake in mindfulness again. The evidence supports mindfulness and the only thing stopping you are the self-limiting beliefs that you are too busy to add a bit of mindfulness.
What is Mindfulness?
Awareness without judgment or self-criticism.
What is mindfulness? When a thought arises, you don’t compare it or judge it. Witness the thought and be present; allow it to flow and when you are ready, be curious about it and be kind to yourself.
You don’t always need to be 100% all the time. Most of the time, you live in the middle.
You have moods and setbacks. We all do.
Mindfulness in Your Daily Life
Mindfulness lets you live more in harmony with your daily life. There will be challenges and worse every day; accept the challenge while looking for the optimal solution that foils the attempt at ruining your equanimity. And mindfulness gives you a gap. A second to breathe. Take that opportunity and do a quick breathing exercise. If triggered, take a second and practice kindness and self-compassion. What is the best thing you can do for yourself in these most difficult moments?
Mindfulness in your daily life provides the extra seconds where you can decide to respond rather than react.
Health Benefits of Mindfulness
A few health benefits of mindfulness include:
- A “Left Shift” in your neuroanatomy. An increased activity of your left frontal lobe allows approach behavior to challenges rather than avoidance. In other words, a left shift lets you get stuff done and make progress on your intentions. The left shift is resilience. If you practice mindfulness, you are more resilient to life’s inevitable challenges because instead of running away, you approach the problems and thus are more likely to solve the challenges of your day.
- Improved immune function.
- Just feel better
- Proven in OCD, BPD, and addictions
- Neuroanatomic correlations (fMRI supports physical changes in the brain with meditation. Neuroplasticity affects the size and volume of parts of the brain)
- Since what wires together fires together wires, you can change your thoughts, emotions, and moods.
Mindfulness in Retirement
Mindfulness has demonstrated benefits in life and retirement. It improves concentration and makes you a better person.
Aware you are thinking, pause, and allow it to flow through you without judgment or comparison. Aware you are feeling, let it go without judgment.
Anything you are mindful of will open itself to you if you attend to it carefully and patiently. Mindfulness leads to discovering self-identity. You grow and become mindful and improve your life.
