5 Best Mindfulness Practices To Support You In Your Business This Spring
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Being mindful brings intention and consciousness into your business. When you do, there is a letting go that happens. And with it, exponential expansion surely follows.
As spring moves into full swing, we are reminded to adopt mindfulness practices to support us through the transition. For those in business, this also tends to be precisely when the heat gets turned up on the hustle. So if collapsing time while expanding exponentially sounds appealing, keep reading!
Here are 5 of the best mindfulness practices to add fuel to your spring and summer business strategy:
#1 Bathe In Breath Basics.
“With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available at that moment.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Let’s begin by bringing ourselves back to the very thing you did when you entered the world: you took your first breath. Fundamentally, pursuing our goals without excessive hustle requires the ability to return to the centre, breathe deeper and reconnect to our inner harmonious world.
Breathwork literally refers to ‘any type of breathing exercise or technique’. It involves conscious interruption of the subconscious ‘sympathetic’ breathing patterns that many highly stressed women in business adopt.
“Healing dysregulation in your inner environment is the key to exponentially expanding”, shares Karen Whelan, who was recently featured in Thrive Global, Hollywood Digest, and Yahoo News for her work and wisdom in the world of Psychotherapy. She elaborates by adding: “Breathwork soothes our system to bring our bodies into relaxation, cultivating safety and grounding us. 5 rounds of inhaling and exhaling are all that’s required and can be done at a desk, in meetings, or even on a business call.”
The Box Breath is another simple technique that requires just a few minutes of intentional mindfulness to bring the body and mind back into alignment:
Set your timer on your phone for 5 minutes – yes that’s right, start small and aim to WIN!
Imagine you’re breathing around the outside of a square, for gentle counts of 4.
Breathe in for a count of 4, hold at the top for 4, breathe out gently for 4 and then breathe in for 4, REPEATING THE PATTERN for 5 mins.
#2 Ice Ice Baby.
Deepening your connection to the breath through ice or cold water submersion is a favorite mindfulness practice among some of the most influential Performance Mentors of our time. You may have heard of Wim Hof, better known as ‘The IceMan’, who brought the practice to mainstream society in recent years.
“Exposing oneself to cold conditions such as cold showers and ice baths is related to serious health benefits, including stress relief, better sleep, faster recovery from physical exercise, and even relief from symptoms that are related to diseases like fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis”, Wim shares.
Through the power of the cold, your ability to be happier, stronger, and healthier is increased. Unsurprisingly, there is a direct correlation between happier and healthier CEOs and their ability to communicate more effectively, connect deeper and impact farther, which in turn directly influences higher levels of income.
Start small, a minute or two will suffice. Build confidence through consciously interrupting your breathing pattern, and controlling your breathing rhythm. Deepen your practice with the inclusion of cold showers as part of your morning routine.
#3 Gratitude.
Taking a step back from the somewhat extreme nature of ice- and cold-water submersion, the practice of Gratitude is an often overlooked Mindfulness-hack that can help anchor you back into the present moment. Studies have shown that gratitude expands our manifesting capabilities faster than any other practice.
“Arigato in, Arigato out!” – Wahei Takeda, who mentored Ken Honda, the Zen Millionaire. With every thank you out and thank you in, the Law of Reciprocity takes effect and creates a “perfect circle of flow.” Barbie Layton, TV Host of You Are Amazing on The Best You TV, expresses her passion for this simple hack and reminds us that “staying in the frequency of gratitude, allows you to manifest from the highest frequency available. It is fun to see all sorts of miracles come forward when you stay in that flow!”
In today’s world, we want the better, faster or more sparkly thing to take us to the next level. Barbie wants you to know that through “extraordinary gratitude, extraordinary presence, and extraordinary action, you will become that e sparkly thing.”
Barbie includes the act of giving thanks first thing in the morning. She recommends that you do the same. As soon as your feet hit the ground, give thanks for waking up and being able to swing your feet onto the floor!
#4 Makeover Your MorningsWhether it is the 5 am Club, or a slower pace to wake at 7am, intentionally setting your day, week, month, and year up for success begins with a powerful morning
As Brendon Burchard says, your morning begins the night before. Echoing this is Ebony Swank. The Founder of the multi-million dollar brand Swank-a-Posh prioritizes an evening wind-down routine in preparation for the following day:
“Once I have eaten dinner, I set out 30min to double-check any late notifications or emails, then intentionally switch my phone off and set it aside until the morning. Heading to bed at about 10 pm gives me 8 hours of sleep which rejuvenates me ahead of my morning walk or workout at 6 am, followed by journaling and coffee before heading into the office in a grounded and connected state.”
It wasn’t always easy for Ebony to make these elements a priority: “it took time to settle into a routine that worked for me, both in the evening and in the morning. I had to be disciplined and committed to the long-term vision of my company, my health and the life I knew I wanted”
The 5 Essential Elements to a powerful morning routine this Spring are:
A great night’s sleep, free from intrusive blue or outside light and distractions.
A consistent wake-up time each morning.
Movement. Don’t be too strict on the type, just get up and make it happen!
Breakfast that excites you, so you don’t skip it!
Connection. Whether it be through prayer, gratitude, journaling or life-giving conversation with your partner, make this a priority before showing up in the world.
#5 Mind Your Boundaries.
The 4 previous practices may have sparked your enthusiasm, but to make them stick, you need some serious implementation strategies!
One of the biggest factors contributing to the lack of follow-through is the lack of Personal Boundaries. More mindfulness, resourcefulness, and willingness to be the woman who operates with new standards, demands an elevated level of boundary availability.
It is easier to overlook the fact that your attachment to hustle and success is actually a sign of poor boundary-setting. A tell-tale sign is the tendency to be a People-pleaser, where an unwillingness to say ‘no’ keeps you in the spin-cycle of being busy in an attempt to feel a sense of fulfilment.
What if by minding your boundaries and committing to ending your people-pleasing ways, you had the space, energy, and gratitude for all that is necessary to catapult your business into exponentially?
This is what it means to be mindful.
How to ‘Mind Your Boundaries’:
1. Increase awareness of your behaviours. Start noting down the interactions that you allow, despite them giving you a negative feeling within your body.
2. Practice saying ‘no’ to people and tasks that don’t serve you. When the discomfort of that ‘no’ sets in, sit in. It is safe for you to honor yourself and your own energy.
3. Empowering Self-talk. Setting boundaries is not selfish, it is an act of self-love and love for the people around you. Speak kindly to yourself as you navigate this ‘new normal’ and energy high.
In Closing
The common thread within these 5 Mindfulness Practices is an optimized nervous system allowing the beneficiary to operate their business from a more centered and empowered space, leading to exponential wealth creation across not just their finances, but relationships, mindset, body, and experience of life.
Ultimately, mindfulness is about willingness. Willingness to see yourself, meet yourself, and resource yourself with more of what is available to you. In return, becoming a woman full to the brim with all that she can offer, just by being, is serving at the highest level.