Three Ingredients to Your Best Self.

Live with purpose. Discover your potential. Design your life.

This all sounds really important, right? We know if we took on the challenge we’d be a better person – we’d be happier, healthier, more at peace. So, why is it that nurturing our intentions seems to be the last thing we think about every day?

Girl inside of a front-load washing machine with long hair covering face. Her head, arms and feet hang outside open door.

Because LIFE! duh.

It’s difficult to rise above distractions and commitments to make time for what we know inside is most important. Taking a pause, breathing, reflecting, just being feels like a luxury our growing to-do lists will not allow. I know this personally after my soul simply ran out of hamster wheel gas.

POWER INGREDIENTS

With this experience and insights, I discovered three key ingredients that help me stay off of the hamster wheel, connect to what matters most, and design the life that I want. Notice that I used the present tense because we are always on this journey. Although I've found that each of these is powerful as a single shot, I also have learned that when combined the impact is greater.

1. INTENTIONS are your aim, your purpose or your desire. And, if you are like me, my first intention was to discover what I actually wanted! If you do already know what you want or where you want to grow, that’s awesome - write it down.

2. Being MINDFUL is simply being conscious or aware of something. And in this case, being mindful of your beautiful intention is what's important. Keeping your focus alive or present in each day or moment is where the magic happens.

3. You can also simply be mindful of the present moment without judgement – this is known as MINDFULNESS MEDITATION. This technique helps build inner resiliency to stay present in a sometimes chaotic world.

Plate too full? There's good news.

As we go down this ingredient list, we all (for the most part) get into less comfortable territory. We’re pretty good at talking about our intentions or what we want in the future, being mindful of them is tough (note: LIFE!) and, finally, developing a mindfulness meditation practice seems like a huge jump.

Here’s the good news. There are a growing number of people, spaces, tools to help us deepen our knowledge and practice related to each ingredient. LumenKind is excited to connect you with inspiring stories, tools and tips to help you along your journey. In the meantime, we'd love to hear about your power ingredients.

Also in Mindfulness

Intention, Intuition, and Mirrors

By Candace Partridge. Many years ago, I became aware of some of the old beliefs I had been trusting in since childhood that were no longer working for me but I didn’t know I had the power or ability to replace them with ones that better suited me today. I wanted to do something different and believed I could try but didn’t know where to start. I began setting intentions. It seemed a safe and easy first step and it changed my life. Every few weeks I would work on a new intention. Slowly I began to recognize a faint inner voice I never knew existed. This whisper of intuition, set me on a course to change deep, destructive patterns that entered my life as a child and were now crushing me and my family.

Healing: everything is temporary

by Natasha Akery. I am a high school English teacher, wife, and mother. I live a beautiful and blessed life with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), panic disorder, and generalized depression. The themes of my life revolve around healing, relationships, and spiritual faith. I have always been very proactive in seeking mental health and stability, but it is only recently that I realized healing doesn't mean "to not experience pain."

Same Wavelength: Mindfulness + Meditation

By Paige Davis. I’ve explored meditation and mindfulness practices my entire life, but never with consistency. My real entrée to a formal meditation practice came when I was a stressed out entrepreneur on the verge of burnout. I knew nothing in my outer circumstances were going to change and I was desperate for some peace. That is when I attended my first meditation training with Deepak Chopra and the Chopra Center. It was a game changer.

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Three ingredients to your best self.