A deep and meaningful life is just the sum of thousands of “stupid little tiny things” performed together.

When I understood and believed in that is when I began the way to fulfillment, which always ends up in happiness.

At the Beginning, I Was an Unbeliever

I’ve always been skeptical but, as soon as I changed my mindset from that position, is when I did really grow in life.

I understood that I needed to give things a chance to fail. Even to myself.

I first heard about mindfulness in 2010, when a friend of mine told me he had been practicing it in a retreat.

It sounded odd to me, and I perfectly remember what I thought: “Another stupid thing to sell to stressed people”.

Yes, that was me not so long time ago. Once again, I was wrong.

From that day on, I started hearing, reading, and seeing mindfulness everywhere.

Fortunately, at that time, I had a principle that I still keep on using: “If you see a lot of people doing something, pay attention to it. Maybe it’s worth it”.

That’s what I did. I started reading, watching videos, talking to people, asking, investigating, dedicating time to draw my own conclusions.

The Point Was How I Could Practice It

I need to put things into practice.

I can’t stand things that only “work” on paper. Great phrases that are nothing more than that: phrases.

I need facts, “how-to’s”. Something that tells me, “Hey, do this… TODAY”.

I need to test, practice and feel things. I need to do. I need to see outcomes, tangible results that make me move forward to give sense to my daily actions, to my life.

I’ve developed my own techniques, and I polish them every day, becoming better step by step. Here I share 5 of them.

1. Yoga

I started practicing yoga because I wanted to stretch after practicing my workouts.

Soon I saw results, and I decided to incorporate yoga to my morning routine because I got hooked.

Yoga is not only about stretching.

Yoga makes it possible to focus my attention on balance, to concentrate on the positions, to be fully in the present.

Practicing yoga gave me no choice to think in anything at all but the present time: NOW.

2. Meditation

Meditation is not only for calming people down.

It has allowed me:

• To know me better.
• To improve my performance.
• To be able to concentrate sooner.
• To get into a flow state much more faster.

The more I practice it, the more I like it, the more outcomes I receive from it.

3. Visualization

Visualization is key for me.

It allows me to “come back to present”, as I say in this article: “Why a Rope Can Take You Back to Present”.

I’ve developed a lot of different techniques to bring back my mind to present whenever it flies away and I don’t want to. This is just one of them.

4. Freeing my mind

One of the most important concepts in my life is “autopilot”.

Creating processes that run on autopilot is key to liberate my mind. To leave it to focus on the real important things. Those that matter. Those I do really care.

Whenever I see something that can be automatized or executed without thinking at all, I inmediately do it.

When I start liberating my mind of hundreds (even thousands) of things that don’t need to consume my energy is when my energy levels start to grow.

It’s when I’m fueled up to perform at my best.

I use this “liberating technique” with the most stupid things any human being can think about. For example, one of my “morning pre-decisions” it helped me a lot was leaving all my clothes and things ready to go the night before.

That makes me “drive” my morning on autopilot, without having to make a decision.

That leaves my mind free to work on focusing, mindfulness, enjoying each of my activities inside my morning routine, and taking the best out of them.

The simpler my pre-decisions are, the easier they will fit into my life, becoming a habit and summing towards that “great life” I’m looking for.

5. Practicing mindfulness at any moment

I’m practicing micro-mindfulness moments throughout all my day.

It comes to me naturally, effortlessly, because I’ve trained a lot and I keep on training daily.

My mornings are one clear example.

Mornings are always amazing moments to me. They have become a perfect “excuse” to go to bed full of happiness because I’m looking forward to the day after with motivation, illusion, and joy.

The point is always the same to me: mindfulness.

I focus on the experience I’m living JUST NOW and forget about everything at all. It doesn’t matter if it’s an important day, a normal one, or whatever. I just focus on the thing I’m doing NOW.

This drives me to such many little great moments, full of pleasure and good vibes, that my motivation is at its highest level when I arrive to my office. Motivation for me is just feeling nice, calm, and relaxed.

These are those moments I enjoy at my best focusing on mindfulness:

• Drinking water just looking out the window, feeling the silence, when I wake up.
• Walking with my dog, smelling the fresh air of the morning, listening to birds and sounds.
• Cold shower, feeling the water and “seeing” it’s just that, water. When I started this practice, my brain thought it was pain. Today it’s pleasure… That’s how brains work… as “stupid” as that.
• “After-shave” moment. Feeling how it refreshes my face, smelling it deeply.

I will add here 2 key elements that helped me associate these mindfulness experiences with positive emotions:

• No rush at all. I don’t push myself while I’m doing these activities. If I’m tempted, I always become conscious of it and slow me down. This is CRITICAL. I’ve noticed a lot of improvements because of that.
• Listening to jazz music while having my shower and getting dressed. This, again, was life-changing. I used to listen to the news. This “stupid” change, brought me into a whole new world of peace, calm, concentration, and joy.

Why My Performance Doubled Using Mindfulness

As I said at the beginning, I always look for real outcomes when I do something.

I always focus on quantity outcomes and quality ones.

Here are the quantity results I double after practicing mindfulness:

• I doubled the number of tasks performed each week.
• I doubled the number of projects performed each month.
• I reduced a half the time consumed performing the same tasks.

Last but not least, I always pay attention to quality results. In this case, I’ve improved a lot my peace of mind. I feel calm and relaxed.

That state allows me to feel better with myself and how I interact with others. Life runs smoothly when I’m living at this state.

Takeaways

Mindfulness has been life-changing to me.

These “stupid little techniques” are what make me focus and concentrate whenever I’m facing an important thing, such as preparing a presentation, an essay, an e-mail, a meeting…

That’s the moment in which those “stupid little things” converge into an amazing “torrent” of energy that allows me to perform at my best.

It allowed me to know me better, to make me a better performer, to perform at levels I didn’t even know they existed.

When you perform at your best is when you feel proud of your work, of your life. Motivation knocks on your door. Illusion appears. Joy. Fulfillment. Happiness.

I feel I control my emotions. I feel secured, solid, rational, calm, relaxed.

It’s by enjoying the present at a maximum level how I can create the future I pursue, the one I’ve previously drawn.

Photo at the top courtesy of Aleks Marinkovic on Unsplash