What You Resist Persists

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” Here’s to more time feeling inspired and less time feeling stressed.”
#MondayMotivation

TLDR; Good morning and welcome to your 2-minute dose of happiness. Today we speak to the value of consistently working on your own awareness and the commitments necessary to succeed.

Morning Ritual: Consider adding this exercise to your morning ritual to clear the brain fog.
Be Present: What you resist persists.
Procrastination: The cause of many undesirable side effects that can be combated with preparation.

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MORNING RITUAL

This 5-Second Breathing Practice Can Boost Your Memory *and* Energy

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

As best selling author James Nestor concluded, breathing slowly through our noses instead of our mouths is beneficial including clearing, heating and moistening raw air upon inhaling, our nose triggers hormones and chemicals that lower blood pressure, regular heart rate, ease digestion and more.

If you are interesting in clearing your brain fog, consider the following perfect exercise:

Inhale through the nose for 5 to 6 seconds
Exhale through the nose for 5 to 6 seconds

That’s it!

Try adding this to your morning ritual and setting a timer for 5 minutes to practice this technique. You can also practice this while you are reading your daily newsletters, articles or even filling in your gratitude list or accomplishments journal.

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BE PRESENT

How Not To Make Stress Worse

Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash

We’ve all heard the exercise of trying to stop thinking about a monkey. And all of a sudden no matter what you are thinking about it’s a monkey. Stressful scenarios and events often work the same way.

What you resist persists.

Rather than focusing on the stressful event of the thought, notice and be aware that you are experiencing stress and then change the conversation through breath work, gratitudes, prayers or intentions.

Invite into your mind the present.

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PROCRASTINATION

Do it, to it

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

“People who chronically procrastinate tend to have higher levels of stress, poor sleep patterns and worse job prospects, particularly when it comes to advancing into roles where autonomy and decision making are required. On the mental health front, procrastination is also linked to depression and anxiety. It can similarly undermine relationships, because when we procrastinate, we end up breaking commitments with others.”

An exercise to help you get started daily actually happens the night before. As you begin your evening ritual of winding down, consider what tasks you would like to complete tomorrow. Use a tool like Evernote to brain dump your todo list and do it without reserve or consideration of whether you can actually complete the tasks.

Once your list is “complete”, review the list and set 3 or 4 intentions for the following day that you will complete before your day is over. This simple routine will help make you accountable to yourself and moving forward.

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BOOK OF THE WEEK

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

“A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe–and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” –Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly.

There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

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