The only mindfulness email YOU will ever need has just arrived & it’s in your inbox. This is pretty cool! It means so much to have you apart of this experience so thank you for joining. Enjoy!
Thoughts for the Week:
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Questions like these are very important while on our journey to mindfulness as it can lead us to many discoveries. One of the most important discoveries is that questions like these can help us realize that what we think can lead us to a better life.
But how?
It’s simple. When we ask good questions, we get good answers that can help us grow & evolve to better versions of ourselves.
Empowering questions allow us to explore our ability to be grateful, develop resilience, & focus on the most important things in life. It allows us to immerse ourselves in mindfulness.
“The mind is a lot like a selfie, adjust your angle or perspective, to see a better picture (or world).”
Here’s the LOC breakdown for you to preview what you’re getting in this email (at a glance):
Mindful Insights (special first look at the mindful Monday IG post before anybody else; thoughts on awareness & mindfulness; & 3 apps to help you achieve more calm in your life)
Mindful Weekly Challenge (mindful awareness— a practice you can do anytime, anywhere.)
Mindful Approach (practical tips to help you get through life)
Mindful Reflection (3 ways on how I’m finding zen this week)
Mindful Insights
1) See it FIRST 👀
Mindful Monday IG post (what are your thoughts? Share in the ZEN WEEKLY private Fb group)
How do you respond when something goes wrong? Do you quickly react or do you try to come back to yourself to better understand?
Having compassion for ourselves has so many benefits for our wellbeing. When we’re able to hold space for ourselves, we can cultivate more happiness, life satisfaction & motivation, better relationships, & less anxiety & depression. We are also able to build up resiliency; something that’s needed to cope with the stressful shit life throws at us & even overcome trauma.
I know this works because it works for me in my own life. When I was kicked out of nursing school beginning of 2018 (something we can discuss at a later time), I could of went down a dark path. At first, I was mind fucked. I couldn’t understand how this was happening to me. I was so close to graduating and just like that, it was all taken away. If it weren’t for my ability to practice a little self compassion for myself (or this case a lot of self compassion), I don’t know what I’d be doing with my life right now. But because I took time to show myself much needed love, I worked out my emotions, and have since then been working towards getting back into another nursing program to accomplish what I once started.
When we are mindful of our struggles, & respond to ourselves with kindness, support, & compassion, things start to change. Our perspective holds a lot of weight in the way we navigate our world, so let’s try to create a perspective that serves our wellbeing rather than destroy it.
2) Mindfulness & Awareness
Mindfulness and Awareness are the FOUNDATIONS of meditation.
One of the things I hear the most from ppl is that they think they’re doing meditation wrong. Or they don’t know how to be mindful. But really there’s no trick to it. To successfully practice mindfulness & meditation, all you really need is to embody a sense of awareness.
So what is mindfulness again?
Mindfulness is the ability to pay full & open attention to the present moment, without judgement.
Mindfulness is the ability to pay full & open attention to the present moment, without judgement. Sounds simple right?
But if you think about it, we spend most of time doing anything but that. We instead get lost in our thoughts, thinking of the past or the future, never really allowing ourselves to just be here, in this moment.
To embrace the present moment, you’ve got to be able to recognize it; become aware of the here & now.
When we practice mindfulness meditation, we’re training ourselves to recognize our thoughts, sensations, & emotions that arise in the moment (without judging them) & then we allow them to pass, just the way cars do on the highway. We see them come, and we see them go. To do this, we focus our attention (our awareness) onto something in the present moment (like the breathe). And once we become aware that our minds are trying to escape us, we gently bring our attention back to our breathe or whatever else it was that we chose to focus in on initially, and continue the session. With some practice, this form of meditation becomes the key to cultivating mindful awareness.
3) THREE APPS TO CHECK OUT
So I’ll about finding new tools that will help me and help others cultivate a sense of calm in our lives. These three apps help me to do just that and it may be something you would want to look further into for yourself:
Headspace - a great meditation app especially for beginners.
Down Dog - a great yoga app (again…great for beginners) to help us find a litte mind/body balance in our lives.
Insight Timer - another meditation app with thousands of options to choose from to help us sleep, relax, and find some calm.
Mindful Challenge
Share your experience with us in the zen weekly private FB group. I’d love to hear about how this went for you.
Mindful Approach
Remember the intentions from last week? Continue with that this week—set a purposeful intention for the day.
You can start by thinking, “What is one thing that I really want to achieve today?”
“Setting intentions for yourself is powerful. It helps to creates a sense of meaning for your day.”
Try to avoid setting an intention on something you “have to do” and think of what you really love to do.” Use your answer to set an intention (or a fun goal)
TRY THIS: When you wake up, spend some time doing something that you enjoy so you can have something to look forward too.
Mindful Reflections
What’s helping me get by this week:
What I’m listening to—
May seem funny but honestly I’ve been listening to a lot of Britney Spears music. I feel that she’s been going through so much, and with the #freebritney trend going viral, I’m holding space for her by supporting her music. It’s the least I can do for the time-being. I truly hope she’s okay tho.
What’s helping me rejuvenate —
So taking vitamins has been something I implemented into my daily routine for almost 1 year now and tbh it’s one of those things where you don’t quite see the benefits but you feel it. I buy my vitamins through Care/of, a company that allows you to take a quick quiz so that they can get to know you & from that, their algorithm works it’s magic & curates a list of vitamins specifically for you.
Then they ship you a box with a months worth of personalized vita-packages. So if you’ve been looking into adding vitamins to your self care plan, care/of is the way to go. And because I love you, you can use this CODE to get your first order 50% OFF ❤️
What’s keeping me productive —
Well currently there are several things keeping me productive. Managing my iG page has been on top of it all; it’s where I spend a lot of my time. I show up there every single day. Mindful Mondays are especially my favorite because it’s when I share wonderful mindfulness tools that I’ve learned and practice to help you get by too. Be sure to visit me, I’m sharing more content on there about ways to practice mindful awareness
side note: I’ve been in the process of getting my website revamped because where it stands currently, does not truly represent who I am. I am so excited for you to see the new website that’s set to go live very very very soon. You’ll be the first to know when :)
Please share your feedback.
You can leave your thoughts on this week’s newsletter by joining the *NEW* private ZenWeeklysubgroup, apart of the ZenRn FB Community.
Stay well my friend.
Namaste.
I’m Victor.
Or the mindfulness guy.
I aim to find calm & balance in my life through inspirations between alternative Eastern traditional Buddhism styles of meditation & mindfulness, as well as modern secular styles too.
I believe that we ALL have the capacity to create greatness for ourselves & I’m willing to show you how.
you can find me hanging out on:
Instagram —@2whomitmayconcrn_
Facebook — @iamzenrn
TikTok — @iamzenrn
Join the fam!
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Want More?
Visit the Zen Rn website for more mindful treats >>
https://www.iamzenrn.com
~I’m here to hold space for you because you deserve it.~
Victor Padilla