5 Simple Mindfulness Practices for Daily Life

Your day-to-day activities offer ample opportunities to call up mindfulness in any moment. These simple practices will breathe space into your daily routines.

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How often have you rushed out the door and into your day without even thinking about how you’d like things to go? Before you know it, something or someone has rubbed you the wrong way, and you’ve reacted automatically with frustration, impatience, or rage—in other words, you’ve found yourself acting in a way you never intended.

You don’t have to be stuck in these patterns. Pausing to practice mindfulness for just a few minutes at different times during the day can help your days be better, more in line with how you’d like them to be.

Explore these five daily practices for bringing more mindfulness into your life:

Marta Locklear/Stocksy 1) Mindful Wakeup: Start with a Purpose

Intention refers to the underlying motivation for everything we think, say, or do. From the brain’s perspective, when we act in unintended ways, there’s a disconnect between the faster, unconscious impulses of the lower brain centers and the slower, conscious, wiser abilities of the higher centers like the pre-frontal cortex.

Given that the unconscious brain is in charge of most of our decision-making and behaviors, this practice can help you align your conscious thinking with a primal emotional drive that…

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About the author

Parneet Pal

Parneet Pal, MBBS, MS is a Harvard- and Columbia- trained physician on a mission to create a compassionate society where health is the default. She moved away from clinical practice to focus on chronic disease prevention. She provides lifestyle-as-medicine consulting to academic organizations, business and individuals. She also serves as Chief Science Officer at Wisdom Labs, Inc.

About the author

Carley Hauck

Carley Hauck is the founder of Leading from Wholeness, a leadership and organizational development training firm that creates customized speaking and large scale change management programs to support the virtual workplace with psychological safety, trust and high performance in teams, and inclusive leadership development. Carley has served mission driven leaders and companies in tech, finance, and high growth start-ups, such as Bank of the West, LinkedIn, Pixar, Genentech, Clif Bar, Intuit, and Capital One to create thriving cultures and increase their leadership game. She teaches on the subject of leadership at Stanford University and Haas Business School and is the author of Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World. Learn how you can uplevel your inner game and be a conscious and inclusive leader at work and in the world by joining Carley and leaders by signing up to listen to her acclaimed podcast Shine.

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Elisha Goldstein

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and conducts a private practice in West Los Angeles. He is founder of the Mindful Living Collective—a donation-based leading global network for mindful living and learning, and creator of the Uncover the Power Within coaching program and the free master class on the Uncover the Power Within Blueprint. He is also the author of Uncovering Happiness: Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion (Atria Books, 2015), The Now Effect (Atria Books, 2012), Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler (Atria Books, 2013), and co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook (New Harbinger, 2010).

About the author

Kyra Bobinet

Kyra Bobinet, MD, MPH, is the author of Well Designed Life: 10 Lessons in Brain Science & Design Thinking for a Mindful, Health & Purposeful Life.

About the author

Cara Bradley

Cara Bradley is a leading authority on mental fitness having led thousands through her signature strategies of how to work and play in flow. She shares her 30+ years of body-brain training with Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, and premiere college sports teams. Cara’s expertise includes science-backed tools to enhance coherence and awareness through mind training and priming the nervous system and gut-brain connection. She is the author of On The Verge: Wake Up, Show Up, and Shine, founder of the award-winning Verge Yoga Center, and host of the On The Verge mental fitness podcast.