How to Start Your Day With Love and Kindness Instead of Stress

Stress, if not harnessed correctly and used to fuel your success, is the ultimate buzz kill, as it can affect your waking moments and prevent you from sleeping as well. It makes you less productive, so it makes sense to lessen your stress levels and one effective way of doing this is through meditation and mindfulness.

Meditation can help on many levels, it helps quieten the stress, increases joy, helps you practice self-awareness and strengthens your concentration.

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Meditation is a state where you are not actually actively thinking, it needs to be practiced but is a very effective way of making it calm in the storm. With some, you just concentrate on breathing and silence and others will be accompanied by white noise or soft music. There are all sorts of different meditations to try. YouTube is full of them.

But to start, I would suggest a guided meditation, but listen to a few different types on YouTube and see what comforts you.

My personal favorite is the loving-kindness meditation, which concentrates on spreading love and kindness to yourself, a loved one, a neutral person, someone you are having difficulty with. It is really peaceful and calming. A great place to start the day from:

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The words are as follows:

First, concentrate on yourself

May I be well
May I be happy
May I be peaceful
May I be loved

Second, someone you love

May ?name? be well
May ?name? be happy
May ?name? be peaceful
May ?name? be loved

Third, Neutral person, you don't know, like a cashier

May you be well
May you be happy
May you be peaceful
May you be loved

Fourth, Someone you having difficulty with

May ?name? be well
May ?name? be happy
May ?name? be peaceful
May ?name? be loved

Fifth, all four

May you all be well
May you all be happy
May you all be peaceful
May you all be loved

It is also worth considering looking at mindfulness meditation, which concentrates more on living in the moment and being aware of your thoughts (rather than clearing your mind) and enjoying life right now, without thinking about the past or future. Enjoy the orgasm that can be life. Actually, sex is just the perfect time to experience and practice living in the moment, that and eating a piece of chocolate really slowly and enjoying it melt in your mouth.

It is also useful to help you take stock of your life. Last year, around this time I was doing a mindfulness course and one of the sessions included a meditation where you just watched your thoughts like clouds drifting by and I did this when I felt negative and down and it was then I realized that 90% of the negativity wasn't coming from me, but from my husband, who I now know to be a toxic person. He is no longer in my life, not an easy choice, but a necessary one and if you could have seen me in January, to the person I am now, there is a huge difference in my confidence and positivity, but I'm still on my journey, I won't even be the same person tomorrow.

Meditations or mindfulness are a very empowering start to the day. Take some time to look into this, pick one and try it every day for a month.

You can thank me later. ;)