I Tried These 10 Mindfulness Exercises And Finally Let Go Of The Emotional Weight I’d Been Carrying
Living consciously and intentionally feels so much better.
RgStudio | Canva Emotion can weigh us down. We have thoughts about our lives that feel heavy. We are burdened by beliefs about who we should be, how others should act, and what our relationships should be like.
These things limit our emotional mobility, add stress, and will lead to physical health issues, as shown by 2016 research on emotional wellbeing and immune response. So we need some mindfulness exercises to bolster our emotional strength. Depending on your emotional wellness goals, there are different options for an emotional workout.
Do you want to feel less overwhelmed? Use a paper calendar. Do you want more control over your emotions? Meditate. Do you want to feel calmer? Do a daily brain dump or thought download.
I tried these ten mindfulness exercises and finally let go of the emotional weight I'd been carrying:
1. Do a thought download
This workout is for everyone. How you think about your life drives what you do. On the days when we focus on helpful, strong thoughts, we feel amazing. On the days you let your unhelpful thoughts affect you, you feel heavy, unmotivated, and apathetic.
To do a thought download, take out a piece of paper and a pen. Set a timer for 3 minutes and start writing.
- What are you thinking about?
- How are those thoughts making you feel?
- What stories are you making up?
Thought downloads help you process emotions and see where you’re holding on to negative thoughts that weigh you down. Choose to focus on different thoughts and lose some emotional weight.
2. Speak to yourself via sticky notes
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Want a workout that helps you feel better? The thoughts we focus on drive how we feel. This workout helps you control your thoughts and puts you back in control of how you want to feel.
What are some of the negative things you've told yourself? What are some of your negative thought patterns?
Go on the offense! If you speak negatively of your appearance in the morning, put a sticky note on your mirror that says "Good morning, beautiful" or "Your body does great things for you."
I have a sticky note near my computer that says, "You help many." On the visor of my car, it says, "How can you be your best self right now?"
The first step to removing emotional weight is awareness. How can you use sticky notes to disrupt some of your negative thinking patterns?
3. Create a morning routine
Mornings are a crucial time to set ourselves up for success. When we wake up, our brain is trained to look for what is wrong in our lives. It looks for what went wrong the day before and what might go wrong today. Disrupt that pattern.
The important piece to remember is that there’s nothing wrong with you if you wake up in a negative space. It’s evidence that that’s a great opportunity for growth and an emotional workout routine.
Wellness coach Jeffery Siegel said, "I'm not talking about merely organizing your daily to-do list. I'm referring to consciously crafting your mindset for the day with care. A deliberate morning practice aligns what you do with how you do it and who you become in the process. It makes all the difference between living proactively rather than reactively. Don't let your day slip by — master it. All it takes is a well-designed morning routine."
4. Ask yourself powerful questions
Looking for a workout with little effort but big results? Start paying attention to what kinds of questions you're asking yourself during the day. Do you know that our brain considers it its job to find the answer to those questions?
If we ask, "Why am I so stupid? Why don’t I have motivation? Why am I so lazy?", it will go to work to find reasons for you to continue to feel unmotivated, stupid, and lazy. It looks for evidence to support the question you’re asking.
On the contrary:
- What is going well for me?
- How can I feel great today?
- How can I help the world today?
These questions let your brain work to find the answers. Get your brain to work for your emotional health, not against it. Your brain can’t help to find answers to the questions you ask. That is what the brain is trained to do. What are you asking your brain to look for?
5. Start scheduling
Looking for a workout to manage your overwhelm or anxiety? Plan your days with a paper calendar. It is the most powerful tool I use to live a calmer, less reactive life. I have written entire posts on scheduling, yet all you need to get started is a piece of paper.
Write the numbers 5-24 down the left-hand column of the paper (one number for every 2 lines). Now, take out your to-do list. What are your top priorities for today? What is going on in your life?
Carpools, kid duties, work duties, physical duties (like sleep, exercise, meals) — write those things in a time slot (the numbers 5-24 are the times of the day) and get started.
The goal is not to have all your time slots full. Rather, it’s to have the things you want to get done and the things you have to get done written in a time slot.
We think we can accomplish so much more in a day than time allows, leading us to run around feeling like our pants are on fire. Look at your day and the actual time you have.
Maybe you don’t have time to do all of the laundry, clean the garage out, write that grant proposal, and organize your summer and winter clothes. What are your priorities? The laundry and grant proposal? Write those on your paper for today, and write the garage and your clothes for other days this week.
Scheduling allows you to set intentions and live more consciously. The goal is to write down when you’ll do all the things you want to do and to gain perspective on the actual amount of time in a day.
You are in charge of how your days pass, and you can deliberately create and manage your time. Scheduling encourages me to be deliberate about how I spend my time and thus brings calm to my days.
6. Have some radical downtime
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Want a workout that’s the equivalent of resting in child’s pose? Start including some blank time in your days. Yep, slow down. Better yet, just stop. Research The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine showed downtime as a "need for recovery and respond by entering a state of physical relaxation and psychological detachment from stressors."
At some point in your day, do something aimless that doesn’t involve your phone or have a purpose. Look at the trees. Count the tiles on your floor. Hug your child. Snuggle your dog. Breathe.
Write it on your calendar as "RD" and stop for 10 breaths or 10 minutes. Find time each day to stop doing and just be. We are human beings, yet spend our time as human doings.
7. Meditate
Looking for a workout to make you less reactive? Start meditating.
I started meditating for 3 minutes a day on my 43rd birthday. It is the best gift I’ve ever given myself. Nothing has changed my life more. People who are interested in mediation often ask me what meditation gives me.
Where to start? It has given me self-awareness, self-compassion, the ability to complete a task, calmness when parenting, and a better ability to manage my emotions.
What has it taken from me? Stress. Anger. Anxiety. Overwhelm. Confusion.
As suggested by a study in The American Psychological Association (APA), I now meditate between 10-20 minutes a day and just passed my 900 consecutive day mark (yay me!).
8. Choose to be curious over furious
This type of workout is the equivalent of choosing an apple over a cookie. When someone does something and you feel triggered, pause and ask how you could look at what they’re doing with a curious mind instead of a furious mind.
I like saying to myself:
- "Isn’t that interesting that they’d do that?"
- "I wonder why they did that?"
- "I wonder what in their past has them thinking that is okay?"
This helps me detach from taking someone else’s words or actions personally and instead see it for what it is, about them, not me. It helps me keep my emotional power, which feels light and free.
Much like eating an apple over a cookie. It gives you a sense of lightness to be in control of yourself and the choices you’re making.
9. Take breathing breaks
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This is a simple behavior to ameliorate your workout routine. It’s like stopping for water between your reps. Set an alarm 3-5 times during your day. When it goes off, count 3 of your breaths.
Done. Emotional weight lessened. A study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience showed how slow breathing techniques have a positive effect on the autonomic and central nervous system activities and your overall psychological state.
10. Exercise
Yes, exercise is also an effective tool for losing emotional weight! When we choose to deliberately move our bodies, we decrease our stress, improve our sleep and digestion, and increase our confidence.
All of these factors play together to help us feel more in control emotionally. Try it. There you go, warriors! Those are 10 workouts that will help you lose your emotional weight.
But, before you head out to the emotional gym and start your workout plans, remember these two things first:
- Start small: In the same way you don’t begin a physical workout with 75 lbs weights and 60 minutes of cardio, don’t put those expectations on yourself for your emotional workout. When I started meditating, I told myself that I needed to meditate for 3 minutes a day, every day. When I started with my thought download, I set my timer for 2 minutes.
- Practice daily: Do you brush your teeth once and forever have clean teeth? Nope. Do you do 30 sit-ups and suddenly have a strong core? Nope. Do you meditate once and forever live in a calm and reactive-free state? Nope. Rinse and repeat. When you find a workout that works for you, keep it. Make it a part of your routine. The great news is that, in the same way physical exercise and routines get easier with practice (neuroplasticity), so do emotional habits.
It can be that easy. Use these workouts to take the drama out of your life. Living consciously and intentionally feels so much better than the alternative.
Susie Pettit is a mindfulness-based cognitive coach and podcast host. She coaches women to live a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
