People Who Feel 10x Emotionally Lighter Often Practice These Simple Mind Exercises
Yaroslav Astakhov | Shutterstock Emotion can weigh us down. Some thoughts about our lives feel heavy. We carry 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 lead to physical health issues. So we need mindfulness exercises to strengthen our emotional resilience. Depending on your emotional wellness goals, you can choose different emotional workouts to feel a heck of a lot lighter.
People who feel emotionally lighter often practice these mind exercises:
1. They 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 3-minute timer 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. They speak to themselves 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 negative things have you told yourself? What negative thought patterns do you have?
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 my car visor, 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 negative thinking patterns?
3. They 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 yesterday and what might go wrong today. Disrupt that pattern.
Remember: 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 talking about consciously crafting your mindset for the day. A deliberate morning practice aligns what you do with how you do it and who you become in the process. It makes the difference between living proactively and reactively. Don't let your day slip by; master it. All it takes is a well-designed morning routine."
4. They ask themselves powerful questions
Looking for a workout with little effort but big results? Start paying attention to the kinds of questions you ask yourself during the day. Did you know our brain considers it its job to answer those questions?
If we ask, "Why am I so stupid? Why don’t I have motivation? Why am I so lazy?", our brain will work to find reasons to keep us feeling 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 you answer the questions you ask. That is what the brain is trained to do. What are you asking your brain to look for?
5. They 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 isn't to fill all your time slots. 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 more in a day than time allows, so we 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 the laundry, clean out the garage, 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, which brings calm to my days.
6. They carve out 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. They 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 interested in meditation often ask me what it gives me.
Where to start? It has given me self-awareness, self-compassion, the ability to complete tasks, calmness when parenting, and better emotional regulation. What has it taken from me? Stress. Anger. Anxiety. Overwhelm. Confusion. I now meditate 10-20 minutes a day and just passed my 900-day mark (yay me!).
8. They choose to be curious over furious
This type of workout is like 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 curiosity instead of fury.
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 and control over yourself and the choices you’re making.
9. They take breathing breaks
This simple behavior can improve 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, take 3 deep breaths. Done. Emotional weight lessened. A study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience showed that slow breathing techniques positively affect your central nervous system activity and your overall mental state.
10. They exercise often
Yes, exercise is also an effective tool for losing emotional weight. When we choose to move our bodies deliberately, we reduce stress, improve sleep and digestion, and build confidence.
All of these factors work together to help us feel more emotionally in control. Try it. There you go, warriors! These 10 workouts will help you lose emotional weight. But before you head out to the emotional gym and start your workout plans, remember these two things first:
- Start small: Just as you don’t begin a physical workout with 75-lb 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 have clean teeth forever? Nope. Do you do 30 sit-ups and suddenly have a strong core? Nope. Do you meditate once and live in a calm, reactive-free state forever? 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, just like physical exercise and routines get easier with practice (neuroplasticity), emotional habits do too.
It can be that easy. Use these workouts to cut the drama from 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.
