The 4 Benefits That Mindfulness Brings When it Comes to Achieving Your Goals

One of the most common traps we tend to fall into when we set goals (for example, at the start of a new year) is to assume that whether we achieve them or not will depend on the amount of time and effort we put into achieving them. of those tasks.

The reality is that if we do not learn to correctly manage our emotions and our attentional focus, we will end up throwing in the towel no matter how much we want to invest in a project. In many ways, less is more, for better and for worse.

Fortunately, currently There are therapeutic resources such as Mindfulness that help us improve our chances of achieving our goals through efficient use of our attention, focusing on the present moment and adopting a constructive perspective about the problem we want to solve or the need we want to satisfy. In this article we will see how it does it.

What is Mindfulness?

Let’s start with the most important thing: what, exactly, is Mindfulness or Full Attention? This term can be used both to describe a certain type of state of consciousness and the set of techniques and exercises used to reach it.

If we stick to the first meaning, Mindfulness can be summarized as a psychological state in which attention is directed exclusively to recognizing and observing mental contents linked to the here and now without us getting involved in morally valuing them.

And if we stick to the second meaning, Mindfulness is a type of practice inspired by the ancient Vipassana meditation (with a great tradition among followers of Buddhism and Hinduism), but unlike the latter, it has not been developed as a religious element. but as a scientifically validated tool with which objective therapeutic effects can be achieved (regardless of whether the person adheres to a religion or not).

Mindfulness exercises were created in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, especially by researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn, who from the University of Massachusetts designed the Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. Initially, the objective of Mindfulness was fundamentally to help people with stress and anxiety problems through a training plan of several weeks, but as time went by, variants adapted to other types of needs began to emerge, not necessarily limited to the field of mental health.

Today, although the MBSR program continues to be a powerful ally of psychotherapists, a wide variety of Mindfulness techniques are available that can be used in contexts as different as companies, primary education centers, and the training of athletes. , etc. All of these variants have characteristics and stages adapted to their objective, but in all of them the essence of Mindfulness is preserved, which is to teach the person to focus on the present moment to get rid of dysfunctional psychological inertia (obsessive thoughts, tendency to self-sabotage, mental blockages). stress, lack of skills to manage physical or emotional pain…).

How can Mindfulness help you achieve goals?

What does Mindfulness have to do with, for example, New Year’s resolutions, the start of a new career path or the desire to leave an addiction behind and start a healthy lifestyle from a certain date? Below I summarize the different ways through which Mindfulness helps to address this type of personal or professional projects

1. Helps curb avoidant tendencies

Many times, the fact of being subjected to the pressure of having to achieve very ambitious goals causes us to fall into a dynamic of procrastination: as we feel a lot of stress when faced with a complex or new task for us, we avoid starting it or thinking about it, so we We let time pass and the problem becomes bigger and bigger. Mindfulness helps us face this pressure in a much more functional and adaptive way without letting it intimidate us to the point of paralyzing us.

2. It makes breaks more useful

Although technically Mindfulness is a relaxation exercise, one of its consequences is that it usually leads people to a state of calm This allows Mindfulness to be easily incorporated into rest routines between work or study sessions.

3. It allows us to do a “mental reset” when faced with blockages

It is very common that when we try to do something that is new to us, we reach a point where we cannot think of how to continue to achieve our goal. In these situations we can feel so stressed that we give rise to what is known as a “self-fulfilling prophecy”: we suggest to ourselves until we assume that we will not come up with a solution and that we will be incapable of moving forward, so that this imagined reality It ends up being fulfilled because we become obsessed with the fact of being in an apparent dead end.

Given these experiences, Mindfulness allows us to regain an objective perspective to what happens to us, so that we are able to see everything from a more distant point and it is easy for us to take a few steps back to face the problem in another way.

4. Improves our self-esteem

When faced with a new project, it is common for us to go through many situations in which our imperfections become very evident: in certain points we will lack experience, in others we will lack technique, etc. These constant frictions between what we want to achieve and what we have learned to do so far is part of the process of personal and professional development, but if we do not manage it well, it will discourage us.

That is why Mindfulness is a valuable tool to achieve self-motivation, since it will prevent us from falling into interpretations of reality that are too pessimistic or “tragic.” in which all our attention is directed to our defects. It is important to be aware of what we are not perfect at, but we should not let it obsess us.

• You may be interested: “Do you really know what self-esteem is?”

Do you want to have psychological assistance and Mindfulness training?

If you are interested in incorporating Mindfulness into your daily life, Get in touch with me

I am a psychologist and MBSR Mindfulness instructor certified by the University of Massachusetts and I offer MBSR Mindfulness training courses and programs in Mindfulness, in person and online formats.