How to Practice Mindfulness in the Cracks of Your Day

You don’t need hours of time or a weekend retreat to practice mindfulness and self care. Squeeze these techniques into the cracks of your day and start feeling more peaceful, calm and settled right away.

I have this itch in my hand. Whenever I find myself waiting on something, the itch in my hand starts to tingle and I just have to reach for my phone.

I caught myself being incapable of waiting, even for the shortest amount of time, without reaching for my phone.

Standing in the doorway of the backyard waiting for Rufus to pee… Grab the phone.

Stirring food in a pan waiting for it to cook…Grab the phone.

Waiting in the checkout line at Publix…Grab the phone.

Three cars back at a red light…Grab the phone.

I don’t know what it is about waiting, but it makes me feel bored, like my time is being wasted, a little irritable, and very impatient. And I guess my way of solving that problem was to try and multitask through it. In that dead time I could at least check a few emails or scroll to catch up on social media.

In an odd way that felt like being productive to me. In a sad way that felt like the only free time I had to catch up.

But what I realized was I didn’t really feel more productive when doing that, I certainly wasn’t getting more done and I wasn’t relaxing in a way that made me feel like I’d had any free time at all. That’d be a multitask fail in my book.

I decided to try and stop myself whenever I felt the itch to reach for the phone.

I’ve heard that a good method for habit formation is to replace an old bad habit with the new habit you’re trying to lock in. So I decided to go for it and replace my itch for the phone and mindless scrolling for a tiny little moment of mindfulness and self care.

I wanted to see what it would feel like to take those little moments of waiting scattered throughout my day and replace the noise from my phone with what I hoped would be quiet from my mind.

In the first phase of this experiment there was absolutely no quiet. My monkey mind would race and scream and throw poo and do anything at all to resist being quiet.

So I had to pivot a little bit and instead of going for silence I decided to replace the noise from social media with a chosen affirmation, prayer or mantra, or even counted breathing. Something simple, but it had to be something.

Standing in the doorway of the backyard waiting for Rufus to pee...

Now I can stretch my chest wide open in the door jam and drink in the fresh air, the nature and just try to breathe deeply. Now I can admire the garden, admire God’s creation, and feel the sun on my face.

Waiting in the checkout line at Publix…

Now I can breathe deeply and thank God for all of the new freedom and peace I feel around food, and feel gratitude for the ability to put food on the table at all.

Three cars back at a red light…

Now I can breathe deeply and remind myself to slow down, stop rushing everywhere, stop hustling and get in the moment.

In building these new little practices I began to feel some space and calmness that wasn’t there before.

The habit replacement worked pretty well and I have no problem remembering to take those cues as my new opportunities to practice self care and mindfulness.

And if I forget, that little itch in my hand and the bubbling up of impatience will remind me to check myself and choose again.

This experiment is what inspired me to create my first FREEBIE that you can download right now by clicking this link.

GRAB YOUR FREEBIE!

It’s a printable resource: four little cards for you to print out and stick in those places where you too might feel the itch to reach for your phone, where you might have a little bit of stress that I’m encouraging you to replace with self care through the use of these cards.

The cards give you a simple prompt and a scripture verse to plug into that moment instead. And it feels better than scrolling. Try it and see for yourself!

We don’t all have big chunks of time we can block out on our calendar to make room for mindfulness. We don’t all have hours a week to devote to self care.

But we all have moments where we have to wait.

We all have little cracks in our day that can be filled.

Where are those cracks for you?

Maybe it’s when you’re folding laundry. Maybe it’s when you’re in the carpool line trying to pick up your kids. Maybe it’s when you’re riding in an elevator. Maybe it’s just in the commercial breaks of your favorite show.

I want to encourage you to find those moments and seize them.

They can become opportunities to plant the seeds of a mindfulness practice if you just breathe into those moments and stay in them, rather than mentally checking out, getting impatient or scrolling on your phone.

They are opportunities to practice self care if you replace that noise with silence or positive words.

They are little nuggets of gold waiting to be mined.If you have any of those moments, go ahead and grab my free printable and stick those cards into the cracks of your day. I made one for your dashboard, one for your bathroom mirror, one for your refrigerator and one for your wallet.

I pray these cards will bring positivity, patience and peace and that they will inspire you to dive deeper into taking care of your heart, mind and soul beyond just the cracks in your day.

But until then, this is a great place to start.

I hope the next time you’re at a red light, in the checkout line at Publix or just waiting impatiently you remember that you DO have time to be mindful, you DO have time to practice self care and , most of all, you deserve the peace and wholeness that will grow in your life when you do.

Whenever you catch yourself impatiently waiting or mindlessly scrolling, you’ve identified a crack in your day. Seize this as your moment for mindfulness and self care!

Breathe deeply. Say a little prayer. Recite an affirmation or verse that speaks to your soul. Be in the moment.

Where did you find a crack in your day? What is your favorite quote, verse or mantra you can use to speak into those moments?