

And just 2 minutes of exercise that raises your heart rate can change your mood.

For example, in Stress Free for Good: 10 Scientifically Proven Life Skills for Health and Happiness, the authors write it takes only 3 to 4 deep breaths, about 10 seconds, to shut down the stress response. Research shows very brief mindful moment practices can be restorative in many ways, including reducing your stress level, boosting your mood, keeping you more alert and focused, and improving your performance. An ideal use of mindful moments is to incorporate them into a routine part of your day, such as the beginning or end of the day, before or after meals, or transitioning from your work life to your home life. Your mindful moments can also foster kind, generous, and thoughtful actions when targeted for the benefit of others. Pausing for brief mindful breaks interspersed throughout your day can be a way to cultivate mindfulness as well as reduce stress and negativity, sustain a positive outlook, and nurture self- compassion. Your mindful moments can be stress-relieving, tension-releasing, relaxing, calming, energizing, self-soothing, or mood- lifting as the moment commands.

A daily stream of mindful moments can keep you from stressing out and slipping into autopilot. Without deliberate stress-buffering practices needed in the moment stress strikes, stress can easily accumulate and make your day go dismal in no time. A mindful moment practice is pausing regularly throughout the day to take mindful action, either for your own well-being or for that of others. The daily challenges of life are endless and stopping to take a mindful moment is a way to meet the shifting challenges a given day brings. What a Daily Dose of Mindful Moments Can Do for Youīraking for mindful moments throughout the day is a way to take mindfulness from an inner practice to an active practice by taking intentional action.
