10 Daily Actions to Slow Down and Add Intention to Your Life

It’s all too easy to just go through the motions. You find yourself in a rut, days, weeks, months going by faster and faster. SLOW. IT. DOWN. This is not about abolishing routine—big fans of routine over here. Rather, take on your day with intention. Make it count. Appreciate, reflect, digest. This will not happen inherently. Practice mindfulness, and your life will be all the richer. Try these 10 things to foster intention, purpose, and improve your daily life!

1. Use your brain: practice or learn something every day! Keep your brain active.
2. Do something for someone else: be kind, be courteous, be considerate. Compliment someone. Help someone.
3. Breathe better: be mindful of your breathing and practice taking deep breaths. Try to breathe through your nose more. Set aside a minute here and there to just sit and breathe deeply.
4. Identify triggers: pay attention to your responses. Don’t ignore when something upsets you or makes you feel some kind of way; look at that with a magnifying glass. Identify the trigger and work to address it.
5. Be creative: whatever the mode, practice creativity every day. It doesn’t have to be good.
6. Practice gratitude: the things you pay attention to are the things you’ll notice most. Focus on the things you’re grateful for and appreciate, and you’ll find yourself noticing them more throughout your day.
7. Laugh: laughter, smiling, these things trigger happy chemical responses in your brain. Laugh freely!
8. Wake up early: or, at least try to wake up at the same time every day. Find peace in a morning routine.
9. Move your body: get sweaty. Get your blood going. Endorphins flowing. Nutrients pumping through you.
10. Cut out negative talk: listen to the way you talk out loud and in your head and restructure negative words and sentences. Listen for “sorry” and replace it with “thanks” (sorry I’m late à thanks for waiting). Stop hating on yourself (you wouldn’t say that to anyone else, so why you?). Focus on appreciating yourself and others, instead.

Try any of these 10 pointers and you’ll find the rest of your day will go by more mindfully. Instead of ingesting your day like a large popcorn at the movie theater (gone already? How?), sip and savor moments and reflect on them later. Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate! Keep growing, Team CK.