Using Mindfulness and Meditation To Realize Your Goals

Goal setting can be an excellent tool to understand the path you want to take to reach your health and fitness goals. In our often too-busy worlds, where we so closely follow our calendars to know what to do next, plugging in your exercise classes into your weekly schedule is very important.

So is being mindful about why you’re showing up and where you want it to take you next.

Does the following situation sound familiar?

When exercising, your thoughts are always on the future: your long-term fitness goals, what the traffic is going to look like on the the way home, what’s for dinner, what you’ll do next time… next time… next time…

If this sounds like you, where is your mind? Are you in the present or focusing primarily on what is not happening in the present moment?

Setting some time apart to reflect on what your goals are, could be, and why they’re there can be a great helper in keeping us motivated and on track for success.

What is Meditation?

One definition of meditation is being consciously aware of what you’re doing and where you are at the present moment. You are able to honestly observe thoughts, emotions, etc. without judgement. Often, this leads to new clarity and insights.

How Meditation Can Help with Your Fitness Goals:

Meditation is essentially the act of focused and intentional breathing. The more efficiently you can get your oxygen pumping, the more efficient your muscles can be.

Breath and intentionality are major components of success in working out and meditation can lead to greater performance during workouts, overall relaxation, clearer thoughts, and more energy.

When we take some time to meditate, we can focus on ourselves in order to get clear on what’s working for or against us. In order to achieve long-term goal success, we need to evaluate our goals from time to time and make sure we’re on the right track.

Meditation can help to create a deeper connection with ourselves so that we want to nurture our bodies even more, leading to healthier choices in what we eat and perhaps even less alcohol.

When we welcome the peace and focus that meditation techniques can bring, there may also be a shift from feeling like working out is a “punishment” for what you’ve eaten, for skipping a day, etc., to actually enjoying your body and wanting to give it your best.

Mindfulness and meditation can help you be more present in the moment and when you pay closer attention, you perform better.

Simply, the mind-body connection is very synergistic: a healthy body can often mean a healthy mind and vice versa.

Setting a new goal

Start small. Maybe try two or five minutes on a routine schedule to sit, focus on one thing— your breath, a candle flame, a thought, one thing— and see how it feels. Two minutes in beginning this new practice can be harder than you may imagine. Build up from there.

The goal of meditation is to be aware of your thoughts— not get frustrated when your mind wanders. Be gentle and non-judgemental. Set an intention for your practice.

This is a start but you may be surprised at what could result from it!