6 Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness Outside of Meditation

What’s the difference between meditation and mindfulness?
1. Meditative practices are found in almost all religious and spiritual traditions. The Buddha didn’t invent meditation. He did, however, devise the practice of mindful awareness — what we call mindfulness.
2. Mindfulness can be practiced inside or outside of formal meditation. Meditation is a technique for practicing mindfulness in a structured setting; it can improve your mindfulness skills outside of meditation.
What are the benefits of practicing mindfulness outside of meditation?
1. Mindfulness gives the mind a rest from our fixation on discursive thinking.
Of course, we need to think at times. That said, the mind tends to dwell on stressful thoughts about the past and the future: we replay painful experiences from the past; we mock up worst-case-scenarios about the future. It’s exhausting and rarely productive. Bringing our mind out of our stories and into the present moment brings with it a welcome relief from these stressful and habitual thought patterns.
2. Mindfulness takes us out of ourselves.
You can see from #1 that most of our discursive thinking is self-focused. It’s refreshing and energizing to open our awareness to the world around us instead of always being preoccupied with our personal stories. Mindfulness also helps us cope with painful physical sensations when their intensity takes over our entire sense of self and we feel we are nothing but painful sensations.