Wake Up. Stay Up.
Life Hacks to Help You Stay Conscious and Maintain Enlightenment Throughout Your Day
What if you could not only elevate consciousness with moments of insight and reflection (i.e. prayer, meditation, yoga), but what if you could stay conscious and maintain the peace from these moments throughout your day, your being, and your way of interacting with the world? Would you like to learn ways to stay conscious and enlightened in all walks of your life: from your relationship with your partner or children, to your career and hustle life, and most importantly to staying conscious of your inner wisdom. Staying conscious in the way we live our lives, beyond moments of reflection, is the key to unlocking your greatness! And as an added bonus, maintaining an enlightened way of being will not only help improve your own life, but those around you will benefit just from being influenced by your undimmed light.
Imagine A More Conscious Life
Imagine navigating an argument with your partner from a place of calmness that let’s love prevail instead of righteousness. Imagine being in your next high pressure meeting, engaging from a place of calm confidence instead of anxiety or defensiveness. Can you see yourself making better decisions based on your own internal wisdom and not the overwhelming influence we endure each day?
That’s what staying conscious is all about and more. I can’t illustrate every advantage, because part of the beauty of staying conscious is the ever unfolding internal wisdom that you encounter. This wisdom can only come from the combination of your inner truth and external experiences. But I can tell you some helpful ways to maintain elevated consciousness and mindfulness throughout the day. Here are three life hacks that are sure to help you stay above the fray:
3 Life Hacks to Stay Conscious
- Compassion Reminders. I use my iPhone to set reminders to stay compassionate. Many philosophies like Buddhism and Christianity tout the benefits of loving kindness. I like to highlight one of the greatest benefits of practicing having more compassion for others is that it opens you up to the unknown. Having compassion for someone, even during conflict, allows you to stay curious, and stay questioning. This curiosity helps you to keep in mind that you never know what someone is going through internally (mentally, physically, or emotionally), what news they might have just found out, or even what trauma they might have survived. By allowing yourself to operate from a place that allows for acceptance and curiosity about others’ actions, it blesses you with the ability to not attach yourself to any situation or action. Furthermore it creates a cycle of compassion and acceptance that naturally flows back to you in so many ways. So having little reminders throughout your day, or week can help remind you to add a moment of compassion before you react to someone. And it also great for positive interactions alike, allowing you to stay conscious of people and interactions that serve you. This consciousness gives you the opportunity in that moment to be more grateful and experience more joy. This will also help you practice the skill of non-judgement, releasing you from the binding hold of assumptions. Read more about non-judgement here.Side note: Be sure to use the reminders app not the alarm app for frequent reminders. Trust me, the intrusive alarm will get annoying. In the reminders app you can set times to be reminded that are less intrusive and usually include text only, not sound (turn off sound in settings).
- Plaster your Purpose Everywhere. An essential factor in helping you stay conscious is operating from your true self, and your purpose is an action plan developed to fulfill that true self. Therefore every action you take should be informed by your true purpose, your Spirit intention, your philosophy. As this purpose is ever evolving like everything in life, it is important that we ritually attune with this purpose and how to manifest it in our lives. (For a helpful article of doing exactly that click here) Once you have a symbol (like a vision board), or a condensed summary of your purpose on paper, take a picture of it and put as many places as you can to ingrain it in your mind. Place it as your wallpaper on your phone and laptop. Put it in a frame and set on your workstation. Put a small picture on your dashboard in your car. Also a good tip to that I have learned from Les Brown, is to create three words that embody your purpose. Remind yourself of these words multiple times, everyday. For this I would suggest using an alarm and setting it to a convenient time that would not interrupt you. I like labeling my alarm in my iPhone that wakes me up in the morning with my three words, and similarly do the same with my alarm to go to bed at night. (Bonus: If you have difficult time getting to bed on time and ensuring you get the amount of sleep you want, try setting an alarm at your desired winding down time. This helps you get out of auto-pilot of whatever you are doing and puts sleep at the forefront of your mind). Being constantly reminded of your purpose will help you navigate life more organically. This process helps you hone your skills of non-resistance, and flow with the grain of your truth. Finally, in doing so the veil of seeing mistakes as failures is lifted and you will appreciate learning from mistakes more, knowing mistakes are just forming your path to your destiny.
- Ask yourself one question in arguments. In arguments and tense interactions alike, there is one dynamic that remains constant for everyone: Can you see me? Can you hear me? Do you understand me? I knew this from studying validation within psychology, but for some reason when I heard Oprah articulate this very fact something shifted for me. Not only was I able to apply it to my own interactions and see drastic improvements, but it also gave me an easy way to check in with myself and stay conscious of my motivations. Understanding validation in this way helped me to check in with myself and see if I am seeking external validation when I can easily give myself self-validation? Asking yourself in an argument: “What I am trying to get this person to see, hear, and understand?”, helps you become conscious of internal defenses, compensations, and what you are truly searching for in this interaction. Many times we aren’t invested in the actual content of the conversation, but we are invested in feeling validated (i.e. seen, heard, and understood).For example I found myself in a tense situation lately, with an deep desire to explain why I was previously confused about a notion the person was explaining. Upon taking a moment to notice my heartbeat pounding and my shortness of breath I immediately said, “Wait Tiffany, what is really going on here? What are you trying to get this person to see, hear, and understand?” I quickly realized that it was important to me, for my own personal reasons and experiences, to prove my intelligence in that setting. It suddenly hit me that what I truly wanted was validation of intelligence, which I often mistakenly over identify with. I immediately gave myself the validation I was searching for saying in my head, “Tiffany you know you are smart, don’t waste your energy feeling like you have to prove that to everyone you meet.” Instant freedom. My heart rate slowed, I started breathing easier, and what was just a tense moment, became consciously fulfilling.This works both ways as well. Asking yourself “what is this person trying to have me see, hear, and understand” helps you stay conscious of the underlying components of any argument. Having an understanding of what’s going on beyond the surface can not only save you hours of arguing, but help you interact from a place of truth and love that others will appreciate and most often reciprocate.
Hope these hacks help you stay conscious! Let me know what you do to stay conscious in the comments below or on social media! And of course I encourage you to download Cocoa Butter for the Mind: Guided Meditations for Self-Fulfillment to tap into your internal wisdom in a deeper way.
