Experience the power of “just” 10 minutes
Yep, just 10 minutes. You’ll be surprised how doing something every single day for just 10 minutes can boost your well-being in so many different ways!
10 minutes is something you can easily implement into your day. Let’s be honest, doesn’t it sound better when you think about doing something every day for just 10 minutes than feeling the pressure to find an hour once a week?
I’ve started to appreciate the power of 10 minutes when I first participated in the Whole Life Challenge and slowly started to implement it in several areas of my life.
10 minutes doesn’t sound as scary, it is doable and most of the time, when you get in the flow, you just keep going.
The hardest part is to get started
Boosting my well-being has always been on the top of my to-do list. At the beginning of the year, you know those New Year’s resolutions I had worked out this genius plan to start running, lose weight and be more mindful. You know the works, create that balance between your body, mind, and soul.
Sadly enough, that plan was hardly successful. Yes, I would lose some weight and be able to complete the start-to-run but then I would throw in the towel because things would become harder. It all started to take up way too much time and I ended up doing nothing at all. Resulting in gaining weight, finding it hard to even walk 5K, and being very unhappy about everything. Bye, bye, mindful living ?
Usually, it took me a couple of months to start up the whole process again.
It took me years to break that vicious circle, but I finally did, thanks to embracing the power of 10 minutes!
It started with one habit
Going for a walk every day for just 10 minutes. Easy right?!
Walking is the first thing I picked and started experimenting with. It was easy to convince myself to go outside and I usually ended up walking a lot longer.
Once the walking became a habit, I felt I was ready to introduce something else. I started with doing Yoga every day for ten minutes, then added daily meditation, journaling, and reading. Adding everything together resulted in creating a morning routine for myself, that consists of 5 habits that all just take 10 minutes ? And guess what? I’ve been doing that for the last 4 years every single day!
I finally lost that weight, got fit, read 64 books in 2020, meditated for more than 9500 minutes and I’ve covered some distance walking. I guess I can say that I’m living more mindfully and that I managed to create that balance between my body, mind, and soul!
Besides my morning routine, I also enrolled in Duolingo. I first started with learning Portuguese but then realized that keeping up with my French was a better idea. Just 10 minutes a day and that I’ve been doing for 2667 days in a row, that is 26.670 mins or 444 hours of learning French! Don’t tell that to my old French teacher ?
Pick anything!
Are you ready to devote 10 minutes of your time to give your well-being a boost? All you need to do is to pick one thing that you wish you would do more often. Do you want to exercise more? Then that is what you choose. Do you want to learn how to meditate? Meditation it is. Do you want to read more, go grab the book you would like to read.
Once you have chosen, all you have to do is spend 10 minutes doing exactly that every single day! No, you can’t skip a day and when you do, then you have to start again ASAP.
To give you the best chance to succeed you want to keep track of your progress. I can promise you, it feels good when you can say to yourself that you’ve done something 400 days in a row ? I’ve made a habit tracker for you to download.
If you only have 10 minutes, then you can set a timer. When your 10 minutes are up, you are done! It is as simple as this. But you’ll find out soon enough that once you get in the flow you might up doing something much longer.
You want to give yourself at least 21 days before your daily practice will become a habit and you can add a new practice.
Don’t wait till tomorrow to get started, you’ve got nothing to lose, it is only 10 minutes after all ?