1. Be aware of your breathing: are you breathing properly?

Being aware of your breathing means being fully conscious of your breathing pattern. Though something as simple as breathing in-and-out is an automatic function of our body, being aware of how you are breathing is important. Unfortunately, many people are unaware that there is actually a proper way to breathe. A way of breathing that is optimal for your body and brain.

Proper breathing involves inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth upon every breath. When I first attempted this breathing pattern, I was very skeptical of its effectiveness. However, after being open-minded and giving what has been deemed “proper breathing” a shot, I noticed that I felt better, had a clearer thought process, and actually had more energy. Surprisingly, an automatic process as simple as breathing can actually have a profound impact on the way in which you feel and think. If you are interested in learning how to breathe properly and reaping the benefits that this practice has to offer, then do a Google search for the keywords: How To Breathe Properly and read some of the content that comes up.

Once you are able to breathe properly, you will have a much easier time being consciously aware of your breathing. To be fully conscious of your breathing, you must learn to fully shift your awareness to your breathing pattern. It is not necessary to be fully aware of your breathing at all times, but practicing the exercise has serious potential to boost your conscious brain power. As I have mentioned in previous articles, my favorite way to focus on proper breathing is through meditation. Learning to shift my entire focus to my breathing pattern has not only allowed me to learn proper breathing, it has allowed me to go deeper into meditation.

To begin a breath-awareness type meditation: get yourself into a comfortable position that will allow your body to relax. Next, close your eyes and shift your attention to your breathing cycle. Take note of how you are currently breathing. Make sure that you are inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. After my body is fully relaxed, I focus completely on my breathing cycle and breath. Initially, I may take deep several deep breaths to get myself even more relaxed. After the deep relaxation has been achieved, I focus on a cycle of air flow: air gets inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth, and cycled back up to my nose. What previously seemed like inhalation and exhalation becomes complete: like a continuously recycling the same air. I then keep my focus on my breathing for as long as I feel necessary. As you come out of meditation, you will probably notice an increased awareness of your breathing pattern.

The process of becoming more aware of my breathing through exercises like meditation and conscious breathing have significantly helped me increase my overall level of focus, emotional stability, and level of consciousness. Though the act of breathing is very simple, to be able to shift your entire focus on it for an extended period of time takes conscious brain power. Do yourself a favor and give proper breathing a 7 day trial to see how quickly your raw, conscious processing power improves!

2. Spend more time with yourself

In the fast-paced lifestyle of the 21st century, it is very common for people to spend time with others, yet never take personal time to spend with themselves and focus on their own life. I realize that it can indeed be fun, and satisfying to spend a lot of time with others, but do you realize how fulfilling it can be to spend time with yourself? The reason that many people are unhappy in life is due to the fact that they do not give themselves any personal time.

If you are an individual who is currently not taking enough time for yourself each day, try starting up a personal routine. Examples of ways that you could spend time with yourself, contributing positively to your own life include: taking time for internal reflection (meditation), letting yourself know how much you love yourself, going on a walk to listen to your own thoughts, giving gratitude for everything that you have in your life, or getting involved in a hobby that inspires you. Simply taking 20 minutes a day for personal fulfillment can really work wonders for conscious improvement. Taking time for yourself teaches you to build awareness to fit your personal needs and development.

There is plenty of time each day for you to at least take some for yourself. Realize that spending time with yourself can actually be more powerful and rewarding than spending time with others. Ultimately, all exercises that help you better understand yourself will lead to greater self-awareness, self-mastery, and conscious growth.

3. Listen more than you speak

In this day in age, it seems as though there is always someone that wants to be the center of attention; conversations easily become viewed as egoistic competitions. While being the center of attention can feel great and can be a rewarding experience, it can become consciously dangerous if motivated by the ego. To counteract the ego getting involved in your personal interactions and relationships, make a conscious effort to listen more often than you speak. While this advice may be very difficult to grasp for highly extroverted people, it will provide greater satisfaction and awareness when involved in relationships.

Listening more often than you speak shows a conscious ability to be compassionate for others and truly helps you remain in full control of your ego. When the time is right to speak, speaking is fine. However, when the constant want to take control of every conversation can guide your consciousness down an unconscious path. By practicing the act of listening more often than you speak, you can train yourself to be more consciously aware of others, while still holding the conscious ability to politely contribute to a conversation. Developing the ability to listen, and actually care about what another person is saying, may take some significant conscious work. With that said, it will be a much more rewarding trait to develop in relationships and will indeed raise your consciousness.

4. Muster up some courage; be courageous

Being highly conscious means doing what you want to do, saying what you want to say, and living how you want to live at every moment. Somewhere along the path towards developing a highly conscious mindset, you will need to be courageous. You may initially have some fear about sharing your decision to be a vegetarian with your family, telling someone how you really feel about them, or explaining your current philosophy in life to a crowd – but these fears need to be overcome. As was already mentioned in a previous installment in the “raising your consciousness series,” it is important to develop and muster up the courage to face your fears.

Having fears does not mean that you have some sort of disorder or disease. It just means that you are afraid of something. Most everyone has a long list of things that they fear or dread. However, most healthy fears need to be faced in order for conscious advancement. Being courageous in all situations is a trait that resembles a highly conscious individual. A great exercise for building your courage is to make a long list of your fears. Then, expose yourself to every single one. Q: Are there any other ways to build up courage? A: No. Exposing yourself to your fears is really the only way to go.

After you are able to successfully learn to consistently muster up courage that’s needed to face the things that you fear most, you allow yourself to truly live life to the fullest. Many people have a motto of: living life to the fullest. Well, if those same people are not facing everything that they fear on their journey in life, are they actually living life to the fullest? No. Developing a sense of courage is an integral step, possibly a phase that may last several years, on your journey to become more conscious.

5. Always act with compassion

Having complete compassion for others is a direct result of becoming more conscious. Unfortunately, there are few people here on Earth that are honestly able to make the claim that they always act with complete compassion for others. Because compassion is such a key ingredient in the process of developing consciousness, it is important to develop compassion. There are many factors that you should take into account when determining your level of compassion. Do you eat animals? – Is eating animals (meat) an action that a person with unshakable compassion would take? Are you respectful of others and their beliefs – Or do you like arguing over why your beliefs and life strategies are better than the next guy? Is that a compassionate action to take?

In my opinion, you should strive to be compassionate in every area of your life. One great way to always keep yourself acting with utmost compassion is to ask yourself questions while completing various tasks throughout your day. Ask yourself if certain actions that you are taking are allowing yourself to express your true compassion. If they are, you may not need to make changes in your level of compassion. If not, you may want to consider re-evaluating / revising your actions and making changes to become more compassionate.

Other ways to get yourself in a compassionate mindset include: making a conscious effort to think compassionate thoughts and through practicing compassion meditation. Compassion meditation involves entering a mental state consisting of only complete love and compassion for others. Consistently practicing compassion meditation is a phenomenal way to boost your overall levels of compassion in your life. Compassion meditation also allows you to learn how to shift your mental focus from any state into one of pure love for others. Entering a completely compassionate state of mind has been studied and is associated with: healthy structural changes in the brain, pleasurable neurotransmitter changes, healthy brainwave pattern changes, and states of complete bliss. As you may have already guessed, practicing compassion can be one of the single most powerful exercises for boosting your level of consciousness.

6. Improve your mental focus; enhance your clarity

Improving our mental focus helps us get a better understanding of reality and provides us with more inner clarity. As we enhance our level of focus and clarity, concepts that had previously seemed very difficult to understand become simple knowledge. We get a better sense of understanding within ourselves and of the world around us. Cultivating a state of mental focus allows us to consciously advance – whereas being distracted, unfocused, or bored, will naturally shift us towards a lesser state of awareness.

There are many qualified methods for boosting your level of mental focus. Several examples include: concentration meditation, self-hypnosis, developing self-discipline, and eating a diet that provides optimal brain functioning. There are even healthy supplements like fish oil that have been proven to increase the ability to focus. As you practice techniques that allow you to increase your focus, you will develop greater mental clarity and a deeper understanding of reality.

As you continue the process of boosting your focus levels, you allow yourself to create a significant amount of positive change in your life. The act of being able to focus helps you better express your emotions, become more productive, and expand your consciousness. As your focus increases, so will your level of consciousness. You will better understand others, your reality, you will be better at retaining knowledge and being able to consciously apply your knowledge in every aspect of your life.

7. Think rationally and logically

Being able to think rationally and logically allows you to positively interact with your reality much easier than being irrational and illogical. In fact, being irrational and illogical will actually lower your current level of awareness. Activities such as: arguing, fighting, hating, etc. are usually extremely irrational and illogical ways to act. For this reason, it is very important to learn to think and behave with rationality.

Allowing yourself to be overcome with unhealthy emotions and throwing a fit of distress will quickly move you to a lower state. Instead, your primary goal should be to act rationally in all situations at all times; even if that means holding back your rage of pent-up negative emotion. Thinking rationally allows yourself to quickly deal with severe forms of stress very quickly. Rational thinking is a byproduct of a high functioning brain, particularly the high activity within your left-prefrontal cortex. One great way to increase your ability to rationalize is to strengthen your brain’s level of functioning by boosting your brain power.

In essence, it will genuinely help to develop your ability to rationalize. While you are experiencing an upsetting, disturbing, or distressing event, your ability to think logically will allow you to detach yourself from all negative emotional aspects of your situation. You will literally be able to think your way out of what may seem like tragedies. A large majority of people negatively react with strong unconscious emotions when they experience a distressing event. Therefore, being able to be rational when faced with distress, will allow you to better develop your awareness. Probably the best exercise for developing and encouraging rational thinking is through concentration meditation. While practicing this type of meditation, bloodflow to your brain increases and your left-prefrontal cortex of the brain heightens with activity. This is the part that has been long associated with logical, rational thinking, and healthy, positive emotional expression. Even if used as your only tool, concentration meditation will definitely get you on the right track towards raising your level of consciousness.

8. Purify your body; detox

One great way to become more conscious is to purify your body. You can help purify your body by going on a specific diet, by cutting certain substances from your diet, by decreasing stress and learning to deeply relax, by cutting certain substances from your diet, by sitting in a sauna to sweat out toxins, etc. There are many methods that you can utilize that will help you to detoxify / purify your system. Do a simple internet search for How To Detox and choose a method that sounds best.

Why would anyone want to detox their body? A great reason to want to detox is to become more conscious. Other smaller reasons that lead to becoming more conscious include: releasing chemical build-ups, clearing toxins from your body, reestablishing a sense of peace within, encouraging an optimal mind-body connection, enhancing your spirituality, etc. The fact is, purifying your body through detoxification will aid in the process of keeping yourself pure. Every system could use a good cleaning now and then. When you allow chemicals, animal hormones, artificial flavoring, processed foods, etc. to build up in your system over an extended period of time, they can have a largely negative impact on your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing!

While following a detox routine, be conscious of what you are doing to your body. Be fully aware that you should choose a detox routine that has been researched and proven effective in order to avoid risking bodily damage in the process. With that said, choosing to purify or cleanse your body can really work magic for your current level of consciousness.

9. Start a personal journal / blog

Starting a personal journal or blog is a great time investment that will allow yourself to become more conscious of your: thoughts, feelings, actions, philosophies, beliefs, etc. Writing entries in a daily journal or on a personal blog can be extremely helpful in the process of understanding your current state of awareness. What is nice about keeping tabs on yourself is the fact that you can watch your progress as you undertake a conscious journey. At the beginning of your journey, your journal may be filled with entries about certain concepts in life just don’t make sense. As you advance, those same concepts that you initially may have struggled with may seem to become general knowledge.

Starting a personal blog or website allows you to analyze your consciousness from a third person point of view, revisit the past, and consciously observe your growth. Seeing your life from an alternative perspective can provide you with greater self-awareness and understanding. If you haven’t yet started a journal, you should highly consider it! The act of journaling has actually been scientifically studied and linked to increased ability to deal with your emotions, greater personal happiness, and a greater ability to retain past events in your long-term memory.

If you are interested in starting a blog or personal website for journaling, all that’s really necessary is choosing a reliable webhost to help get you started. Sure it will cost around $7 dollars a month for a quality webhost, but the purpose of having your own host is to have personal freedom and full ownership of your material. Freedom to choose your own URL (website address), freedom to own all content published on your website, freedom to put up any advertising that you choose, and many more freedoms that having a blogger-hosted website wouldn’t provide you with.

However, if you don’t care to much about having personal freedom over your website and full ownership over your personal content, you can run a free blogger blog. If you are happy with your decision to run a blogger blog, I am happy with your decision. Blogger blogs don’t require you to pay money and you still can have some freedom with your URL choice (though there will always be a “dot blogspot” in part of it). The downfall is: you will not own full rights to all of your content. With that said, you can still earn money off of advertising and can still operate a free, quick, and easy blog.

Another way to journal is to use a pen and a journaling book. For those of you who are less tech-savvy and would prefer to use a good ole-fashioned, pen-and-paper style journal, go right ahead. Some advantages to keeping a hard-copy journal are: it is easily accessible (no need to boot up the computer to write an entry), you can take it anywhere (easily transportable), and the fact that it looks like an authentic journal. Disadvantages to keeping non-computerized journal include: invasion of privacy (strangers finding it and reading it), you losing it (misplacement), and it being used for a firestarter (maybe a bit extreme)…

You could also use a journaling software by downloading one to your computer. Using a journaling software would allow you to keep saved electronic tabs on your consciousness. Google the keywords “journal software” and you’ll probably find something helpful. And for those of you who are uber-desperate to start a free journal in a short amount of time, open up Microsoft Word or Wordpad and journal til your heart’s content.

In my personal experience with journaling, it has been much easier for me to do it via my computer. I can type much faster than I can write and am much more productive when I type. However, what matters most is not your method of keeping your journal, but the fact that you actually are keeping a journal. No matter your strategy for journaling, understand that keeping tabs on yourself and events in your life is a great way to develop a deeper sense of understanding, knowledge, and conscious awareness.

10. Make others laugh; tell a joke

Being funny and making others laugh is a great way to ease stress and create a more positive outlook in life for yourself and for others. Though you may not be an expert comedian, being able to make others laugh is extremely rewarding and satisfying. It is satisfying to you for making another person laugh, and for the other person who gets the laugh out of your joke; a true win-win situation. Depending on your current state of awareness and perspective on life, certain jokes may be extremely funny to you, while to your children or parents, they may be extremely obnoxious. What matters is that you are always conscious of your joke telling and its side-effects.

What is important when telling a joke is to understand the individuals in which you are telling it to. Telling appropriate jokes at the appropriate time and being conscious of whether or not what you say may offend someone will increase your consciousness. Many times, certain jokes may be very funny to certain individuals, while they may remain tasteless to others. Being conscious of your ability to make others laugh and when to use a certain jokes in appropriate situations will increase your ability to empathize with others and create a sense of happiness and peace.

In my opinion, any remarks that are aimed to insult, degrade, or hurt another individual are definitely not jokes. Making others laugh through the act of an insult will not lead you to greater conscious growth. As you tell jokes, you may also be tempted to get your ego involved. I recommend trying to tell jokes without allowing your ego to get involved. When the ego takes the joke-telling hot-seat, what may have been good, clean jokes, turn into hateful or disgusting words.

If you are able to make others laugh and put a smile on the faces of others, joke telling can prove to be a rewarding trait to develop. Making others laugh and smile shifts all attention away from pain and negative emotions, towards one of pure enjoyment and happiness. Good comedians can make certain people laugh. Great comedians are able to make anybody laugh while suppressing their ego. The act of telling jokes is a great way to improve quality of consciousness by allowing you to look at life from a different perspective.

Can’t get enough laughter and jokes? Want to become a more conscious individual through the act of laughing? Well, believe it or not, there actually is a form of meditation called Laughter Meditation. The process of laughter meditation seems very pleasurable and fun, though I’ve yet to give it a shot. To try laughter meditation, get yourself into a comfortable position and consciously relax your mind. Next, focus vividly on a funny past experience, fully visualizing it within your mind. After you are able to recall a past experience, begin laughing. Try not to start with natural laughter, but if it does not come, fake it til you make it! Allow yourself to consciously laugh as loud as possible – be sure to fake the laughter if you need to. Because eventually, your fake laughter will be converted through your brain into a phase of real laughter. Eventually, you will essentially be able to laugh upon conscious command. To come out of the laughter meditation state, quiet down your laughter until you are no longer laughing, just smiling. Then tell yourself that anytime something feels troubling to you, you can use laughter to look at the situation from a funnier, happier perspective.

Though I haven’t tried laughter meditation in substitute for my current meditation routine, I will eventually get around to it. Jokes and the ability to laugh can really change your entire perspective from what may seem like a grim, serious situation, to a happier, more positive one. They also have the potential to help increase positivity in the lives of others. Making yourself laugh and possessing the ability to tell funny jokes to others will allow you to easily guide yourself and others through what may perceived as distressing life events.

Related posts:

  1. Raising Your Consciousness: 10×10 Ways To Become More Conscious (Part 5)
  2. Raising Your Consciousness: 10×10 Ways To Become More Conscious (Part 2)
  3. Raising Your Consciousness: 10×10 Ways To Become More Conscious (Part 3)
  4. Raising Your Consciousness: 10×10 Ways To Become More Conscious (Part 4)
  5. Raising Your Consciousness: 10×10 Ways To Become More Conscious (Part 1)

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