Break Toxic Patterns: A 15-Day Mindfulness Exercise

June 4, 2024 Pooja Singh

15-Day Mindfulness Exercise – We are all creatures of habits and we fall back into comfortable toxic patterns. Any kind of change is difficult. Our habits do not get changed without putting in effort to change. Our mind puts in lots of resistance to any change. Sharing a simple technique to help you start with a pattern-breaking journey.

Simple 15 Day exercise to break patterns

This 15-day exercise is broken into a 3-3-9-day pattern. It will help you start on a journey of mindful living and break toxic thought patterns.

First Three-Day Phase – Half an hour before your sleep time, pick up a notebook and write the activities of the day on which you wasted your time. For Example, Gossiping, Social media scrolling, and worrying too much due to a thought that cropped up in your mind. Once you do this exercise for three days you will pause at each time wasters activity. What you do after this awareness of timewaster activity is absolutely your decision but at least it’s a conscious decision.

Be honest with your activity
Be Consistent, transition always takes time

Second Three-day Phase – In the next three days give specific name (Tag) to your thoughts that crop up in your mind. For example, a thought comes for a future activity so tag it as future, a thought of a previous bad memory comes tag it as negative, an embarrassing moment crops up then tag it as demeaning, and so on. This will help you become aware of your thoughts and patterns. You will be more present in the moment rather than living in the past or future. An awareness will come if you continue this activity.

Do remember to continue working on time-saving activities and making conscious decisions for them
Journal your observations once you start tagging your thoughts

Third Nine-Day Phase – In this 9 days phase start tagging your emotions along with thoughts. Once you have practiced first two steps of 3 days each you will automatically start labelling your thoughts and you will become aware of your time-wasting activities. Now when you tag your emotions you become more and more mindful. Believing is doing remember.

Castles are not built in a day nor can habits change in a day. Your toxic patterns of having negative, demeaning thoughts can change for the better with 3-3-9 day method. Do remember consistency is key to all activities. Once you see rewards for above exercise in terms of excluding time-wasting activities, tagging thoughts and emotions and breaking toxic patterns.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a professional if you have existing conditions. Try the remedy at your discretion.