Staying Grounded: Mindfulness Techniques for Any Time

How might embracing mindfulness and slowing down in 2025 help us navigate the chaos of modern life?

Mindfulness doesn't always come easy, especially for those of us who are constantly swinging between future goals and past memories. As someone who has lived in that whirlwind, I, Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco, invite you on a calming journey aboard the Self-Growth Train. This episode marks the start of 2025—a year for slowing down, for intentional steps, and for truly being present in each moment. After a whirlwind 2024, let's rediscover the art of living 'right now' and explore the gentle power of mindfulness. Together, we'll navigate practical techniques backed by my personal experiences and insights from a Mayo Clinic article, promising a path to greater self-awareness and peace without the need for meditation.

Join me as I share my story of battling the rush of modern life and how a mindful approach has transformed my outlook. With the podcast turning five, I'm taking this opportunity to shift gears and focus on growth without the pressure of haste. We'll explore mindfulness exercises that can seamlessly integrate into your daily routine, helping you cultivate patience and self-connection. If you’ve ever struggled with mindfulness or meditation, I offer guidance and encouragement to find peace in the present—because sometimes, the most profound journeys are taken one intentional step at a time.

Resources Used Today:
Mindfulness Exercises

Transcript

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 0:07

Hello, my dear passengers, and welcome aboard the Self-Growth Train, a podcast that combines personal stories, opinions and research in order to better guide you through your self-growth journey.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 0:17

My name is Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco and I am your tour guide. First, I want to say thank you for tuning back into the podcast for the first episode of 2025. I know I didn't do anything for it and that's my bad, but I was kind of busy, honestly. Anyways, the podcast turned four years old on December 22nd, which means that this year is going to be turning five years old and I have a bunch of exciting things that are going to come, but I'm not saying anything about it because I don't want to jinx anything. If there's one thing that I learned this past year is that you work on your goals. You don't necessarily tell everybody about them because if not, you might get sidetracked. Okay, so just letting you know there's a lot of fun stuff coming, there's a lot of amazing stuff coming, and you need to stay tuned because it involves you. My dear passenger, the last two episodes have been about struggles and just pushing through and basically trying to figure out how to continue living and making yourself stay focused and thriving right, but today's episode is going to be a bit different, because I'm going to tell you something 2024 was a lot of lessons.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 1:33

2024 was a lot of back and forth. 2024 was a lot of time spent working and working, and working and working. But 2025, at least for me and the journey that I'm going to be taking you in it's going to be a bit slower. We're going to focus on ourselves, we're going to focus on our growth, but we're not going to be putting all this pressure behind this. No, we're not doing that. We're taking things a little bit different this year, and you know what? I hope you enjoy it as much as you have been enjoying it over the past four years, but right now, I need to take a different tone with the podcast. I need this to be about you and I, and I need this to be at a slower pace. Why? Because one of the things that 2024 taught me is that you can try to speed up the process, but it's not going to do anything. You have to go through each one of the steps. You have to go through each one of the things that need to happen.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 2:37

Well, my dear passengers, the time has come for us to buckle up our seatbelts as we head into the first stop of the day. That is the topic of the day, and today's topic is mindfulness. Mindfulness is defined by the American Psychological Association as the awareness of one's internal state and surroundings. Now, I don't know about you, my dear passenger, but I have struggled with being mindful or using my mindfulness, especially because I'm the type of person that likes to live in the future or sometimes reminisce too much of the past to enjoy the present. Now, if that's you, welcome to the club.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 3:14

For today's episode. I will be using my own personal experience with different techniques that have worked in order to help me be more mindful, but also I will be using an article by the Mayo Clinic titled Mindfulness Exercises. Why? Because I think it's good to have some medical backup, especially when it comes to a subject that it's very important for us to work on. So sit back, relax and let me take you down this stop on how to become more mindful.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 3:48

First things first, even though mindfulness and meditation go hand in hand together, it doesn't mean that you need to meditate in order to be mindful. It just means that meditation is one of the many ways that you are able to get to that mindful mentality. However, if you struggle with being mindful, or you struggle with meditation as a whole, I'm going to let you know right now meditation is a great way to get through mindfulness, because it teaches you to be patient, it teaches you to be in the moment and it teaches you to be with yourself, which is such a beautiful encounter if you really take the time to give yourself that moment, to be with yourself and int une with everything that is going on inside of you and around you, right? So we're going to try this. I've never done this in the podcast. We're going to try this.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 4:39

Okay, one minute. I'm going to put the timer in here for one minute. We are just going to close our eyes and we're not going to think about anything. And if that's hard for you to do, don't worry. It happens to literally everyone, especially if it's their first time meditating. But again, we're just going to do one minute and we're just going to be quiet with our thoughts. I don't want you to think about anything, but if any thoughts come your way, let them come. Okay, you're going to let them come and you're just going to be aware of them. You're not going to try to solve them. You're not going to try to fight them, you're not going to try to like cry about them or be happy about them, just let them come as they do.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 5:18

Okay, so here we go. Here's one minute starting in three, two, one, one. Here's one minute starting in three, two, one, one, one. Thank you all. Right, stop.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 6:33

How did that feel? Because I can tell you right now, that felt amazing for me. I feel so relaxed, I feel so calm, like I felt like I needed that. Actually, now that I think about it, I really really needed that. Oh, wow, wow, hold up. This is great. That was a good moment. Okay, that was a good moment. Take a step back and clap your hands for yourself, because I needed that and you probably did too. You probably needed that moment to just be with yourself and not do anything, not think anything, just be present. I don't know about y'all, but I needed that minute. Okay, I needed that minute and I hope you enjoyed that minute. I hope that, even if you thought it was boring, even if you thought, what the hell are we doing? Like she's never done this in the podcast, I hope that you actually did it and I hope that you reap in the rewards of just having that present moment with yourself for one minute, like we had a moment. Do you know that we had a moment? We shared a present moment in meditation and I'm just telling you right now it was a good one. It was a good one and you better have enjoyed it, because I did anyways, that was really fun, but let's keep moving, all right.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 7:57

So how else can we get through mindfulness if not by meditation? Well, we can get through mindfulness by using our breathing. Yep, that's right. Something as simple as taking three deep breaths can really make you feel present and aware of what's going on inside you and around you. So, again, like I did earlier, we're going to try this. We're going to take three deep breaths and you're going to do it with me. So here we go, ready and through your nose Out the mouth, through your nose out the mouth, through your nose out the mouth. And I don't know about you, but I'm feeling so good. I'm feeling so calm, so peaceful and so present. How are you feeling? Because, like, honestly, like I wish this was a moment where I could talk to you guys and just be like how are you feeling? Because I'm feeling so good, so good, okay.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 9:17

Moving on to the next thing, okay, now we're going to get into the Mayo Clinic article, and the first thing that they tell you, as a mindful exercise, is to pay attention, live in the moment by paying attention, right? So, actually, my therapist used to do this thing with me. I don't know the actual name of it, so I'm just going to call it using your senses. I guess I have no idea, but basically, when I needed to be grounded or I needed to be in the present because I would get anxiety attacks, right she would tell me to ground myself through my senses. And it's very simple. So I touch five things. Okay, now you're going to see four things. So if I look in the camera, I can see the headboard, I can see the door, I can see the frame and I can see the bed.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 10:33

Okay, so now number three. Number three we're going to do hearing. Let's see, what can you hear in here? Okay, I can hear the fan, I can hear a snapping and I can hear a whistle. All right, so three things, right? Then the second thing, I mean not the second thing, the fourth thing you're gonna do is smell. So let's see, I have perfume on, so I smell delicious. I smell really good. Good, um, trying to see if there's anything else that I can smell in here. Okay, um, this is a fake flower, but let's just imagine that it's a real flower. What? Wow, it actually has a smell. It's really nice. Okay, I would have never known that. And the last one, obviously, is taste. Now, usually I have gum with me. I don't have any right now because I'm doing this, um, or I'll do some chapstick, because sometimes I like to lick my chapstick. I know that's not natural, but it happens, okay, um, or something as simple as like taking a mint. So, yeah, that is one way to pay attention to what's happening around you.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 11:53

The second thing that Mayo clinic tells us to do is to live in the moment. I've only been saying that literally every couple of minutes, but, hey, live in the moment, find joy in the simple pleasures, like, for example, with me. I'm not a chef, I'm not a cook, I'm not a baker, but you know, sometimes I dream that one day I'm going to be pretty okay at this stuff Not mediocre, not amazing, but okay and that is what pushes me forward to put on my little apron and cook like I did tonight. I made ravioli tonight. I did burn the sauce, but it's okay, it got saved because it tastes good. So did you say I have an interesting palate? I have an interesting palate, but more than that, I know how to live in the moment and make the most out of it, and maybe you should learn how to do the same too.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 13:00

Listen, the last thing that Mayo Clinic is telling us to do. It's not simple at all and it's something that I still struggle with. But hey, here we go, that is, accepting yourself for who you are. I mean, I wish I had a wand that I could just make myself accept myself for who I am and make you accept yourself for who you are. But it's not that easy. I mean and you know it's not that easy because however old you are, you have struggled with this Like there's no way You've never struggled with accepting yourself for who you currently are or who you were Right. So all this to say therapists say different things. Like some therapists are like treat yourself like you are your friend, and other therapists are like treat yourself like you are a younger version of yourself, maybe a child version of yourself. But see, those never worked with me, and if they worked with you, that's amazing.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 13:55

But for me, the thing that has worked very, very well for me to start accepting myself and again, I don't accept myself all the time, but this past year this specific technique has helped me accept myself more than ever is just treating myself with unconditional grace. Unconditional love can be hard sometimes because I don't know about you, but I am a very resentful person, so my love I wouldn't call it unconditional. However, when it comes to grace, I'm way more lenient because I do believe that people can change and people can become better, because if I didn't believe that then I wouldn't have this podcast right. So what I've started to do is I treat myself with unconditional grace. I tell myself you could have done better, but now you know and now you're going to do better. And just having that type of conversation with myself has helped me love and accept myself way more than telling myself you have to love yourself - you have to love yourself like your little child I mean, not a little child, your version of a child is crying for you to love them and it's like that doesn't really work with me, or like your friend, and like with friends, like there's times that I'm like I don't like you. That's just everyone, right? So treat yourself with unconditional grace. Unconditional grace, and you will see the difference. I'm telling you you're going to type it down here because you're going to see the difference.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 15:31

Well, my dear passenger, the time has come for the last step of the day, that is, recap time. Today's episode discussed mindfulness, which is the awareness of our internal state and surroundings. We now know that we can become mindful through meditation, also through breathing, also through using our five senses and, last but not least, living in the moment and accepting ourselves. Remember, self-growth is an endless journey towards self-improvement. However, you don't ever have to do it alone. As your tour guide, my goal is to guide you with the best intentions and the best research available. Make sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Self-Growth Train Podcast, and to also follow my new website, theselfgrowthtrainpodcast. com. As always, all the resources used today have been added to the episode's description. Well, until the next stop, dear passengers, safe travels, bye!