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Living your best life every day requires the ability to stop and enjoy the present moment. While there are lots of positive things you can do daily to feel happier, having at least one mindfulness day per week will help you better connect to your inner self. Today I’ll show you a way to have a mindful Monday every week, which includes 10 ideas on how to make the most of it!
In a world full of doing doing doing, it’s important to take a moment to just breathe, to just be.
If Monday is not an ideal day for your mindfulness practice, you can choose any other day. Make it mindful Wednesday or mindful Sunday, if you want! I prefer Monday as it’s the traditional start of the workweek and it has the refreshing feeling of starting with a clean slate.
It’s mentally easier to begin a new healthy routine or add a new habit when something else starts with you, whether it’s a new week, the first day of the month, or a New Year.
Frankly, a specific mindfulness day doesn’t have any special meaning to it, as it’s just a starting point to building new habits and gradually bringing more mindful activities into your daily life!
So within this post, I’ll talk about my ideas for a mindful Monday (which I bet is a weekday you don’t know a lot about!), but don’t stress over it being a Monday for you. As long you are consistent with your mindfulness practice and show up for yourself every week, you’ll become more mindful and learn to be more present to enjoy life.
What does Mindful Monday mean?

While mindfulness is a powerful tool for consciously enjoying life to the fullest, a regular mindful Monday practice means that you consistently show up for your mental strength every week. You learn to be more aware of your thoughts and surroundings, which is beneficial for dealing with stress and improving overall life quality.
As we spend most of the day on autopilot, making a ton of automatic decisions we aren’t even aware of, we let our subconscious minds take the reigns of the course of our lives. Even though most of the time it’s great as we don’t have to spend brain juice on habitual actions, sometimes we rely on the subconscious too much.
- If you don’t pay attention, you don’t notice any positive things that happen around you.
- If you don’t practice awareness, you can easily get overwhelmed with emotions in tough moments.
- If you don’t stop and breathe, you let the stress damage your health, both mental and physical.
Committing yourself to mindful Mondays lets you get used to being more present, positive, and healthy, which then becomes natural and stays with you no matter what day it is.
So why not start today?
Here are my 10 ideas for your first mindful Monday. Try them all and then tune it however you want to do more of what you enjoy and what works best for you!
10 things to do on Mindful Monday
1. Make an effort to be present as much as possible

There is no need to be obsessed about being present in every moment, it’s not possible anyway.
But every once in a while, stop yourself in a random moment and consciously turn attention to yourself. Look around, evaluate your state and your surroundings, and ask yourself the following questions:
- What are you doing?
- Where are you?
- What are you thinking about?
- What are you feeling?
- Why?
As you probably aren’t used to practicing awareness yet, you’ll likely do it one or two times and then forget about it, snowed under the usual daily tasks, thoughts, and routines.
One way to avoid forgetting is to set a bunch of alarms on your phone at random times during the day. Whenever it goes off and “wakes you up”, immediately find yourself in a present moment and observe it.
The more you practice it, the easier it will be to identify your sensations. Soon you’ll be able to stop yourself for the moment of awareness without any alarms! You’ll learn to be more focused and less distracted, handle your emotions and deal with stress.
2. Remind yourself about all the great reasons to love Mondays
If you choose Monday as your mindfulness day, first ask yourself how you really feel about this day.
Do you like it or do you hate it? Or is it the same as any other day to you?
Do you ever experience Monday blues?
Most people have a negative perception of Monday (there are even T-shirts for Monday haters and Monday sloths!), even though research shows that it’s the day of the best performance during the week.
Whatever it is for you, find the time to appreciate this day, to be grateful that it came once again, and to recognize all the nice reasons to love Mondays.
3. Inspire yourself with mindful Monday quotes

Reading quotes from other smart and influential people who achieved something not only gives us a dose of inspiration but sometimes also a new perspective on one life aspect or another.
Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.
Groucho Marx
Make a habit of reading at least one quote a day and reflecting on its meaning. This is the one you can do with another person, too! Oftentimes different perspectives bring a completely new meaning to something you’ve heard before and didn’t find special.
If you need a good source of motivational quotes, I have a huge collection of positive quotes for your Monday inspiration and also a set of specific sayings about Mondays that are fun to read and encourage yourself with!
Start your Monday by surrounding yourself with good vibes before you proceed to mindfulness exercises. Both your mood and positive mindset matter for making the most of your practice.
4. Participate in various mindful Monday activities
Starting with simply bringing awareness to your breathing, there are all kinds of different mindfulness exercises you can do.
I have a dedicated post with 10 mindfulness activities suitable for adults that don’t take too much of your time at once.
Some of them you should do alone, in a quiet space, with a calm mood. Others may be shared with someone. There are also special group mindfulness activities that bring a whole another level to your practice.
For now, start with adding one exercise from that list to your Monday routine, and gradually try more things next time. Some of the activities only take a couple of minutes so you don’t need to wait for the next Monday to do them.
Start with fewer things in order to not overwhelm yourself, and build up from there. This way you’ll stick to mindfulness exercises longer and increase your chances of actually making mindful Monday a habit!
5. Enjoy healthy meals mindfully

Mindful eating is one of the ways to practice mindfulness that can be easily added to your life as you eat every day anyway.
Not only it’s good for your mental awareness, but it’s also beneficial for your gut and health in the long run!
Next time you eat, don’t grab your phone or turn on the TV. Get away from all the entertainment and pay attention to the food you eat! Notice the structure, the smell, the flavor. Focus on chewing each piece thoroughly. Be grateful for your meal and let yourself enjoy every bite!
Other than the process itself, mindful eating also implies making conscious choices about what you put in your mouth. Oftentimes, especially when in a rush or in a low emotional state, you grab the fastest meal available to you, even if you know it’s bad for you.
To be more mindful about food, pay attention to what you choose to eat and why. If time is the issue, try meal prepping once a week or order delivery. If that’s emotional eating, find another way to deal with your feelings.
Services that help you make healthy food choices
Cooking every day is not for everyone. Unwillingness to do it doesn’t make you a bad cook or a bad housewife, it may just mean that you prioritize other things in your life before spending time in the kitchen.
Thankfully, there are plenty of amazing food-related services these days that can make our lives so much easier!
Here are a few that you may find interesting:
- Groceries delivery. Save yourself regular visits to the supermarket and order your groceries online.
- Time-saving meal kits. Get all the ingredients pre-measured for portions and delivered to your doorstep. With these kits you still get to cook fresh meals yourself but it only takes a few minutes!
- Hello Fresh
- Dinnerly
- Purple Carrot (plant-based)
- Green Chef
- Sun Basket
- Ready-to eat healthy meals. Leave cooking for professionals who actually love doing it!
- Freshly
- Snap Kitchen (gluten-free)
- Youfoodz
- Real Eats
- Restaurant delivery & takeout
6. Analyze where your life is going with mindfulness questions
Another idea for spending your Monday mindfully is to sit with yourself for a minute and reflect on your life’s course.
I’ve made a list of 20 questions you can ask yourself every week to keep your life and goals under control. They are meant to help you analyze your week, your mood, your environment, whatever may have happened recently, and why you reacted the way you did. There are also a few questions about your productivity, goals, routines, and some brainstorming ideas to improve it all.
You can use them for gaining clarity on your state and feelings, which should motivate you to work toward achieving the necessary changes.
Go through the list next Monday and see if there are any insights in your answers! It may be hidden desires you didn’t notice before or feelings that you keep ignoring. You can always tweak the list for your own needs later by adding more questions that are important to you or removing some.
It would be better if you could find a quiet place for this mindful activity and analyze everything without distractions. Notice and accept all the feelings that may arise in the process, and note the fresh ideas that come up.
You can write everything down in a journal, if you want, and maybe even review and compare your answers every few weeks. Or simply find the answers in your head, whichever works best for you!
Another option is to pick up a mindfulness journal that has a ton of journaling prompts for you to fill in with your thoughts.
7. Keep yourself in a positive mood with Monday affirmations

Positive affirmations are powerful statements that you repeatedly feed to your subconscious until it sticks and becomes your truth. We all have various negative beliefs, most of which we aren’t aware of, even though they hurt our happiness. With the power of affirmations, you can rewrite those negative thinking patterns over time and build a positive mindset open to success and an abundance of opportunities!
I’m a big believer in using affirmations for keeping a growth mindset and achieving the best version of your life. I even have my own guidelines on making them work for you!
If you are new to the concept, you may start with my happiness affirmations or general affirmations for women. Then you can work further on whatever you need to work on, whether it’s your beauty, finances, confidence, inner peace, health, or relationships.
8. Spend your time productively even if there is nothing to do
Other than specific exercises for being more present, being more mindful can also mean paying attention to where you put your time.
Are you aware of the time you waste scrolling social media? Or procrastinating with other unnecessary activities?
If you notice a lot of automatic behavior, make slight changes that help you make conscious decisions.
For example, to avoid unnecessary Instagram scrolling, I placed its app’s icon in a folder so it’s not as easy to reach automatically. I also put my Spanish learning app on the prominent place on my phone’s home screen. This way I rewrote the pattern of wasting time scrolling, and now whenever I have a spare minute, instead of opening Instagram, I go learn a few new words in another language!
When you have some free time and don’t know what to do, find a productive activity instead of reaching for entertainment.
9. Find a way to make Mondays better
As you reminded yourself of all the reasons why Monday is cool and set your intentions with positive affirmations, it’s time to make it as great of a day as it can possibly be!
I have an 8-step strategy on how you can make Mondays better and improve your mood in case you feel a bit down. There I explain why we often feel like that in the beginning of the week and include some activities you should do in advance in order to have a great Monday.
No more Monday blues for you!
10. Post on Instagram to inspire others to live more mindfully too

This one is not exactly for making you more mindful (in fact, be aware of how much time you spend semi-consciously scrolling after posting!).
But as you have your mindfulness Monday, why not share the idea with your friends on social media?
You might even find like-minded people to do this together and share your insights! Imagine having an accountability buddy who is as much into self-development as you are and will gladly motivate you to continue practicing mindfulness!
Besides, posting about your commitment on Instagram can give you extra motivation to stick to it longer. There are even studies that show the positive influence of sharing goals on their effectiveness and results! In any case, if you don’t feel comfortable sharing personal stuff like that with strangers, you can always post it for close friends only.
Above all, sharing your progress and thoughts about mindfulness on social media is likely to inspire other people to be more present as well. Hence, by simply posting a selfie or something, you can share the awareness and improve the lives of your friends or subscribers!
And if you need the best hashtags for sharing something on Monday, I got them!
Final thoughts for mindful Mondays
This concludes my list of 10 ideas for a mindful Monday!
By adding just one or two new little things every week and spending your day more mindfully, you’ll learn to be more present and take more control of your life, feelings, and decisions. You won’t live as much of your life on autopilot! Instead, you’ll be able to pause in the moment, enjoy it, and appreciate all the good that happens to you!