Practicing mindfulness can seem impossible at first, and for a long time, but with enough experience, you realize it’s nearly impossible to do it wrong. Exercises that initially seem strict and unforgiving prove surprisingly flexible, generous, and gracious.
Expecting one or more of the following outcomes sets you up to misinterpret your successful efforts as failures:
unwavering focus
physical relaxation
mental quiet
emotional peace
a sense of time passing quickly
Expecting mindfulness practice to always feel focused and relaxed isn’t sustainable. Working with whatever happens is exactly what’s needed, even though it’s usually not what we’re hoping for.
Leaving room for one or more of these inevitabilities increases your chances of sticking with the practice long enough to notice when ordinary moments feel more alive.
feeling distracted or focused
feeling agitated or relaxed
having lots of thoughts or very few thoughts
feeling pleasant or unpleasant emotional feelings
noticing time racing, dragging, or somewhere in between
Just as it’s impossible to develop muscle strength without challenging your muscles, to achieve flexibility without running into stiffness, or to build endurance without going beyond what you’re currently capable of enduring, you can’t develop attentional skills without discomfort. The stock images of serenity seduce us into exploring mindfulness, but can feel like a bait-and-switch tactic when we sit down to actually do it.
It’s challenging to illustrate what the process of developing mindful awareness actually looks like. The real work is completely hidden from view and wouldn’t be entertaining even if we could observe it.
The difficulty of portraying it parallels the challenge of conveying mastery in movies. The time constraints of film prevent it from showing Luke Skywalker putting in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years required to become a Jedi. The same applies to movies about individuals who become dancers, writers, or artists. The process is often slow, filled with frustration and doubt, until an unexpected event reveals the empowerment and growth that surprises everyone—including the individual who has been quietly honing their skills.1
Here’s a Jedi move to try the next time you get frustrated when a meditation practice session doesn’t live up to your expectations: Modify the exercise to turn the disappointing aspects into the main practice theme.
For example:
If you are trying to savor physical relaxation but feel irritated instead, focus on the irritation. Irritation feels like this…
If you plan to hear the sounds around you but your mind is filled with chatter, try to notice where your verbal thoughts seem to be coming from. Mental talk sounds like this…
If an exercise isn’t clicking, try something that doesn’t sound like it should count as meditation, such as simply noticing what it feels like to sit in a chair, letting time unfold at its own pace, without trying to impose a particular experience. Sitting feels like this… Boredom feels like this…
Practicing mindfulness isn’t a struggle to notice your breath, relax deeply, or clear your mind. It’s not intended to make you feel bad about thoughts, feelings, or realizing how often your attention wanders. It’s an open invitation to notice that you’re alive in this unrepeatable, even though it’s easier to never notice.
A meditation bell is an invitation to hear what the present sounds like. Even though it’s brief, it’s surprisingly challenging to stay with the sound until it fades away. But the next bell is another invitation, and so is the silence that fills the time between them.
Ordinary life is full of invitations to cultivate intimacy with being alive. You don’t have to accept all of them. You don’t even need to accept many of them. Just practice remembering to accept some of them.
sights
sounds
scents
flavors
feeling distracted
feeling focused
feeling agitated
feeling relaxed
having lots of thoughts
having very few thoughts
feeling pleasant emotional feelings
feeling unpleasant emotional feelings
noticing time racing
noticing time dragging
Every time you see what’s in front of you, hear sounds around you, smell what’s cooking, taste what you’re eating, notice how much energy you have, what mood you’re feeling, or your body breathing, you’re mastering the art of accepting the invitation to remember that you’re alive in this moment—one that has never happened before and will never come again.
It’s impossible to imagine the impact of this secret hobby, but I encourage you to discover it for yourself.
Exercise
This exercise helps you recognize that, even though your attention inevitably wanders, there are many opportunities to gently redirect it back.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
During a mid-morning coffee break
Before lunch
After reading a chapter of a book
While listening to on-hold music
After wrapping up a productive meeting
Before diving into an afternoon work session
While waiting for a friend to arrive
During a relaxing evening walk
