“We are not trying to create a special feeling or experience—simply to realize that this moment is already very special—because you are alive and awake in it.
This is hard but well worth it.”
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
taking a walk
waiting for a doctor or dentist
during a boring meeting you’re required to attend
When we try to pay attention mindfully, our thoughts have an advantage over sensory perceptions. Considering possible reasons for this inevitable dilemma sparks creative ways to navigate it.
Thoughts are narrative. Human life is saturated with stories. We use the basic narrative structure to remember what has happened and predict what could happen.
We fantasize about what the present would be like if we'd made different choices in the past. We imagine how things could be better or get worse in the future. We try to predict how things will turn out in the lives of people we care about.
When you or someone you love isn't feeling well, it's natural to try to predict and influence the future.
With all this going on inside our minds, the sound of a bird singing doesn't stand a chance of being heard. The goal isn’t to stop thinking; it’s to be able to focus on things that don’t demand our attention when we want.
If we wait for mundane sights, sounds, and sensations to become entertaining enough for this shift to be easy, it won’t happen. But with practice, we can learn to disrupt the insistence of unsolvable problems and take breaks from trying to solve them.
Feelings fuel thoughts. I'm convinced mindfulness would be easy—and we wouldn't need to practice—if we didn't care about how things were going. When things are going well, we try to improve on them or prolong pleasant feelings. When we face struggles, we naturally want to skip ahead to the relief.
We don't intend to engage in these behaviors; they are instinctual and seem tied to our survival instincts. However, we can waste a ton of time grappling with our emotions throughout our lives. While we frame this as a thinking problem, emotions fuel the narratives we create in our minds.
Feelings steer our attention into our imagination. Sights and sounds around us have a hard time competing for our direct awareness. When our emotional feelings are intense, it becomes even more challenging to notice the sensation of a relaxed leg, the breeze gliding across our forearm or face, or the feeling of exhaling.
With practice, we can learn to feel our emotions more fully and devote less time to resolving them mentally.
Thoughts provide structure for navigating the passing of time. Intentionally turning our attention to mundane details can feel like watching paint dry. It's disorienting—more like reading a poem than a novel. While fiction creates a path into the future, poetry invites you to linger in the ambiguity of the present. There’s a similar dynamic at play when we switch from mentally making sense of things to sensing them directly instead.
It helps create some structure for navigating the ambiguous, open-ended sense of time passing. This is one reason why breathing sensations are commonly used in mindfulness exercises. They provide some temporal scaffolding.
The exercise below offers a way to work with these challenges. Rather than relying on a narrative, we cultivate curiosity by closely observing the details around us. Instead of trying to alter our feelings, we remain open to directly observing the nuances of our experience. Instead of waiting for time to pass, we immerse ourselves in a simple rhythm.
It’s one tangible way to wean ourselves gradually from the gravitational pull of drama.
Give it a try and see if you find it useful.
