Work with What You’ve Got
Acknowledging reality isn’t indifference. It’s the first step to responding intentionally, rather than reacting impulsively.
Practicing mindfulness isn’t about perfecting what you experience. It’s about feeling more alive despite the inevitably imperfect circumstances we all face.
During my first meditation retreat, the teacher suggested an experiment.
I’d explained that when meditating became physically uncomfortable, I often struggled with the urge to make the discomfort go away. I noticed that compassion exercises, rather than breath awareness, helped me stay present with my agitation instead of trying to eliminate it.
“When you get home,” he said, “you could try doing the technique you’ve found useful for five minutes a day. Give it a couple of years and see if you notice any impact.”
I laughed. I’d been working in the mental health field for a decade and had never heard of any approach with a two-year trial period.
Plus, I didn’t even have a consistent meditation routine.
When I realized he was serious, I considered it might be one of the wisest suggestions I’d ever been given. I decided to try it.
I planned to give him a report at the end of my informal, longitudinal study.
That was October 2002. I’ve been meditating daily ever since, not because every session feels profound or peaceful, but because I learned to approach whatever arises with openness, including discomfort, boredom, and restlessness.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this experimental approach helped me avoid a common impulse to constantly fix, judge, or perfect my experience, which often undermines consistency.
In fact, working with confusion and emotional discomfort has taught me more than savoring relaxation. Just as strength training reveals its value when you need to move furniture, take the stairs, or walk across a parking lot, cultivating a warm relationship with discomfort prepared me to have better disagreements with my spouse, set boundaries with my daughter, and develop better work habits.
The trap of constant self-monitoring
Practicing mindfulness means being present with whatever is happening, without rushing to change it. That includes feeling:
calm and agitated
focused and scattered
energetic and fatigued
emotionally pleasant and unpleasant
The complexity of our humanity makes interpreting our efforts precarious. It’s easy to misinterpret agitation or fatigue as failure when, in fact, they come with the territory.
Occasionally reflecting on organic outcomes
Be on the lookout for subtle shifts in how you’re responding when you’re not meditating. Those moments when you notice yourself pausing, softening, or simply being with an uncomfortable sensation without immediately trying to change it.
Rather than constantly evaluating your progress, it’s more helpful and sustainable to periodically schedule specific times on your calendar to reflect on any changes you’ve observed over the weeks, months, or years.
Once every three months, ask yourself if you’ve noticed yourself:
Savoring pleasant moments more?
Wrestling with unpleasant moments less?
Pausing before responding more often?
Recognizing the humanity you share with others
Mindfulness is often marketed as a way to relax with your eyes closed to escape or recover from life’s challenges, but its true heart lies in noticing what’s happening without trying to change it and in cultivating the composure to respond wisely.
Exercise
After considering the possibility of noticing sensations without rushing to interpret what they mean about how mindful you are, let’s explore what it feels like in practice. The goal isn’t to relax or feel better, but to cultivate awareness of what’s present, whether it’s pleasant or not.
This exercise helps calibrate equanimity by practicing a paradoxically neutral response to whatever you hear and feel. It involves a bit of pretending in order to undermine the impulse to interfere with what you notice. Your mind will push back, but try to gently persuade it to treat it as a game, similar to the internal shifts cultivated by actors and improv groups.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
Feeling tired or rested
Feeling grumpy or agreeable
Feeling lonely or connected
