The One Resolution That Matters

A fellow meditation teacher sent this out today, and I thought it apropos. So, here you go. 

As another year begins, many of us will resolve to exercise more and sleep better and eat more sanely. Of course, these are all good things to do. But there's a prior commitment, whether one makes it consciously or not, that will determine the quality of everything else. And that's the commitment to take care of your mind.

As has been widely discussed, we are living through an all-out war for our attention. Most of the digital economy has been engineered to keep you clicking and scrolling and sharing and doing these things in a continuous state of agitation or outrage. And even when the mood is different, let's say you've been captured by something genuinely amusing, that cat sleeping on top of that dog, sleeping on top of that tiger, the result is now a new normal of perpetual distraction and fragmentation.

We start a conversation and then reach for our phones. We sit down to read, this is a book we really wanted to read, and find that we just can't help but check our messages. We watch a film while simultaneously scrolling some digital timeline. We barely live in the vicinity of our bodies anymore. And this has become entirely normal to be elsewhere almost all of the time. We want meaningful experience and yet we are training ourselves to avoid it.

The Essence of Mindfulness

Well, this is why mindfulness matters. Mindfulness isn't just something to add to your list of commitments. It's the skill that can revise and reorganize the list.

Mindfulness clarifies what deserves your attention and what doesn't. It allows you to notice pointless and even painful distractions and to drop them and reveals a deeper truth. So much of the quality of our lives isn't a matter of what happens to us or even of what we do. It's a matter of how our minds respond to everything we experience in each moment.

Many people think mindfulness is a strange practice that is based on some spiritual superstition. Others imagine it to be a kind of endurance test. You force yourself to sit perfectly still, suppressing your thoughts, and you're chasing some drug-like experience of bliss.

These are misunderstandings.

Mindfulness is simply the ability to pay clear attention to the contents of consciousness in each moment to sensations, perceptions, emotions, intentions, thoughts exactly as they are, as they arise, without grasping at what's pleasant or pushing what's unpleasant away. The point is to make what is unconscious or barely conscious something you're aware of. But why did you say that thing that you now regret? How are you feeling the moment before you said it? And how are you feeling now? And what in you is aware of every feeling? What does awareness itself feel like?

You don't need to change your experience to clearly observe it. And paradoxically, the act of observation begins to change how you feel and perceive the world.

And this matters because your mind colors everything. Anger, anxiety, envy, confusion. These mental states make the world and the people in it appear a certain way. And without mindfulness, these mental states seem to define who we are. With mindfulness, we can see them as nothing more than patterns in consciousness that arise and pass away.

This recognition doesn't make life painless, but reveals a condition of well-being that is deeper than any passing pains and pleasures.

Practicing Mindfulness in Daily Life

Consider a simple test for the year ahead. Can you watch a movie without checking your phone? Can you read for an hour without interrupting yourself? Can you be fully present with another person, your partner, your child, your friend, without needing to be somewhere else?

If the honest answer is not really, then you're precisely the sort of person for whom mindfulness will make an enormous difference.

The practices we teach in the Waking Up app aren't a way of retreating from life. And this isn't about sitting cross-legged on a cushion every day to acquire a new identity as a meditator. It's about learning a practical skill that you can use anywhere. At your desk, in traffic, in the kitchen, on vacation. It's about becoming familiar with the mechanics of your own mind, how attention determines what you notice, how thoughts and emotions can seem to subsume and define you, and learning that you can wake up and experience the intrinsic freedom of the nature of your mind at any moment.

If you're skeptical about this, that's fine because there's really nothing you need to believe to get started. All that's required is a willingness to look carefully at your own experience.

Here's a short exercise you can try right now.

Close your eyes and take one deep breath. And then just let your breath come and go naturally. And then notice the sounds around you. Notice the feeling of your body resting in space. And notice the next breath coming and going as it does. Let attention just rest on whatever appears in consciousness in this moment. And see if you can notice the next thought that arises in your mind. You don't need to search for it. It will appear all by itself.

See if you can observe the exact moment a thought appears, whether it's an image or a bit of language, and notice how it dissolves all by itself. And when the next thought appears, just notice that, too. There's nothing to grasp at and nothing to push away. Just leave everything as it is.

Okay. So that's mindfulness. It's not a mystical state. It's just a clear recognition of what your experience is like in each moment. But practiced regularly, it becomes a very powerful skill. Among other things, it allows you to focus when you want to and to let go of negative reactions and emotions when you should. Mindfulness allows you to reconnect with what really matters.

Conclusion: Embracing the Present

The point isn't to become a different person. It's to stop being confused about the person you already are. To recognize that your conscious awareness of life in the present is the basis of every experience you will have this year and every year thereafter because the future never arrives. There's always just this moment and this.

And if you train your powers of attention, everything you care about improves. Your capacity to work, to enjoy your friends and family, to be at ease in your life.

So, just start small. Give it five minutes a day and see if you can bring some clarity to the rest of your life. If you want guidance, the Waking Up app is there to help. And if you already use the app, perhaps you can recommit to your practice now.

The world seems likely to grow more chaotic and fragmented, not less. And the war for your attention will almost certainly intensify this year. But there's an opportunity hidden inside this problem.

This year, you can finally come to know your own mind. You can learn to recognize distraction the moment it arises and return again and again to the only place your life is ever truly real, here in the present. So this year, I hope you'll join me in making the one resolution that can put all the others in perspective. And I wish you much happiness in the new year.

Sam.