Mindfulness Is Simpler Than You Think

I can lose an embarrassing amount of time on Facebook Marketplace.

Give me a room I’m working on and something I’m trying to find—an antique table, the right chair, a piece with just the right proportions—and I’m gone. I’ll study photographs, zoom in on wood grain, check dimensions, mentally put something in the room, reject it, keep scrolling, then go back twenty minutes later because maybe I dismissed it too quickly.

The same thing happens when I’m designing a room. I can think about color, scale, texture and placement for hours. Painting does it too. When I’m cutting in around trim or along a ceiling, my attention narrows to the brush, the paint and that edge I absolutely do not want to screw up.

I can become completely absorbed in something I enjoy. So absorbed, in fact, that an hour disappears. My shoulders may be tight. George may have said something to me fifteen minutes ago. At some point I’ll surface from a particularly promising antique cabinet and realize I also really need to pee.

My attention, apparently, is magnificent.

Give it something it wants.

Ask that same attention to stay with my breath for a few minutes and suddenly we’re renegotiating the contract.

My brain has other things it would like to discuss

I notice the inhale. I notice the exhale. Maybe another inhale.

And we’re off.

What am I making for dinner? Did I respond to that email? I need to remember to order dog food. What time is that meeting tomorrow? And while we’re here, why not revisit something stupid I said seventeen years ago and conduct a full retrospective?

At some point, I realize I was supposed to be paying attention to my breath.

For someone who can give an antique cabinet my undivided attention, this feels a little insulting.

But it also helps explain something important: being absorbed in something isn’t the same as being mindful.

When something interests us enough, attention can narrow around it. We become absorbed in what we’re doing. Flow describes another related but distinct experience of deep engagement in an activity. Mindfulness involves attention too, but the terms aren’t interchangeable.

I can be completely focused on Marketplace while remaining remarkably unaware of everything else happening in and around me—including, apparently, messages from my own bladder.

Focused? Absolutely. Mindful? Not necessarily.

As a mindfulness facilitator, I feel obligated to make that distinction before somebody comes to revoke my credentials.

I’ve heard this one before

I’ve facilitated mindfulness long enough to know one of the reactions that often comes when people first try it.

I’m terrible at this. I can’t stop thinking.

I understand why it feels that way. Someone decides to pay attention to the breath, discovers within approximately twelve seconds that the mind has gone somewhere else, brings it back, loses it again and concludes that everybody else must be sitting there peacefully while their brain alone has decided to host a committee meeting.

They’re not alone.

My mind wanders too.

Mindfulness isn’t about eliminating thought. We don’t need to empty the mind or somehow maintain a perfectly serene internal landscape. If that were the standard, I would have been fired from this work years ago.

Part of mindfulness practice is intentionally bringing awareness to what’s happening in the present moment with qualities often described as openness, curiosity and nonjudgment. And one of the things happening in the present moment may be that your mind has wandered somewhere else.

The important part is what happens next.

You notice.

Oh. There I went.

Then you bring your attention back.

That’s not the part where the practice failed. That’s part of the practice.

Sometimes paying attention is easy

There are places where I don’t have to work nearly as hard at being attentive.

Put me near water and something changes. It can be the ocean, but it doesn’t have to be. I can sit beside our backyard pool and watch the movement across the surface, notice the light, hear what’s happening around me and happily stay there for quite a while.

I felt it again at the beach recently. Sitting on the sand and listening to the waves come in and go back out, I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything. There was nothing I needed to find, arrange, paint or improve. I could simply sit there and listen.

The woods do it too. I love walking among trees, pulling weeds in the garden or sitting outside long enough to notice what’s happening around me. One of my favorite things is hearing wind move through the trees, sometimes before I fully feel it where I’m sitting. Then I watch the plants respond—leaves turning, branches shifting, stems bending and settling again.

I love that.

But here’s where the mindfulness facilitator in me has to ruin a perfectly lovely paragraph: none of that is automatically mindfulness.

Sometimes I’m simply enjoying the hell out of being outside.

Enjoying nature, feeling relaxed or becoming captivated by something beautiful doesn’t automatically turn the experience into mindfulness. If I’m intentionally attending to what’s happening—the sounds I’m hearing, the sensation of air against my skin, what I’m seeing, sensations in my body, perhaps thoughts coming and going—then we’re talking about a different quality of awareness.

The distinction matters because mindfulness isn’t determined by how peaceful the setting looks.

You don’t need an ocean.

And thank God for that, because most Tuesdays do not contain one.

It’s considerably easier when the present moment is lovely

Of course I want to be present when the present moment contains the ocean. Give me sand, waves and nowhere I need to be and I am an exceptionally enthusiastic participant in the here and now.

I’m a fucking mindfulness prodigy at the beach.

Put me in an uncomfortable conversation and let’s see how enlightened I am.

That’s where the practice becomes more interesting to me, because mindfulness isn’t training ourselves to enjoy every moment. Sometimes it’s simply recognizing what’s happening while we’d very much prefer something else were happening.

Maybe I’m angry. My jaw tightens. My heart beats faster. My thoughts begin assembling an impressive amount of supporting evidence for why I’m right and the other person is an idiot.

I can notice that without pretending I’m not angry.

That’s an important part of mindfulness that can disappear beneath all the peaceful imagery surrounding it. Nonjudgment doesn’t mean we suddenly approve of everything we experience, and awareness doesn’t require us to become calm before we’re allowed to practice it.

Sometimes what’s here is pleasant. Sometimes it isn’t.

The practice is still to notice.

Mindfulness doesn’t have a dress code

It has certainly acquired one.

There’s the meditation cushion, the peaceful room, the carefully placed candle. Possibly some linen. Apparently nobody practicing mindfulness has a laundry basket visible in the background.

I have nothing against any of those things. I like beautiful spaces. Clearly. Give me enough time and access to Facebook Marketplace and I’ll prove it.

But none of that is required. Neither is sitting cross-legged, closing your eyes or achieving some recognizable state of serenity.

Formal mindfulness practice can be valuable, and we’ll explore it here. But mindfulness can also be practiced in ordinary life: while walking, eating, listening to another person, noticing sensations in the body or standing at the kitchen sink with an extremely unphotogenic laundry basket somewhere nearby.

And wherever you practice, eventually your mind will wander.

Of course it will.

You’ve met your brain.

The question isn’t whether you can prevent that from ever happening. It’s whether you can notice where your attention has gone and, when you choose, bring it back to what’s actually happening.

Mine will wander again

I know this because I’ve met my attention too.

Sometimes I’ll notice quickly. Other times I’ll spend ten minutes mentally reorganizing my life before realizing I was supposed to be following my breath. And sometimes, apparently, I won’t notice much of anything until I have to pee.

I’m not trying to become someone whose attention never wanders or who moves serenely through every difficult moment. I’m not sure that person exists, and if they do, we probably shouldn’t invite them to watch me read an irritating email.

What I can practice is recognizing when I’ve left the moment I’m actually living.

Sometimes that moment will be easy to return to. Maybe I’m outside and the wind is moving through the trees. Maybe I’m sitting beside the water. Maybe I’m with someone I love and realize I’ve been thinking about something else instead of listening to them.

Other times, what’s waiting for me when I come back may be the very thing my mind was trying to escape: the uncomfortable conversation, the boring task, the worry, the email.

Mindfulness doesn’t make the ocean and the email the same.

It just gives me a way to notice which one I’m actually with.

And if I’ve wandered off somewhere else?

I notice.

Oh. There I went.

And I come back.