Build Positive Traits & Habits Through Mindful Breathing

The intention of mindfulness isn’t stillness nor perfection, but working with how we relate to our experience day to day. It’s meant to be practical and understandable to anyone. We settle ourselves when our mind gets caught up in thoughts or emotions, past or future, and return to something neutral like the feeling of one breath. Through that process, we learn to manage our lives more intentionally and less reactively. When we practice regularly, we see long-term changes – and in the moment, we better settle ourselves when our mind gets caught up in stress too. The practice is, on the one hand, simple and straightforward, trusting in the practice having value without striving or self-analysis. We aren’t aiming to be always calm or to quiet our mind specifically. Breathing practice and mindfulness develop a multitude of traits and abilities that help us relate to our lives with more skill, compassion, and precision.

Most of our lives are filled with distraction. Without effort, we’re here but not really here - caught up in thoughts of past, future, rumination, doubt, and far more. Research shows the ability to give aware, full attention to our experience – even when it’s intrinsically pleasant – increases our happiness. As we meditate, we build focus by attending to what’s actually going on during this one breath.

Everyone's moment of mindfulness practice, every time we come back to the breath, is a chance to return to our best intentions. Practicing mindfulness, we set out on an impossible task. No one can focus their intention fully on the breath or anywhere else for long. The same is true of the rest of our lives, where we inevitably lose touch with our best intentions and efforts sometimes. With awareness cultivated through mindfulness practice, we more easily realign ourselves when needed with our best intentions for ourselves, our families, and the world. We learn to settle, see with clarity, step out of reactivity, and come back to what we know best. Letting go of self-criticism and perfectionism, we notice our minds have wandered, and then, return to our intention for ourselves right now by focusing on the next breath, over and over again.

Breathing practice intrinsically encourages self-compassion. No matter how much or little we practice, our mind gets distracted. Our job is to notice when it does and come back to the next breath without self-judgment. It’s easy to get caught up in self-criticism ("I’m miserable at this, I can’t ever do it, I wasted ten minutes daydreaming"). Where else in life do we so directly practice the ability to set our intentions, lose track of them, and then resolutely but without self-criticism, come back to them again? We observe each breath (or when we get distracted, the next one or the one after that) with resolve and kindness, working toward self-improvement without excessive harshness and building an attitude of resolve balanced by self-compassion.

As we practice, we build a fuller awareness of our world - both the world around us and our inner worlds. There may be aspects of our life we barely notice, and others we actively avoid. We often act or think under the influence of unconscious habits, preconceived notions, and assumptions. We get caught up in negativity or self-criticism, past or future, in ways that complicate and escalate our challenges. To step out of our mental ruts, we must first recognize them. Guiding ourselves around each breath, we become more familiar with the full complexity of our physical, emotional, and mental experiences.

Any mindfulness practice includes compassion. We see our own challenges (like our utter inability to focus our mind where we want for long) with care and patience, instead of self-recrimination and frustration. And then, aiming to see with unbiased clarity how the world around us works, we can recognize that even the people we find difficult face many of the same, unavoidably human challenges and crave happiness and health in their own ways.

Every breath, every moment of mindfulness practice builds our ability to stay patient and strong through all of the uncertainty and change in our lives. Meditation is often difficult and that’s the point of practicing. Our minds stay busy and our bodies get restless. Challenging thoughts arise, and emotions come and go outside of our control. We aren’t trying to be calm or to quiet the mind all the time. For a few moments of mindfulness, we notice our full life experience and choose not to react and not to get caught up in habit. We aim for clear-sighted awareness and build our capacity for patience and resolve.

There’s nothing mysterious about the practice of mindfulness. There is nothing we can force to happen. Our mind gets caught up somewhere, and we guide it back. Almost soon as we start, our thoughts may wander off again. That’s normal. Continue to breathe naturally. When you notice thoughts or emotions, or anything else taking over, come back to the next breath. For all there is to explore in the practice, it’s not meant as an intense intellectual or analytical exercise. In an unforced way, trusting in our own wisdom, we come back to seeing with clarity and acting with precision and care - one breath at time.