Every moment is an opportunity for mindfulness.
Every moment is an opportunity for freedom.
It's very easy to get into this issue or this sort of mental trap or this delusion that if I miss my opportunity to meditate in the morning,
Or unless I'm practicing formally,
Or some other sort of mental block that suggests,
Okay,
I've missed out on my meditation practice today,
Or,
Oh,
My mind is not in a good way today.
You know,
Maybe you've had too much coffee or some other sort of inebriation.
It's like,
Ugh,
I'm done now.
Here's the thing.
Every single moment is a new moment.
What meditation teaches us,
Experientially,
Is that right now,
This moment is all there is.
This is it.
The now.
The perpetual now.
So no matter what you've done up into this exact point,
You can meditate.
Notice the the inner trap that says,
Okay,
Tomorrow will be a better day,
Or next week,
Next month,
Next year.
These,
It's an interesting sort of thing to consider because why?
Why do we need to have that mental stopgap of tomorrow?
Why will tomorrow be naturally just better?
Why not the next moment?
There's a little mental trick you can give yourself rather than saying,
Oh,
I've wasted today.
Today was a terrible day.
You instead can block your day off into sections.
Morning,
Afternoon,
Evening,
And night.
Okay,
You had a terrible morning,
But the afternoon,
Evening,
And night will improve.
Oh,
You had a great morning,
Great afternoon,
But your evening was atrocious.
Fine,
You can recover at night.
This,
Rather than blocking things into days,
You can block them into quarters of a day,
Or segments.
But why not take that even a step further?
It's not that today was good or bad,
Or this week,
Or this month,
Or this year was good or bad.
It's this moment.
This one moment was good or bad.
Or,
Even a step further,
Mindfully,
This one moment simply is.
It just is what it is,
And the next moment might be the same,
Or it might be different.
It too just is what it is.
This is something that's a conceptually able to be understood,
But to put it into practice is another story.
The way that we put it into practice is a couple of things.
Number one,
We meditate formally daily.
We sit down,
Set a timer,
And meditate.
Great.
But we also have to endeavor to take our meditation practice off the mat and into our everyday lives.
We don't just practice formally and then not think about it for the rest of the day.
In the same way that we exercise to get strong,
We don't exercise to get strong to be able to do more exercise.
We exercise to be able to be strong in everyday life.
We practice a skill to get good at that skill,
Not to be good at the skill,
But to benefit our lives.
In the same way,
We meditate.
We don't just meditate to be good during our formal meditation practices.
We meditate to be good in everyday life,
To be able to detach,
To be not so restricted by thoughts,
To not so driven to compulsion,
To be calmer,
To be more controlled,
To be more detached,
To be not as attached to our thoughts,
To not act as rashly.
That's why we meditate.
So our goal is to get our meditation practices off the mat.
How can we do this practically?
Well,
One thing is just to set the intention.
Let's say you meditate in the morning.
At the end of the session,
Just think to yourself,
Okay,
I'm going to try and be a bit more mindful throughout the day.
But we can also do a few more things.
You could set a timer.
Set a timer on your phone or your watch,
And when the timer goes off,
You just think to yourself,
Mindfulness.
Am I being mindful right now?
Maybe you take a mindful breath,
Just a big breath.
Let's just do one breath now and just feel how you feel.
Seriously,
Do it with me.
You ready?
Just breath in and out and just focus on the feeling of your body.
How do you feel?
You feel a little bit better?
What if you did that a couple of times a day?
So set an alarm.
Or better yet,
Do it during transitions.
Let's say you go to work and back.
That's two transitions.
From home to work is one,
And then work to home is another.
Let's say you pick up the kids.
Home to work to school to home again.
That might be three or four transitions,
Depending on how many trips you take.
But as you make each transition,
Just as you arrive in the car,
When you get to the office,
Whatever,
Take a moment.
Just one minute of mindfulness.
Just one minute of formal mindfulness practice.
And if that's too much,
Just one breath like we did just before.
You can do another thing.
Make it an environmental trigger.
Every time you touch a door handle,
You just think to yourself,
Mindfulness.
Just a little note,
Just a mental just ping,
Oh mindfulness.
And that way it's sort of training you to just observe the contents of your consciousness.
Observe your mental state in the moment.
And the idea or the goal is to be able to be mindful throughout the day.
So that when a strong emotion arises,
When you get into an argument,
When you get overwhelmed,
When you lose yourself in a delusion of memory or anxiety or future planning or whatever it is,
Just a little part of you,
A little 1% just says,
Hey,
Consider this.
Consider mindfulness.
That's the goal.
Let's say you find yourself having fallen to your addiction.
Some sort of inebriation,
Some sort of sugar,
Some sort of action,
Whatever it is.
And you're about to do it or you're doing it or you've just done it.
That moment is still a moment to be mindful,
Even if you're still under the impact of it.
You can still observe reality as it is for what it is in that moment.
You can still make a different choice.
But the first thing you have to do is wake up and take it.
That's what has to happen.
You have to be awake.
And by awake I don't just mean like awake to reality,
But awake to what's actually happening in your mental state.
We do that by practicing meditation every day,
Formal practice,
But also taking that practice off the meditation mat and into our everyday lives.
You can do that.
It just requires a little bit of focused attention,
A little bit of effort.
Listening to the talks that I've got up on Insight Timer,
One a day.
That can be a process.
Setting a timer can be another process.
Formal practice can be another process.
Getting someone to meditate with you,
A meditation coach,
A guide,
A friend.
Talk about meditation.
All of these things can be done to help.
Writing a meditation journal.
Basically be thinking about meditation a little bit more often and it will permeate your entire day and you'll see benefits ongoing and in all aspects.
So with that in mind,
Let's take one more mindful breath and enjoy the rest of your day.
Have a great one.
