Mindfulness meditation has a lot in common with practicing the piano. Both require clear instruction, consistent effort, and falling in love with the process instead of obsessing over the results. They are also both about finding tangible ways to navigate the abstract murkiness of time.

IMAX enhances awareness of the objective world by increasing the intensity. Strengthening your attentional skills elevates awareness of the subjective world — your thoughts and feelings — as well as the interplay between both worlds.

Intensity isn’t required.

Mindfulness only seems strange to people who don’t yet know it’s possible to exercise their attention to feel more alive.

Equanimity is the ability to allow a sensory perception to play out without trying to change it. It’s an attentional skill you already have that gets stronger when you exercise it habitually.

Expand your options for developing focus and awareness.

We live in a data-driven world but what it takes to thrive can’t be measured.

Beauty and wonder might be closer than you realize.

You can appreciate autopilot and also choose to disrupt it sometimes.

Pay closer attention to your life without drawing attention to yourself.

Life can seem richer when we’re able to switch off cruise control sometimes.

Pause from making sense to get intimately acquainted with the process of noticing itself.

It’s surprisingly satisfying to notice what doesn’t insist on our attention sometimes and to really notice what it’s like to be alive more often.

Without direct experience, the impact of habitual mindfulness practice seems too simple to be beneficial.

Three big obstacles to establishing a consistent mindfulness routine are finding time to practice, being distracted by thoughts, and feeling bored. I discovered an exercise that obliterates all three simultaneously, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to hate the idea of it.

An attention exercise on the theme of rest barely disguised as a poem.

When you begin a walking or running program, there are several details you can track as evidence of improvement. Your step count. The length of your stride. Your pace. The amount of time it takes your heart to return to its recover its baseline resting rate. But how will you know when you’re getting better at noticing perceptions? 

"You don't have to analyze it. You just have to feel it." 

Dan Harris

What keeps us holding out for these perfect, comfortable lives that we imagine? And how can training your attention help address these habits?

We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

Louise Glück

Thinking your way through unpleasant emotions takes time while a single repetition of any mindfulness exercise only takes a few seconds. The skills of attention strengthened by mindfulness practice enhance both the resolving of unpleasant emotions and the acceptance of them.