Habitual mindfulness practice gradually erodes our tendency to constantly interfere with the natural flow of being alive.

It’s so much more difficult to focus on what’s within your control than on all the things that aren’t.

Why not start practicing now?

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

"Linguistic repetition, you learn from an early age, can give form or take it away, because it forces a confrontation with the malleability of language and the world we build with it, build upon it."

Ben Lerner

If your strategy for trying to live in the present more doesn't acknowledge that the present often sucks, you will find yourself frequently convinced that you have failed instead of realizing that your expectations are unrealistic.

A mindfulness teacher needs to sell you on the possible outcomes of consistent practice but also has to steer you back again and again to the slippery path that leads to them.

"Nothing will tell you
where you are.
Each moment is a place
you’ve never been."

~ Mark Strand

When you catch yourself absorbed by some immediate aspect of your environment, try to yield to the observation fully for a few seconds.

Training your attention by listening closely to words as sounds can enrich your lifelong relationship to the language you rely on to navigate your life. It might even rekindle the wordless wonder that existed before you developed the ability to comprehend words.

“If we sit still, like a mountain in a hurricane, if we don't protect ourselves from the trueness and the vividness and the immediacy and the lack of confirmation of simply being part of life, then we are not this separate being who has to have things turn out our way.”

Pema Chödrön