January 9 – Choosing an activity as a mindfulness bell

Dear Friends,

In the fourth talk from the Daily Life Practice Retreat, Andrea Fella mentions that the tool of “what’s obvious” can work well in sitting meditation, but often what is obvious is not strong enough in our daily lives to help pull us out of our “habitually lost” mode.

In our sitting, we have some reminders about becoming aware. She says if we’re sitting still and have our eyes closed, when the mind gets lost in thinking, we’ve got some physical reminders – at some point we’ll recognize “oh, I’m sitting still with my eyes closed, I’m not actually having that conversation with that person” or “I’m not actually in the grocery store” or where ever our mind has gone. When we’re in sitting meditation, there are cues that help us to remember mindfulness. And even then, you know how hard it is, how often the mind goes out and gets lost. Until we remember…

So for daily life practice, she presents two suggests projects to bring mindfulness into daily life. I’ll review the first of them today, and the other in tomorrow’s post.

The first project is to pick some mundane, ordinary, and brief/momentary task that you do regularly throughout your day and explore the possibility of trying to remember to be mindful while doing it. She says it’s helpful to pick an activity that you initiate rather than one that is in response to something (e.g. clicking send on an email is something you’d initiate; looking at your phone when it buzzes is in response to something).

Some of her suggestions include walking through doorways, clicking send on an email, turning on a light switch, drinking water, reaching for something (although she says this is actually advanced practice, because we reach for things more often than we realize). [Note just pick one thing to work on!]

The key to this practice is that you’re going to forget to be mindful of this task a lot of the time. It might be that just as you’re heading off to sleep, you suddenly realize that you had forgotten to be mindful at all.

But that’s the key moment, because right then, you are being mindful!

So she suggests, at that moment, when you remember that you forgot, notice what’s obvious, and then reconnect with your intention to remember that activity. She says to frame this as “I’m just going to keep trying.”

She says

Ultimately, continuity is what supports us in our daily life practice, but we can’t start there. We have to start where we are, which is often very lost. Just noticing that you’ve forgotten, in that moment, that moment is kind of like that moment you remember [you haven’t been following your breath] in sitting meditation. The idea isn’t to beat yourself up for having forgotten. In that moment, when mindfulness returns, we can reconnect with what’s happening.

She says that both in her teaching and in her own exploration, one of the places where people give up is because they think they don’t have time to be mindful. She says it is a little bit extra intentionality to connect with what we are noticing in our daily lives, but that we need to approach it with a lighter touch.

“So you remember that you’ve forgotten, and in that moment, just notice what’s obvious, and then you don’t have to try to hold onto the mindfulness in that moment. It may continue a little bit – if it does, great. If not, just go on with your day.”

In the first bit, you might only remember that you forgot once at the end of the day. Then you might remember that you forgot a couple of times in the day. You might eventually notice just after you did the task.

The goal is not to be perfect. Each time, just notice what’s obvious now, say “I’ll keep trying”, and then carry on.

This is a pretty neat practice. Rather than what would often be my default of “oh geez, I’m terrible at this!”, this is actually a moment to celebrate – “hey, I’m mindful right now!”

Each time you’ve remembered that you’ve forgotten is a moment of mindfulness during your day that you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

So my suggestion for today is to pick one brief, self-initiated activity that you do often in your day, and commit, just for this week, to be mindful of that activity. And almost more importantly, to celebrate the moments you remember that you forgot, because that moment of remembering is a moment of mindfulness.

I invite you to share the activity you’ve selected with me, or with our group as a comment on this post on the blog. If you decide to share something, I’ll add in a personalized reminder to you (and only you) in the remaining emails sent to you this week.

In the interests of disclosure, I’ve decided my activity this week will be to be mindful when I take a sip of tea. I’m excited to explore and play with this. I’ll let you know how it goes!

With best wishes,
Andrea