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Stop Stressing About Whether You’re Being Mindful Enough
You aren’t. Nobody is. That’s not the point.
“Mindfulness is just being lazy.”
I won’t cite the author who wrote that, because I respect them immensely and they usually don’t write things that are that wrong. I did, however, read it aloud to my partner — a trained Kundalini yoga and mindfulness teacher — and she laughed with disbelief.
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “Mindfulness is hard as fuck.” I can quote her directly now, of course, because if you write personal development books you can use the F-word indiscriminately. Thanks, Mark Manson!
She’s right, though. The writer who thought mindfulness was lazy was not actually talking about mindfulness; they were talking about the palliative antidotes to stress that businesses and pop culture feeds us in an effort to keep us working and consuming.
That’s not what I think of as mindfulness; nor is it what my partner teaches.
I learned mindfulness while preparing for war
I personally started studying zen during the most violent period of my life: the Marine Corps School of Infantry.
I was struggling, mentally; along with being married with a kid a lot sooner than I…
