Some Unsolicited Advice #6

Some weeks ago we started a series in which I share some completely unsolicited advice… if you’re looking to pick up from the beginning, you can do so here (which I recommend doing, if you haven’t done so, since there’s a lot of semi-important context in there, as well point #2 here , #3 here , #4 here , and #5 here ).

Long story short (since the initial post was some nine-thousand words): I wrote a book that you can read here ; however, instead of leaving it as an e-book that very few people will ever read (it is titled “Some Unsolicited Advice” after all), I figured it’s worth sharing the points and lessons learned in a more consumable format, as a rolling blog series where I add one or two new items every week (or every other week, depending on how much time I end up having), making for quicker and easier reading than dumping an e-book and calling it a day. And in this way, over the course of a year (or less, depending on the cadence), all the points will get shared in bite-size, more easily readable chunks. Today, we continue with the next point of this series…

6. Meditate / Breathe.

While not something I learned during or as a result of my trip, this is something I really wish I had known about prior to embarking on my journey. Directly in line with the last few points about how, when left to its own devices, the mind tends to run wild, the practice of meditation is an invaluable tool that’s remarkably effective in helping to counter, or at least somewhat lower, the effects of the so-called monkey mind. And even though it may not quiet all the voices all the time, even just becoming marginally aware of the chaos that’s going on in the mind all the time is a huge game changer.

Fundamentally speaking, the type of meditation I’m advocating for here is typically referred to as mindfulness meditation. Which, to be clear, isn’t some esoteric religious practice about praying to a Buddha statue, whipping yourself with chains, or any of those wild misconceptions. Instead, as the name would imply, it’s entirely about the absurdly simple process of observing and being aware of the mind and realizing how crazy that motherfucker actually is. I’m sure we all know the feeling, but personally speaking, whenever I manage to pause for a moment and take stock of exactly what my mind is saying and doing at any given moment, it’s readily apparent that there’s a goddamn lunatic in there, and it’s a miracle that anything ever gets done with it running the show.

At any point in time, my mind is probably running wild with impossible fantasies of girls I barely know or recalling and obsessing over something moderately embarrassing that literally nobody else on the planet gives a shit about, or just generally running amok with stories of fear, uncertainty, and death. But of what possible use is all this internal dialogue to me? Sure, the fantasies feel good, or at least they feel better than reality, so it makes sense why my mind likes to go there. But come on, buddy, we should be focusing on writing, not that girl that may or may not have smiled somewhere in our general vicinity two weeks ago! What’s the point in obsessing over or replaying that memory and then imagining a completely fictional future (house, kids, mowing the lawn on the weekend) —however fun it may be—nonstop? Maybe that’s not your experience with your mind, and if not, congrats, but that’s the last thirty seconds-to-last-few-minutes for me. At some point in the past, it made sense for the mind to worry about things a lot because the people that worried a lot were (ostensibly) the ones less likely to get eaten or killed by things that were preventable. However, in our current world, after an acknowledgement or identification of an issue, there’s no perceptible value that I can figure out for it floating all over the place, ruminating on bullshit, or daydreaming like it doesn’t have a goddamn job to do...

To be clear, I’m not saying mindfulness meditations can or will fix you, but what I am saying is that it’s pretty much impossible for it (mindfulness) to make things worse...

If we actually stop and think about it for a moment, it’s kinda batshit insane that we can watch ourselves think. There’s the self, which is wholly real and existing - and yet at the same time as being ourselves, we can also simultaneously pause and watch the thoughts come and go in our own mind – which is ostensibly also ourselves! I’m not trying to get weird like that one friend who has definitely done too many hallucinogens “the mind, man...” but I also don’t want to underemphasize the incredible and somewhat absurd fact that we can actually see our own thoughts and watch ourselves think! Obvious as daylight but often forgotten or lost in the chaos of the everyday.

Now, what follows from this realization is where the really interesting stuff starts to happen: by observing what we think, how we think, and the ways we react to the world inside and around us, we can learn to recognize, challenge, and adapt our own thought patterns, both good and bad… which again, is nothing short of incredible—particularly considering that we are our minds, but so rarely know what’s going on in them or what they’re doing! Sadly, mindfulness meditation won’t help you levitate or fly off into the 36th dimension, but it will help you recognize cognitive distortions in your thinking as well as help you detach from knee-jerk responses—both of which will allow you to be less reactive and more aware as you go through life. There’s also a growing chunk of research on the matter that supports the idea that mindfulness meditation is useful for all sorts of things, from lowering blood pressure to reducing anxiety to simply having a better quality of life. And while it may not give you more years in your life, being more aware of your surroundings and life as it happens can certainly help give you more life in your years (if you don’t believe me that meditating can make your life feel longer, just try to meditate for five minutes… I promise, it’ll feel like a decade).

If you want a quick intro exercise to this stupidly simple yet incredible practice, one thing I always find to be fascinating is taking a moment to realize all the things that are happening in and around our body (or mind) that we aren’t noticing (or don’t typically notice) right now. For instance, at this moment, pause for a few seconds and realize that you’re sitting, standing, lying down, or levitating. I know it sounds really dumb, but when was the last time you actually thought about the fact that you were sitting, or how sitting feels? What about the rest of your body? How does your left foot feel? Is it a little numb? Cold? Tired? What about your butt? Is it sore from all this sitting? Do you feel the contact or pressure with the chair or the little tactile feel and push each keystroke makes as you type away on your keyboard? What about the tension in your neck? Or the fact that you’re always hearing, and you’re not even trying to hear—hearing just like everything else is just happening. And it’s happening all the time! And that, at its core, is what mindfulness is about—realizing and being mindful of what’s going on in and around us.

What about your breath? Have you ever felt yourself breathe in or the sensations that go with it? Air passes through our nostrils thousands of times a day, and yet, for decades, I’d never once truly paused and considered what it feels like to breathe; you can feel the air along the inside of your nose, it’s a little cold, or maybe it’s not for you. But I do know that I’d literally never paused to feel what a breath feels like before I was introduced to mindfulness meditation. How crazy is that? We could spend our whole lives inside of our bodies and somehow never manage to truly experience them, know what they’re doing, or even what they feel like! That’s wild.

Taking things back to the mind, as I mentioned before, just as we can sit and experience how we feel in any given part of our body, we can also literally sit and watch our mind think—the same as we can listen to our ears hear—both of which happen automatically. It’s important to keep in mind that, contrary to the common misconception, the goal of this exercise is never to “stop thinking” or to control the thoughts; but instead, the goal is to just sit there as an observer and see what comes up into the mind. You’d be surprised what the mind thinks about when you’re not watching, as well as what it gets distracted by. Once more, don’t try to stop any of the stories or images, just let them happen and mentally note them as they come and go— “Huh, I’m thinking about the Mona Lisa right now,” or just note “fantasy” if the mind starts to daydream, or even just “thinking” as the mind goes off into thought about some random item. No need to go deep or crazy; just being aware is enough. And once we’re aware, we can start recognizing patterns and how they feel. When stress or anxiety arises in the mind and you catch it, you’ll also notice it triggers other sensations in the body, and in being aware of this whole series of events, we can start to feel and identify what’s going on across the board. Instead of just becoming mad, you can now feel yourself getting mad—you know the patterns, what it feels like, and where. Previously, we’d just have a craving and act on it. Now we can feel it happening in real-time and then react in a way that we consciously choose, as opposed to permanently running on autopilot and being a slave to our emotions.

If you haven’t tried it already, I highly recommend giving it a shot; it’s an absolutely riveting practice that has no downside at all (that I’m aware of). From my perspective, just the idea of exploring my own mind and body is a completely fascinating concept by itself and can have a ton of benefits on its own.

One of my personal takeaways from doing this practice is realizing how much the mind loves to think of the future or past, and if I/we let it, it’ll spend almost all of my time concocting fantasies, daydreams, and likes. The staggering corollary to this is that if the mind is always in the future or past, then we end up spending almost none of our lives in the right here and now! Again, the implications are substantial. How many times when we’re eating are we already focusing on the next bite instead of actually tasting or feeling what we’re eating now? Maybe if we did that, we would eat less, or at the bare minimum, enjoy our present food a little more. Or, in the middle of a great or beautiful moment, how often do we start thinking about how we can post it later to Facebook or Instagram, how many likes it’ll get, or how it’ll make a certain person feel? And in doing so, do you lose out almost entirely on being there with the moment and experience itself? If we’re always thinking of the future or past, how could we ever hope to be present? And is it then any surprise that we commonly feel like life is sort of just slipping by as if we’re sort of helpless bystanders? This is nothing short of a nearly universal feeling, and though practicing meditation may not be a panacea, we can, at the very least, take back some degree of awareness in our lives—experiencing it as it’s happening, here and now. Again, I definitely wish I had known about this before I went out and traveled. It would have helped a lot to better stay in the moment and appreciate where I was and what was happening around me instead of constantly blasting from place to place to place, seemingly always in pursuit of what comes next. But alas, we live, and we learn.

Additionally, as a reminder, it’s critical to be aware that (a) there is no ‘winning’ or endgame to meditation; and (b) you will get distracted from it constantly. Getting distracted is perfectly fine and normal, and the thing to remember in those situations is to simply begin again. Acknowledge the distraction, and then go back to the meditation. Or sit with the distraction and watch it until it goes away. There’s no wrong way to do it - other than not doing it. To which, on that note, even a minute changes things. I know that sounds cliché, but I’m not joking. Just try it for a minute. Just one, and see how it feels. How much richer and clearer those 60 seconds feel. You can do it for longer if you want, but start with just one minute and see where it goes. Just so you don’t feel like you have to sit for hours to get benefits from it – any bit helps. You’ve got this!

And that’s it for round six! Of course, if you want to skip ahead at any point, feel free to buy the full book on Amazon here . Thanks!