Attention, part 2: The Art of Showing Up

[00:00:02] Speaker A: It's the youe Life Lived well podcast with Dr. Kevin Payne. A better way of seeing the life that you want to live today. [00:00:13] Speaker B: Let's start with a simple question. What happens to you when you sit still and do nothing? I don't mean scrolling on your phone, watching tv, or planning your next move. I mean really doing nothing. Just sitting, just breathing, just being. If you're like most people today, that idea sounds boring, impossible, uncomfortable, or downright terrifying. The second you try, your brain lights up like a pinball machine. Thoughts bouncing everywhere. Popcorn head. Remember your grocery list? The awkward thing you said last week? The itch on your left foot? Did you turn off the stove? And before you knew it, your mind is often racing. Now here's the aha. You must accept and internalize. Most people think this is failure. They assume that if their mind is wandering, they must be bad at meditation. But that's exactly what we talked about last time. How losing focus isn't the problem, it's the practice. Because what did we learn last episode? Your attention is your most valuable resource. It shapes your experience of life. All the time you are allotted in this world filters through your attention. And most of the time, we're not in control of it. We're constantly being hijacked by stress, by technology, by the endless, yammering, blathering noise of modern life. But here's the good news. You can train your attention. That's why we talked about mindfulness last time. Not as some mystical state of enlightenment, but as a practical tool to notice where your attention is going and learn to bring it back again and again and again. And the best way to train that skill? Meditation. Here's a little secret. Our minds were adapted to wander for most of our ancestral existence billions of years. This was a feature, not a bug. Why? We didn't live in a world where anyone needed to think deeply about anything. In fact, if you stopped and got lost in your deep, meaningful thoughts, you might get dead. A mind that was constantly skipping and flitting through the world was more likely to pick up on vital signals more quickly. That's the difference between life and death. In a world crowded with urgent, emergent, existential dangers, death would come quick, often, and from all angles. Challenges were physical and could be identified from superficial signals. But a few thousand years ago, our ancestors began creating a different sort of world, and we haven't hit the brakes since. We now live in an environment that was designed and built by others for their purposes. We are faced with hundreds or maybe thousands of branded persuasive messages every day. Messages designed to draw our attention and warp our thoughts and conclusions. But our primal brains can't see through to that intention. Our modern environment is full of marketing and propaganda. It's an environment chock full of supernormal stimuli, messages that are more real than the natural world, food that is tastier, fake risks that are more exciting, digital stimuli that are faster and edgier, sexy people that appear sexier and is all fed by algorithms that game our biology for the addictions of random reinforcement. But this is an entirely different episode. At its most basic, maybe you should look at mindfulness as the art of showing up for your own life so that you can collect better experiences, implement better choices, and just get involved as a better version of yourself a little more often. And maybe most important, cut yourself some slack when you fail at those lofty goals. Now, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, I strongly recommend you go back and check that one out. First, we covered why attention matters, how mindfulness works, and why meditation is the single most effective way to train your focus. That foundation is key. But today. Today is about action. We're going to break down different meditation techniques, what they are, how they work, and what science actually says about their benefits. And we're going to tackle the real challenges of meditations, the things that make it frustrating, the reasons people give up, and how to find a way to meditate that actually works for you. Because this isn't about forcing yourself into some rigid practice. It's about finding an approach that fits your mind, your life, and your needs. So let's get into it right after a quick break. [00:05:22] Speaker A: I'm Dr. Kevin Payne. Just jump with me into your life Lived well. Half of us now live with chronic illness. Mine is multiple sclerosis. It's your life. Live it well. A chronic diagnosis doesn't mean goodbye to the good life you wanted. You don't have to feel overwhelmed or hopeless. I'll show you how to save yourself. Take your first step at justjump Life. It's the youe Life Lived well podcast. Don't forget to, like, share and subscribe. Meditation is one of the ways I find my bright side. I look at meditation as exercise for the parts of my mind and brain that I want to strengthen for a better quality of life. We all know that when you live with chronic illness, it can be really frustrating and disheartening and things don't work well sometimes and that gets you down and that starts a lot of negative self talk. So meditation Is one of those ways to acknowledge that, put it in its place, and get back to the better things in your life. We need to think differently about our minds and the way our minds work. We like to think of our minds as only me. I'm right there alone in my head. But that's the wrong way to think about it. We don't actually control our minds. Your you is a really small part of your mind. And there's lots of other things going on in your preconscious subconscious unconscious Outside the realm of your direct attention. The result of these processes just pop into your mind sometimes. I call it popcorn head. When you've got lots of ideas and emotions just kind of bouncing around. And it really is like popcorn. Well, those things are all happening in your mind, but you don't get get to see how those thoughts and feelings are being made. You just are presented with the results from some weird little corner of your mind. So our mind is bigger than we are, and we must work with it. [00:07:52] Speaker B: And work within it. [00:07:54] Speaker A: If you start thinking about your mind as your internal environment that you operate in, that gives you a little more reason to cut yourself a little more slack and just understand that just as your body operates in a physical environment, well, you're operating in this mental. This cognitive emotional environment. It's important to understand that we've got this weather going on in our mind. We've got positive and negative emotions. We've got different thoughts and feelings and memories and fantasies and what ifs and all sorts of things in our mental environment. The second thing that we need to keep in mind about our minds Is that idea of the Buddhist monkey mind, which I think is just a delightful metaphor, neurologically speaking. As a side note here, that monkey mind is probably associated with what's called our default mode network. And this is the part of our brains that are firing who when we're not focused, when we're unfocused, when we're at rest, when we're daydreaming about ourself or others or stories or recalling memories or wondering about the future. It's that freeform flow of consciousness. And that's called the default mode network. And that's a relatively new thing in psychology and neurology. But that's our monkey mind, and it's all over the place. And we can't expect to control it because no one puts the monkey in a corner. The monkey is all about being wherever the monkey wants to be. And the third thing that we need to keep in mind about our minds Is that we are a society of mind. It's not just you in there. There are lots and lots of facets of you. And each one are these many small systems making judgments, trying to motivate you in one direction or another. Because you're a society of mind, but you only have one body. So while there are all these possibilities that are being considered, you can still only do that one thing at a time. If we understand that we are a society of mind with lots and lots and lots of voices and motivations and judgments and understandings and different ways of looking at the world and all these facets and your. You, yourself, your identity is. Is trying to broker some kind of deal, some kind of peace amongst all those. It really helps us understand what's going on, and it helps us understand what we see when we meditate and we introspect and we consciously, mindfully go into our minds for a look around. There's been a lot of research on meditation and how it associates with various physical conditions, various medical conditions, various cognitive and emotional conditions. I think the earliest study dates to about 1954 or so, and they were pretty sparse in the beginning. But you start seeing this research pick up in the 60s and the 70s as more people were interested in meditation in the West. And then really in the last couple of decades, as positive psychology has become a buzzword and as neurology has really made a lot of steps with how we can image what's actually going on in the brain. We have seen a lot more studies and early research has a fair number of limitations, but the studies have been getting better in the past couple of decades. Better methodology, better measurement, better samp, better analysis. We have a better understanding, but an incomplete understanding of what's going on with meditation. I'm going to rattle off a list here, though, and this is what we do have some good research about. There is systematic and clinical evidence that meditation tends to sharpen attention, tends to increase resiliency to stress, increases compassion and makes our exercise of compassion more effective. Improves mental health by reducing anxiety, depression and insomnia. It enhances mood and quality of life, May reduce the effects of adhd, helps regulate the immune system and reduce system inflammation. Has a positive effect on relationships. We become more patient, more forgiving, more compassionate, more calm. It reduces cognitive biases and improves clear decision making. Provides a modest improvement to physical health, Makes pain more tolerable, reduces blood pressure, Calms symptoms to irritable bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis, Reduces menopausal symptoms, May help reduce cravings and prevent relapses for substances like nicotine reinforces habit change. That's a mind boggling list of things. So what I'm going to say here, after all, that is, it is fair to say that the research is suggestive, not conclusive. This is also no secret. [00:13:29] Speaker B: It's no magic bullet. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Meditation can help, but it can't be the only thing that we're doing. This is about many small changes that will deliver a noticeable improvement over time. So the effect size we see for meditation on, say, anxiety and depression, for example, is similar to exercise or to medication for those conditions. What that means is it's not a cure all, but if you do it for most people, it will provide a marginal improvement in lots of these many things. And then it's going to depend on which kinds of meditation you're doing. And these benefits compound over time. You probably won't see anything to begin with, but as you stick with it and are consistent and build those habits, then you likely will like everything else we talk about as a strategy that you might employ in your own life. It might not benefit everyone all the time. There is a 2017 study that showed that some people actually have very negative experiences associated with meditation, and they probably need more education and better guidance in it and so forth. But this is a real thing, and we're only just now, in the last couple of years, beginning to do research on the potential downsides. There's a lot of potential positives and a very small chance of negatives. And of course I'm a big fan because it works for me. But I'm not going to generalize from me to you. As with everything else, we've got to learn and we've got to practice and we've got to build habits and we've got to become consistent. So, for example, I meditate 20 to 30 minutes every day. That's a sizable commitment that you have to work into. There's an old Buddhist aphorism that I love about this, and it says, Meditate 20 to 30 minutes every day. Unless you don't have enough time for it, then meditate for an hour. And the more you think about it, it's kind of like one hand clapping. That's an old Buddhist kwan. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Hmm. Sometimes in paradox, we find truth. If you don't think you have time to meditate, I will just put out there that you waste way more than 20 or 30 minutes every day. You can make time for this. Just try it and just start with Those mindful minutes. The first is breath counting. And there are two or three different ways that you can do this. First way is you're gonna relax. You're going to take a deep breath. You're going to kind of lose your focus on the world and introspect just a little bit. You're going to be in a relaxed position, but your back is going to be straight so that you can take a deep, full, unencumbered breath. And you just breathe in, and then count one as you exhale, and then breathe in again and count two as you exhale. You don't have to say it. Just do it in your mind and you count in groups. So because you don't want to get distracted is like, oh, was I on 127 or 128? Right. So it's not about getting distracted. So you use like, count to four and then start again, or count to five and then start again. Right? So something very simple. I like fours because I grew up a musician. And four just seems to be a much more logical grouping to me than five because you very rarely have something like five, four time, unless you're Dave Brubeck. You don't know Dave Brubeck. Look him up. Great jazz musician. That's one way you can do the breath counting. Another way you can do breath counting is by counting beats within each breath. So one popular technique is the four, seven, eight count. So as you breathe in, you count to four. 1, 2, 3, 4. And then you hold it for a seven count. 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7. And then you exhale slowly to an eight count. Right? Now, the timing of that doesn't work very well with the way I like to count. So I tend to count to 10, and I divide it up. So I inhale for 1 and 2, and then I hold it for 3, 4, 5. And then I exhale for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So, you know what I'm getting at here is if the 4, 7, 8 count is not comfortable for your breathing pattern, then pick a different count, right? But the point is to help induce regularity and rhythm and meter and focus on your breath. And however you do it, that's fine, because this is your meditation. And whatever helps you kind of get in the groove and focus on that breath. That's what you should do. So we don't want to just spend 20 minutes of our life every day counting breaths in and out. There are lots of different things we can do while we meditate. 1. That's, again, a very Popular old meditation is sunlight meditation. So you sit comfortably or lay back and you close your eyes. And first you imagine the warmth of the sunlight on your face and just really feel the, the experience and feel how it makes you feel alive and connected and comfortable. And then let the sunlight start spreading across the surface of your body. So it's going to expand from your face and down to your neck and your chest and your arms and your abdomen and groin and legs till all of the surface of your body just go very slowly and just let it expand just a little bit with each breath and then let the sunlight slip inward to your core. So now you're not just feeling warm on the surface of your body, but deep down inside, until all of your body feels like it's being warm, warmed by that gentle natural light of the sun. And for a lot of people, especially if you, if you really dig the outdoors and you deal with like maybe a seasonal affective disorder or something like that, then this one is one that improves a lot of people's feeling of well being and happiness in the world. A third thing we can do is resting awareness, okay? And so resting awareness is where you become an observer of all those things. Those ideas, those feelings, those thoughts, those what ifs, those memories, those possibilities for the future that are, that are being thrown about your mind by your little monkeys right now. I think it's better to make this a more concrete experience. So I use a metaphor, I use a visual metaphor when I do this. And there are two most common ways of doing this. One is a river visualization. And the second one is a visualization of clouds passing through the sky. So let's think about this. For a river, if you're trying to do this, then you can do it one of two ways. One, you can imagine yourself laying on the, on the bed of a river with the river passing around you. And some people like this and some people don't, but you can feel it. And then the thoughts and the feelings are being carried by the current, by you. And what this does is because you've got a visual representation of things moving by you. Once that idea or that feeling, whether it's positive or negative, whatever it is, you accept whatever is coming at you, you let it flow by. And as it goes out of your sight, as it flows by, that's when you let it go. And then you pick up the next thought and it may be another version of that same thought that's coming through. And that's okay if that's what your mind is giving you, then that's all right. You're not here to fight with your mind. You're here to understand it and accept it and learn to live with it and work with it, right? And eventually something new will come along. You know, you can also imagine this laying on the bank of the river, watching it come by. And your ideas are floating by on the surface. You can imagine laying in a warm field on a summer day with scattered clouds passing along the sky. And on the clouds are these different ideas or feelings or thoughts, right? But the point is you've got a natural environment where with movement to it, and that movement is timing. How long you get to think about something or feel something before you let it go. And you're learning to accept something and acknowledge something and let it go and work with that. And these are all variations of what we call resting awareness. Another one that we can do is what we'll call a reflection meditation. Okay. This is where we've got things that we're focusing on as we're meditating. So in this case, we're picking a question that we want to pose to ourselves. And we're not looking for absolute answers. We're just looking for the free association things that pop up in relation to it. And they may not make sense. And that doesn't matter because most of your mind doesn't make sense. Most of your mind is primal. It doesn't have this kind of later, more recent, developed, frontotemporal way of looking at things. It's primal, it's early, it's childish. All those things are still in our minds. There are a couple of caveats to doing this kind of reflection. And the first is usually stay away from why questions. Why questions? Why did I do that? It's an invitation to the wrong sort of mindset. We tend to go negative too easily with that. What questions tend to be much more concrete and tend to be something that we can analyze in a more detached sort of way and don't necessarily be so negative. So we don't want to give ourselves an opportunity to foster anxiety and some kind of negative obsession. So it may be something like, you know, I'll give you a few examples of questions here, like, what am I taking for granted in my life? And an idea or something will pop into your head, and you look at it and you say, am I valuing it as much as I should? Right? And you're just asking that question. Or you could ask, what makes me happy? [00:25:21] Speaker B: What makes me satisfied? [00:25:23] Speaker A: What makes me feel meaningful? What do I want to fill my time with, what do I want to do for those I love? What do I do to care for myself? You're going to have a lot of suggestions that pop in, and some of these, you'll think, oh, they do fit in this category, or they don't, or, yeah, I do this, and I say I'm doing it to care for myself, but I'm really not getting a lot of value out of it, Right? So it's a way to cultivate detachment, and it's a way to accept your mind as it presents itself. Another really important kind of meditation that we can try is what's called a loving kindness meditation. And loving kindness and skillful compassion are about directing love, positive thoughts and positive wishes toward yourself, toward cherished others, toward others that you are in conflict with, or to humanity as a whole. Now, as we go down that list, each one of those becomes a little more challenging. So we may think that directing loving kindness toward ourselves might be the one that we have to work on, especially if we've got poor self images or we're really down on ourselves because of what we perceive as our inabilities to effectively handle our conditions. But interestingly enough, the research shows that when we direct loving kindness to others, we actually benefit more ourselves. So you might have a loving kindness meditation where you work on picturing another person, let's say someone you love, say a child or a parent or significant other, and you focus positive thoughts and feelings and energy toward them. You imagine that person showered in all the love and all the positivity that you can muster in the universe. And then take it a step further. Imagine someone who really gets on your nerves. Imagine someone who you really don't like and shower them with love and positivity. This is where you're really building your muscle, right? And the really cool thing about this, and I kid you not, what the research shows is that if you focus loving kindness unselfishly on others, you will feel much better towards yourself and you will walk out into the world with a much better attitude and be calmer and more patient and more graceful. And all of those things make your life much easier and much more pleasurable. Your negative feelings don't hurt anybody but you. You know how awful it is to live in a mind that is cluttered with negative feelings. It's stressful, so stop harming yourself. And a loving kindness meditation is a wonderful way to build those skills and those experiences so that when you're in a position in the real world and you're faced with Something negative from one of these people that you just want to smack silly, you have a much better, more healthy, kinder response. And I'm not joking. If you're kinder to the people who are not kind to you, it can cause a wonderful transformation in a relationship. The next kind of meditation I want us to think about is that body scan meditation that I've mentioned before. And again, it's one of my favorites. Because if you live with a medical condition like I do, like mine is multiple sclerosis. And it varies day by day. So I may have one set of symptoms one day and they'll be different the next day. One day my legs are not working real well. Another day I've got a lot of cog fog that I'm dealing with, or I'm numb, or I've got more pain in this place and not someplace else. Or one of my favorite is I itch. I itch all the time all over my body. It's not a real itch. It's in my central nervous system, but I always itch. And you know how distracting and infuriating itching is, especially itching that you can't do anything about. I always live with that. Been decades. I would love to not itch. I actually lived with it for years before I was ever diagnosed. [00:30:36] Speaker B: I thought everybody itched. [00:30:37] Speaker A: Turns out I was wrong with the body scan meditation. Some people start with the head and work down. I like to start with the toes and work up. So I work through the toes all the way up to my waist. And then I go from my hands all the way up to my shoulders. And then I go through my head and my brain and back down into my chest cavity and do lungs and then abdomen and then end in my heart and then let the feeling of the heartbeat and the breath fill my entire body. I like that pattern because it ends on a real strong note. And you're very centered. And I would suggest trying it like that again. With each breath, you're taking a deep, measured breath, and you're focusing on. On that part of your body, and you're just going through and you're trying to understand, oh, okay. Here's what I have to work with this particular day. I walk out into the world armored with. I want to avoid this kind of activity because I know that my body is not up to it, or I'm probably going to be able to do this sort of thing today. And that's good. And with the uncertainty of a chronic health condition, just having that level of understanding gives you so much more confidence to bring out into the world with you. So I find it really valuable. There's also a variation on this that we can use to prepare ourselves for sleep. Many of us have trouble sleeping. We're uncomfortable, we're in pain. We have a lot to overcome to try to get sleep. The way we do this, preparation for sleep meditation is let's start with the toes. And you can do it in one or two places. Some people like to sit perched on the edge of their bed, ready to slide into it when they're done. And other people like to go ahead and lay in bed on their backs. You're going to start that body scan. You're going to start with your toes. But instead of just perceiving what's going on there, start with your feet and then tense that body part up. So tense your feet as you're inhaling and then start relaxing it as you're holding that breath. And then as you're exhaling, make that part feel heavy, like it's sinking into the bed or the floor. And then go up to your calves and breathe and focus there and tense it and then relax it. And as you're exhaling that breath, let it feel heavy and then you move on to the next one. So by the time you get done, you've tensed and relaxed and made every part of your body feel heavy. And end with your head. And you should feel sleepy. The US Military for years has advised a variation on this. It's very functional, it's very effective. It's one of those techniques that should be in your arsenal for getting to a good night's sleep. I've just scratched the surface with some of the meditations that you can do. All of these are developing a skill that's sometimes called noting, that is gently recognizing that our mind is wandered. Not every distraction, only the ones we become lost in. Pausing, identifying the source of distraction so we can return to our focus object. We recognize that we are not our thoughts, we are not our feelings. We acknowledge our thoughts and judgments and feelings and then let them go. They're like the weather. And then of course, there are guided meditations for almost everything. So we're social animals. We don't like to feel alone in our pursuits. And even though meditation is a solo activity and it's an inward focused activity, we actually can do it together. And there are lots of things we can do to make it more social. So the first thing I want to mention here are meditation apps. Most of us have smartphones and there are Lots and lots of apps out there. There are gazillion meditation apps. I've got over a dozen of them on my phone. Of those, there are probably three big dogs in the space. Insight Timer, Headspace, and Calm. All of those apps I've used and I enjoy now, the one I use the most is Insight Timer, and I've used that for almost a decade. They tend to offer varying mixtures of similar features. There'll be a timer with bells and ambient sounds that you can add. So I like using a timer because I don't use many guided meditations because I've been doing this for a long time and I know what I need to get out of it. And so I guide myself. I will occasionally throw in a guided meditation just to shake things up. You can add various kinds of ambient soundscapes or music. These apps have catalogs of guided meditations and meditation courses on a variety of topics. They've got things just for beginners. If you're learning to meditate, they've got things for, say, mindfulness and focus and anxiety and stress and sleep and self esteem and compassion and eating and sleep and getting up in the morning. And you understand what I'm getting at here. There's lots and lots and lots of specific targeted guided meditations and classes that you can avail yourself of. And a lot of them are free music libraries. Many of them have yoga and exercise sessions that are part of meditation. You don't have to just be still to meditate. You can move and meditate as well and have a mindful, focused experience. These apps sponsor virtual group meditation events, communities of meditators to connect with. At the end of a meditation, I can click on a button and I can see who was meditating with me. 100, 200,000 people meditating around the world at one time, or people that I'm friends with. And you can pause and you can send them a message afterwards and say, thanks for meditating with me. And I really find that I take a few minutes afterward and do that and just experience gratitude for sharing that experience virtually with other people. There are lots of benefits to those apps. I'd suggest, you know, try some, try Insight Timer, try Headspace, try calm, try any bunch of the others and find the one that works for you. Get together with some people you probably have never met before. [00:37:45] Speaker B: Expand your social circle. [00:37:47] Speaker A: And most metropolitan areas have at least a few local face to face meditation groups. Some are completely secular. Some are associated with a religious or spiritual tradition. Pick one that has the approach that is amenable to you that you think will help you meet and connect with other people that you want to connect with. So try some out and pick one that fits you best. And of course, many of us with chronic health conditions have more difficulty getting out into the world. I mean, some days I just don't want to get out into the world just all too much. If it's difficult for you to get out, then try some of the online and virtual meditation communities. And there are literally hundreds of thousands of these out there. Take these opportunities, because a lot of times we want to do something with other people. There is a benefit to that, and it helps you build new habits and it helps you keep with those habits. So our world is cluttered, anxious, frustrating, and depressing. We're overwhelmed and burnt out. Our chronic illness taxes our bodies, thoughts, emotions, and relationships and leaves us on the edge much of the time. Given all that, we, we deserve to spend some quality time with ourselves. We don't necessarily treat ourselves the way we'd like others to treat us. We kind of need to practice this. And meditation is a really great way to spend some quality time with yourself. It's an opportunity to build and to repair this most fundamental relationship each of us has and that most of us have ignored. And that's really important because we're often dealing with disappointment and we feel like our bodies have betrayed us. And we can feel frustrated and angry and sad and we have a lot of negative emotions that can pile up. And this is an opportunity to see those and accept those and let them go and to find positive emotions and positive experiences with ourselves. Just like we have to work our bodies to build strength and stamina and resilience, it's really crucial that we focus on our minds and our brains, and we both give it a workout and a little loving kindness. So I hope you have found yourself curious enough to really give meditation a shot. I think it's in that fundamental arsenal of tools that we all need to improve our quality of lives with chronic illness. I mean, I put it right there with nutrition and movement and sleep. We all have challenges. Mine is multiple sclerosis. We each have this one life, and we didn't choose to be saddled with chronic illness. But there's a better way. So I choose to just jump. And you can too. It's your life. Live it well. Justjump life. It's the youe Life Lived well podcast. Don't forget to, like, share and subscribe. [00:41:42] Speaker B: So let's sum up why this information is life changing and how to put these tools into action, we started today with a simple but uncomfortable truth. Our minds are not built for this world. For most of human history, a wandering, hypervigilant mind was an advantage. It kept us scanning for danger, reacting quickly, and jumping from one thing to the next, always ready to move, always ready to survive. But today, that same ancient mental wiring is overwhelmed. We live in a world designed to hijack our attention by stress, by technology, by. By the endless noise of modern life. And the worst part, we don't even realize it's happening. That's why we meditate. Not to achieve perfect stillness, not to escape, not to become some serene, enlightened being floating above life's chaos. We meditate because without training, we lose control of our own minds. We react instead of responding. We live in the past or the future instead of the present. We let our attention become dictated by whatever is loudest instead of what actually matters to us. Can we do those other stereotypical, transcendent things with meditation? Sure, knock yourselves out. The issue I care about is that you build these cognitive and emotional skills so that you can use them toward a better life in whatever ways you choose. So what have we actually learned today? 1. First and foremost, meditation is training for your mind. Just like lifting weights builds muscle, meditation builds the cognitive strength to hold your focus, regulate emotions, and step out of automatic reactive patterns. Just like physical exercise strengthens the body, meditation strengthens cognitive and emotional abilities like focus, emotional regulation, patience, persistence, kindness, and resilience. The key is repetition, which leads to habituation, adaptation, and building beneficial dominant responses. 2. There are many ways to meditate. We explored different techniques. Breath awareness, body scans, visualization, and more. The key isn't which one you choose, but whether it works for you at this time, in this place, and for your current goals. All of these factors in your life will change. So your meditation practice must also adapt. Just as you include different kinds of exercise and physical activity at different stages in a life course, meditation is not about emptying the mind or achieving a blissful state of calm. Those are not meditation. They are goals you might someday choose to pursue with your meditation toolbox. 3. Meditation feels hard because it's supposed to be. Your mind will wander, you will feel restless, you will think you're failing. But just as with physical exercise, the challenge is the practice. Every time you bring your attention back, you're strengthening that skill. It's a learning, growth inducing activity. Stress is when you push your current capacities to grow your edges. That always means some failures. That stress is the signal your system needs to build out the growth process, and if you don't use it, you will atrophy. Your brain is wired to seek stimulation and avoid discomfort. Sitting in stillness exposes your natural restlessness, impatience, and internal noise, which is exactly why this practice is valuable. Meditation strengthens the ability to sit with discomfort, manage impulses, and disengage from automatic reactivity. 4. Meditation isn't about escaping life. It's about engaging more fully with the life in front of you. You don't meditate to avoid stress or pain. You meditate to build the capacity to handle stress, pain and uncertainty with more clarity and control. With consistent practice, meditation trains the brain to lengthen that hypervigilant pause so you have time to insert your most advanced mind into your decision making before you get trapped in the ever increasing insanity of your effort cascade. This reduces and reframes stress, improves emotional stability, and enhances your engaged presence in daily life. And if what I said doesn't make sense, go back and catch episode 305 the Truth About Fear. 5. You don't have to meditate perfectly or for long periods to see benefits. Begin with one or two mindful minutes. Pause in your life and take six deep, intentional centering breaths. Set a timer for two minutes each day and spend it in one of the basic practices we discussed here, like a breath counting, a body scan, or a quick inspection of your inner weather. When that gets easy and pretty consistent, add another minute or two. Something this basic can start shifting how we relate to our own thoughts. Consistency beats intensity. But remember, when we're at an edge, consistency comes last. That's the signal that we're becoming more comfortable, skilled and accomplished. So now that we know the why and the how of meditation, here's your next step. Start small and I hammer this point a lot. Take small steps. Take embarrassingly small steps. Why? Because small steps are how you make something manageable enough to build consistency without overwhelming yourself. When you get overwhelmed, you tend to run away and that kills all the progress you've made or ever could make. When your mind wanders and it will just notice and gently bring it back. No frustration, no judgment. That is the work. Although as an aside, this doesn't mean what you think. You cannot help but judge. You will still judge. You must judge. But you don't have to accept or act on the judgment. You can recognize that you're actually making many judgments and they don't tend to agree More on this topic someday soon, I promise. Next thing you need to do is experiment. If one method doesn't work for you, try another. There is no one right way to meditate. There is only what helps you train your attention. I've just introduced you to a handful of the common options. Look around. There are millions of web pages and videos with more variations than you could ever hope to see in a dozen lifetimes. If you haven't found a meditation that works for you, then you haven't looked enough. Expect resistance and distractions. Your brain won't like this at first. You'll get distracted. You'll feel impatient. That's fine. Keep doing it anyway. Look for change opportunities in everyday life. Meditation isn't about what happens while you sit. It's about how it shifts your awareness outside of meditation, in conversations, in moments of stress, in in how present you are with your own life. Use these daily moments as practice. Mindfulness doesn't have to be formal. Mindful awareness can be integrated into everyday life activities like walking, eating, and listening. And most important, be kind to yourself in this process. You will fail at meditation a thousand times, and every single time you you'll have an opportunity to practice coming back. That's the whole point. This practice is not just about building the skill. It's about accepting that you are imperfect, that no matter how much you build these skills, you will still regularly fall short. You will miss the mark, and you will learn you can survive failure and try again. You're building kindness, patience, humility, resilience, and persistence. This isn't about becoming someone new. Meditation is not about somehow making you better. It's about developing the tools you need to get better experiences out of your life. It's about becoming more present with who you already are. It's about reclaiming the attention that shapes your experience of life so that you're not just pulled along by the chaos, but actually living in the moments that matter. Meditation is not about perfection or achieving some special state of mind. It's about training your attention so that you can engage with life more fully, respond to challenges with clarity, and take back your rightful influence on where your mind goes. There's a lot of mystical hoo ha surrounding meditation, and if some of that appeals to you, fine, jump in. But begin with learning the fundamental practice that can change your life. Even small, imperfect efforts make a difference. You don't have to get it right, you just have to show up and keep coming back. And that that is worth practicing. So as always, until next time, go forth. Be well, do well, and do good. [00:52:00] Speaker A: If you've enjoyed today's topic and want to join the conversation with Dr. Kevin Payne. Find your life lived well on all of your favorite social media sites, Patreon. And of course, give your life lived well. Cool.