Today, we continue our Dadly Daily Declaration series with readings from The Passion Paradox by authors Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. So far, Stulberg and Madness have discussed the pitfalls of passion and the sole focus of pursing your passion. Today’s reading focuses on a technique to become self-aware and avoid the pitfalls of becoming too encompassed in your passion: meditation.
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Here are a few gems from today’s reading:
- Mindfulness meditation is the practice of sitting or lying down and focusing on your breath. When thoughts or feelings arise, you acknowledge them without judgment—like clouds passing through the sky—and return your focus to the sensation of your breath. Mindfulness is as simple and as hard as that.
- There is a common misconception that “the point” of mindfulness meditation is to enter a relaxed, Zen-like state. Arriving at such a state is possible, and for most people the experience is quite pleasant, but that’s not really the goal of meditation. There is no goal other than simply sitting and being with your breath, letting whatever thoughts and feelings arise come and go, watching them float by and experiencing them without judgment.
- Another way to think about mindfulness meditation is this: Imagine the difference between being in a fast-paced action movie versus watching a fast-paced action movie. In the former, you are fully in the story, constantly reacting to what’s happening with hardly any time or space to analyze it. Go. Go. Go. In the latter, even though the movie may be very intense, and even though at times you may truly feel like you’ve been sucked into it, you still feel a bit safer and retain the ability to be more thoughtful knowing that you’re merely watching.
Those gems lead us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
When you practice meditation, you cultivate the ability to step out of the movie—that is, the endless stream of thoughts and feelings in your head and body—and instead watch from afar. And it is this watching from afar that offers you the ability to step outside the inertia of whatever it is you are caught up in so you can deliberately and perhaps even wisely choose what to do next, instead of being pulled along on autopilot.
I Am Dadly highly recommends the book The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh.
