Week One

We begin with the fundamental exercise that is the building block for every other practice: Find Your Flashlight. This simple but powerful breath awareness exercise is your foundational skill.

What to Focus On This Week

A reminder: in this exercise, we are focusing our attention on the breath, but not constraining or controlling it. This is not about deep breathing—a valuable activity for relaxation, but not what we’re doing here. Instead of controlling the breath, you are watching it as it occurs in real time, with an awareness of doing so. You may find your breath slows down a bit during the practice, or you have moments where you drift into deeper breathing. This is fine, since as we said this practice is about noticing your breath, not controlling it. The fact that you notice natural variations in your breathing patterns is a good sign. You’re on-task!

Going beyond the formal practice, integrate this into your life as much as possible. Add a mindful orientation to an activity you already have to do. Example: mindful teeth brushing. If you’re already thinking about your to-do list as you’re scrubbing, bring your flashlight back. Steady it on the sensations: the cool, refreshing tingle of the toothpaste, the feel of the bristles, the muscles of your hand and arm moving. It takes zero extra minutes to layer a mindful orientation into some of your existing daily routines.

What Week One Might Feel Like

A lot of people report that their mind is “too busy.” I hear it all the time: “It’s not working; my mind won’t sit still.” But understand this: Your brain is not too busy—you just have a human brain! As we discussed, it works like a “thought pump.” That’s exactly what it does. Your job is not to stop it—your job is to exist with it, and to do the work of placing your attention back where you want it. That is the workout.

Frequently Experienced Challenges

Many new practitioners go into this carrying a lot of “mindfulness myths” along with them. These can be destructive and demoralizing. Here are a couple of reminders, to debunk any damaging expectations that may be lingering from what you’ve heard about mindfulness in the popular discourse:

• You are not “clearing your mind.” This is not possible, and not what mindfulness practice asks you to do.
• Your goal is not to feel peaceful or relaxed. Images of mindfulness practitioners often exude this expectation—remember, this is not what’s happening. This is an active mental workout.
• There is no special state to achieve. There’s no “blissed-out” state you are aiming to experience; you don’t need to feel transported. In fact, the whole point is to be more present in your current moment. You’re not traveling elsewhere. You’re going to feel your hip bones against the chair. You’re going to notice every itch, every desire to move, every shift away from the present moment. You’ll notice every small sensation and outrageous or distressing thought. That’s success.

What Success Looks Like in Week One

That you did it! If you did your five days, for twelve minutes each day, you get a gold star. It doesn’t matter how squirrely your mind felt, or if you opened your eyes to check the time every minute. You got yourself in the chair with the intention to practice, and you did it—that’s a win.

You might have caught yourself mind-wandering a lot this week. Guess what? That’s great. No matter how long you were mind-wandering, the moment you notice it is your success point. So, if you caught yourself mind-wandering a hundred times in a session, that’s a lot of success. This is a big reframe, but an important one: what we think is a failure is actually a win.

How Week One Skills Will Show Up in Your Life

If you’re really able to find your flashlight—that is, know where your attention is, moment by moment—you can then realize whenever you’re mind-wandering during a conversation or not mentally present in a meeting, or notice any moment in your life when you’re displaced in time and space. You’ll notice this happening more and more, and you’ll be able to guide your flashlight back, just as you do in practice. You’ll also develop more confidence in redirecting it, in a supportive yet firm manner.