It's OK to Fall Off the (Mindfulness) Wagon

This actually happened in the middle of a talk I was giving on mindfulness in the workplace: someone walked in who reminded me of someone I knew in college, which led me to remember the night we left the football game and stayed up late enough to do the Buckhorn Roll (don’t ask). Which got me thinking about how much it hurts to roll down stairs.

And I was off on a mind-wandering adventure of epic proportions.

Come to think of it, my neck feels kind of cramped. Should I have it looked at? Speaking of doctors, it’s Maura’s birthday. I wonder if I need more doctors. Why do women think the doctors who help us have our babies are God? Well, our kids. I mean, yes, come to think of it, it totally makes a lot of sense…wonder why the boys haven’t called since…let’s see, was it Monday?...

I had a microphone in front of me the whole time, and I hope words related to my actual talk came out of my mouth. I was aware that I sputtered a few sentences, but I have no idea what I said. Awkward. There I was, talking about the benefits of staying present—how it engenders compassion, enhances executive function, improves focus. And I had fallen completely off the wagon. Center stage.

If I’m honest, it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. I belong to the unfortunate category of people with the mind of a squirrel: every 17 seconds or so, a shiny new thought distracts me. People seem shocked to discover that the attention span of a mindfulness junkie can be so lacking. I reveal this about myself because the value of mindfulness practice isn’t in how good you get at it. It’s about making progress. And noticing the moments when it’s working.

Fact: I spent most of the first part of my life oblivious to my rambling mind. As I got older, I developed strategies to hide my frequent lapses in focus. Now I simply notice when my attention strays, and I bring it back to the present with a friendly attitude towards myself. I try to appreciate my progress and lighten the heck up. I do this sometimes hundreds of times a day. That’s the practice of mindfulness.

I shared this story—of how I momentarily lost my mind on stage—during our second monthly “Mindfulness Works” gathering (second Tuesday of each month at 9 a.m. at our gem of a library). I explained that when I lost my train of thought, I was out of focus, inattentive to the task at hand, unmindful, as it were. I could have left it with that neat, if not desirable, explanation.

But I took the opportunity to dig deeper. While the act of paying attention to what is actually happening—with awareness that you are doing so—is straightforward, the practice is quite challenging. It’s easier for our threat-conditioned brains to conjure drama (“This is the worst thing that could possibly happen!”), judgment (How could I be such an idiot?”), or stories (“They’re out to get me. They want me to fail.”).

When we rewind or fast-forward our thoughts, which is what usually happens when we aren’t paying attention, we take the brain’s negativity bias with us. We think about what went wrong or what could go wrong. (Man, that Buckhorn Roll was dumb. We could have broken our necks. Why did we do that?)

Here’s the deal: This is just what it is to be human, with a brain that evolved for survival by preferencing the red-alert setting. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re doing just fine. And this is also true: Challenging or heartbreaking things will happen. The practice, as you live your “one wild and precious life” (thanks, Mary Oliver), is to notice when your thoughts run away on the back of catastrophe, real or (likely) imagined. It’s to pause—and see how you feel when you pull the reins and take yourself in a different direction.