getting started, step 1

Hi, and welcome to step 1 of my getting started guide. I believe that there are three things at the heart of mindfulness: (1) awareness, which is about being able to notice our thoughts, feelings, and emotions; (2) acceptance, which is about being able to welcome whatever thoughts, feelings, and emotions we notice, and to allow them to be there without wishing to stop, push away, or change them; and (3) compassion, which is about connecting to the parts of us that are hurt or scared.

This step is all about developing awareness; we can't accept or be compassionate towards something that we're unaware of, so that's why I like to work on awareness first, using a meditation technique called focused attention. In the first section, we’ll cover the basics and I’ll provide you with some meditations to practise. In section two, we’ll take a deeper look at the technique and I’ll explain how I like to handle some of the challenges that we might encounter.

section one: the basics

I like to explain things through the stories of fictional people, as I think it helps to see how the process unfolds in real time. I’ll be sharing the story of a man called Adam; however, whilst Adam doesn’t actually exist (so there are no confidentiality issues), the problem he is dealing with is very real. 

Adam’s story, part 1 

Adam comes to see me because he is struggling with anger:

“It’s like every little thing just sends me over the edge; I’m fed up with losing my temper and lashing out at others. I’ll often start smashing things up or yelling at people, and then I feel terrible afterwards. I don’t want to do it; I try and control it for as long as I can, but it just gets stronger and stronger until it bursts out and I fly into an unstoppable rage.”

“So, once you notice the anger, you try and control it because you don’t want to lash out, but it eventually becomes too strong?” 

“Yeah, it’s like no matter how hard I try, I just can’t win.” 

“Could you give me an example of when one of these little things has set you off?” 

“Yesterday, when I was driving home from work – road rage is a big problem for me – I was at a roundabout and someone pulled out in front of me so I had to slam on the brakes. I started shouting, swearing, and hammering the horn. I was so angry; I wanted to get out the car and punch them. When this happens, I grip the steering wheel as hard as I can and clench my jaw: that usually works for a while. But then I can’t stop thinking about it and I just get more and more angry; it’s like I’m feeding it, but sometimes I don’t even realise I’m doing it, it’s like it’s happening automatically. By the time I get home, I’m usually in a rage and I take it out on my family by yelling at them which isn’t fair.” 

“Do you think that the person pulling out in front of you was responsible for all the anger that came out, or do you think that there might have been some anger already there under the surface?” 

“There was definitely some already there; I seem to carry it around with me all the time, but I don't realise until it’s too late and I just explode.” 

“So, you believe that there were other things that triggered anger in you before the roundabout incident, but you didn’t realise it was there – have I got that right?” 

“Yeah, it’s like nothing... nothing... nothing... boom!” 

“On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the weakest and 10 being the strongest, what level do you think your anger has to reach before you notice it?” 

“Hmm... I reckon about a 7 or 8, maybe?” 

“Ok, a 7 or an 8. Do you think it would be helpful if you were able to notice the anger when it was a 5 or a 6?”. 

“Yeah, that would be great; I think I’d have more chance of avoiding a huge outburst.” 

“And you mentioned having angry thoughts that seem to happen automatically: do you think it would be helpful to be able to notice those?” 

"Yeah, that would be nice!” 

“Ok, I’m going to teach you a technique that we can use to develop our awareness. Think of it like training a muscle by lifting weights; as we practise this technique, our awareness gets stronger, and the stronger our awareness is, the more easily we can notice when there’s some anger in our bodies, or if we’re having angry thoughts. Does that make sense?” 

“Yeah, it does.” 

“Ok, so...” 

I introduce Adam to the focused attention technique, and we practise it a few times during the session. Then, I show Adam the recorded meditations so that he can practise when he wants throughout the week. We discuss when might be some helpful times to meditate, and come up with the idea of doing one in the car before he drives home. 

Adam returns a week later and tells me how things have been:

“I’ve enjoyed doing the meditations in my car before driving home; it’s become part of my routine and I like taking a little bit of time for myself. I feel like my awareness is getting stronger as I’m noticing way more angry thoughts than before. The problem is, once I notice them, I still can’t control them; I can’t seem to stop them getting worse and worse. It’s weird, I’m still having the angry outbursts, but I’m now noticing them as they’re building and building rather than realising at the last second. It’s really frustrating though; it’s like I’m watching myself getting more and more angry and there’s nothing I can do to prevent it, no matter how hard I try. I feel like I’m making it worse; am I doing it wrong?” 

“Imagine someone who keeps brushing dirt under a rug because they don’t like it. Over time, the dirt builds up and up until it starts to spill out. The person decides they want to do something about it, so they slowly start to lift up the rug and when they see what’s underneath, they begin to feel worse. But would you say that lifting up the rug is making it worse, or are they just becoming aware of what’s already there?” 

“They’re just seeing what’s already there.” 

“Can you see how this applies to the anger you’re feeling?” 

“So, as my awareness gets stronger and I start noticing more anger, it’s not because I’m making it worse, it’s because I’m seeing what’s already there?” 

“Exactly that. The first step is all about developing our awareness so we can notice what thoughts, feelings, and emotions are coming and going, because we can then start to work with them.” 

Adam’s story will continue in step 2, where we begin to work with the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that he notices. 

I’d like to take a moment to highlight that a mindfulness teacher is not the same as a counsellor. Notice how, when Adam mentioned yelling at his family and that it wasn’t fair, I didn’t say something like, “could you tell me a bit more about the situation at home?” I wasn’t looking to help Adam explore his relationships or his past, as that’s outside the remit of these sessions; I was trying to help Adam notice what he was feeling and how it felt. 

Here’s a quick summary of the instructions for a focused attention meditation (if you’re interested in how and why it works, all of that good stuff is in section two): 

1. We focus our attention on the breath, trying to notice the sensations that we feel as we breathe in and out. 

2. The moment we realise that we’ve become distracted, we congratulate ourselves for realising. 

3. We gently return our attention back to the breath. 

4. We repeat this as many times as necessary. 

I’ve recorded three types of meditation: guided, semi-guided, and unguided, and each type comes in 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30-minute versions. The guided meditations come with full instructions, and the semi-guided meditations come with fewer instructions and a little more silence. In the unguided meditations, I start you off and then come in just before the end. 

I think it’s a good idea to start with the guided meditations so that you hear the full instructions, even if you’re really experienced, as they might be different to what you’re used to. Once you’re confident with them, it’s completely up to you what you do next; if you enjoy having the full instructions, it’s perfectly ok to keep doing guided meditations. If you start to think, “I’d prefer it if there was a bit less talking and a bit more silence”, you might like to give the semi-guided meditations a try. Some people believe that having more silence and less guidance means you’re “better” at meditating, but I disagree; is a runner who trains alone because they prefer the sense of freedom and quiet “better” than a runner who enjoys training with others for more human connection? I see them as different options for different purposes. 

As for how long to meditate for, I think consistency is far more important than duration; meditating for 10 minutes a day and enjoying it tends to be more effective that meditating for 30 minutes every now and then and viewing meditation as something you have to “get through”. Above all, I encourage you to listen to your body and to go with whatever feels right in the moment; I think the most important thing is that you do what you want and what you feel like – not what somebody else imposes on you. 

My recommendation is to add step 2 of the guide once you are consistently doing a focused attention meditation every day. If you occasionally miss a day, that’s ok; we all forget sometimes so try to be kind to yourself (which, funnily enough, is what step 2 is all about!). 

Here's a link to a YouTube playlist with all the meditations; alternatively, you can scroll down to find the meditation you'd like to do.

guided

semi-guided

unguided  

section two: the deep dive 

1. Why do we congratulate ourselves the moment we realise our minds have wandered?  

Imagine your friend does something nice for you, and you respond by saying, “thank you for doing that, I really appreciate it”. This is likely to encourage your friend to do it again; responding to a behaviour with praise encourages that behaviour, and it’s exactly the same with our minds. We cannot control when our minds wander; if we could, we'd be able to decide to work for an hour and not get distracted, or we could decide to not get lost in a spiral of anxious thoughts: but that’s not how our minds work. We also cannot control when we notice that our minds have wandered – this behaviour is up to our unconscious minds. 

Picture your unconscious mind as a friend who is constantly doing things for you without you being aware of it. However, whilst they are well-meaning and want what’s best for you, they sometimes can’t see that what they are doing is actually making things worse. If they see that you’re in pain, they’ll try and help you out the only way they know how, the way that they’re used to, regardless of whether it’s helpful or not. So, what can you do? The moment you notice them doing something that is helpful, you can respond with some praise to encourage them to do it again. 

Whenever I realise that my mind has wandered, I like to imagine my unconscious mind (my well-meaning friend) tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “hey! Look at this thing I’ve done for you”; if I respond by congratulating them and offering some praise, I’m encouraging this behaviour to happen again, which means I’m improving my awareness. 

Here are some possible ways to congratulate yourself when you notice your mind has wandered: bringing a smile to your face, giving yourself a pat on the shoulder, silently saying “I’m proud of you for noticing”, placing a hand on your chest or stomach, or giving yourself a hug. You could play around with these suggestions or come up with your own; find what works for you and most of all, try and have some fun with it! It’s this piece that keeps me coming back, day after day, without feeling like it’s a chore, because it’s a time where I get to smile and be kind to myself. 

2. Help! I keep criticising myself! 

Sometimes, the moment we realise our minds have wandered, we forget to congratulate ourselves for noticing. Instead, the judgemental floodgates open... 

“I can’t believe I got distracted again!” 

“I’m so bad at this!” 

“Why won’t my mind just settle!” 

“This is such a waste of time!” 

If you do this, you’re not alone; this happens to all of us – have you ever met someone who’s never judged themselves? I haven’t. But what happens when we’re harsh and judgemental towards ourselves? 

Earlier, I likened the unconscious mind to a well-meaning friend who’s trying to help; we looked at how we could encourage them to do helpful behaviours by praising them the moment we noticed the behaviour, and the opposite is also true. Imagine your friend does something nice for you, and you respond by saying, “you idiot! Do it faster next time! You’re so bad at this! Why can’t you just be better!” Responding like this is likely to discourage your friend from doing that nice thing again, and it’s the same with the unconscious mind. If, when we realise our minds have wandered, we respond by being judgemental, our unconscious minds are discouraged from doing it again, so our awareness decreases. Knowing this information won’t stop it happening though; we don’t get to control when we’re judgemental. We can’t just decide to stop doing it; at some point, you will be harsh to yourself again: we all will. So, what can we do? We can use the same technique that we’ve been practising: the moment we realise that we are being judgemental – whether we catch it halfway through the first thought or after berating ourselves for an hour – we congratulate ourselves for realising and then gently return our attention to the breath. By doing this, we’re improving our ability to notice when we are being judgemental, which means we’ll be able to interrupt it sooner. 

3. Help! My mind just feels so frantic and all over the place! 

This is ok. If your mind feels frantic, it doesn’t mean that you are meditating wrong, all it means is that the mind wants to be frantic. It also doesn’t mean that meditation is “making your mind go all over the place” - blaming meditation for causing your mind to be frantic is like blaming your TV if you think that the movie is rubbish. Meditation doesn’t cause anything; it simply allows us to observe what’s already there. We are trying to develop our ability to notice when the mind has wandered, and we can only practise this if the mind wanders in the first place! I like to think of it as a win-win situation; if the mind doesn’t wander very much and attention stays mostly on the breath, this is likely to produce a calming effect as the mind settles – win! If the mind is ping-ponging around and wandering again and again, the more opportunities we get to practise the skill of noticing – win! So, the next time you’re experiencing a frantic mind, see if you can let it do its thing; you could try reminding yourself that the more your mind wanders, the more you get to be kind to yourself when you realise it’s wandered. 

We can also use a technique called counting to help the mind settle, which is exactly what it says on the tin. On an inbreath, we silently count “one”, and on the outbreath, we silently count “two”. On the next inbreath, “three”, and on the next outbreath, “four”. Two things can happen here: either we keep going until we reach “ten”, or our mind wanders before we get there. If we reach ten, on the next inhale we start again at one. The reason we do this is to let go of turning it into a competition: we let go of striving to reach the highest number. We’re placing value on the process of counting rather than the outcome; it’s like valuing the effort someone has put into an exam rather than the score they get. If our minds wander before we reach ten, that’s ok; the moment we realise we’ve wandered, we congratulate ourselves for noticing, and then begin counting from one again.

There are a few different ways you could use counting. One approach is to always use it: every time the instruction is to focus on the sensations of the breath, you could use the counting technique. Another option is a sort of hybrid approach: using the counting technique until you reach the number ten, and then letting go of counting and purely focusing on the sensations of the breath. After noticing your mind has wandered and congratulating yourself, you could use the counting technique again until you reach ten and then let go of counting. The last approach is to not count at all, instead focusing only on the sensations of the breath. All these approaches are equally valid; I switch between them all the time. Sometimes, I feel like focusing on the breath moment by moment, so I don’t count; other times, I enjoy having a little more to focus on, so I count. Rather than looking for someone to tell you which is the “right” one to use, I would encourage you to try them all so you can learn through your own experience; this way, you get to practise listening to your own body and you can go with whatever feels right in the moment. 

4. Why do we focus on the breath? 

We can use all sorts of things as the focus of attention during this technique, such as a sound, an object, or a particular sensation in the body. Whatever we choose, the steps remain the same: focusing our attention, congratulating ourselves the moment we realise we’ve become distracted, and gently returning our attention to the focus. But, whilst it’s possible to use almost anything as a focus, some things tend to work better than others; here are the main reasons I like to use the breath for focused attention meditations... 

It’s always available. The breath follows us everywhere we go, it doesn’t require any equipment, resources, or another person, it’s there any time of day or night, during any weather, it’s immune to financial collapses and political policies, and it stays with us even if we fall out with a friend, lose our job, or get dumped – pretty cool, I think! 

It’s consistent. The breath follows a repeating cycle of four parts: inhaling, a pause, exhaling, and another pause, so there is always something to pay attention to. Here’s a fun fact for you: the most common time to wander off tends to be the pause after the exhale. Now, you might be wondering, how was this studied? If the participants became distracted, how could they know at what point in the cycle they wandered off? I’ll leave you to decide if you want to go down that rabbit hole! 

It’s repetitive. I get it, the breath isn’t as exciting as your favourite TV show or waiting to see if the roulette wheel lands on your number, but that’s the whole point: we don’t want the thing we’re trying to focus on to be too stimulating. Maintaining attention on something that’s incredibly stimulating, such as scrolling through social media, is so easy that our brains get used to it: they start to say, “what do you need me for?” and go on holiday. Then, when we come back to the real world and things aren’t as stimulating, we find it much harder because our brains need to wake up from their post-meal nap at the all-inclusive resort and get back to work! The breath makes an excellent meditation object because it’s full of subtle differences and sensations that require effort to notice, but it’s not so stimulating that the mind doesn’t wander off; this gives us plenty of opportunity to realise its wandered, congratulate ourselves for realising, and then gently bring it back – and that’s how awareness is developed. 

5. How will meditating in a calm space help me with my hectic daily life? 

At first, it may seem like the two are unrelated. You might be experiencing a difficult situation at work, a devastating loss, or a stressful relationship and be really eager to deal with it straight away, but starting your mindfulness journey by trying to bring awareness and kindness to these sorts of situations is like trying to navigate roundabouts and motorways without knowing how the pedals work. Is it possible? I think so. Would I recommend it? Absolutely not! Fellow dog owners will likely know that, just because our furry friends can sit beautifully on command in a quiet living room, this is no guarantee that they’ll do it in the middle of a busy park surrounded by distractions. When I trained our dog to sit (if you’re wondering, her name’s Georgie and she’s a Labrador), we practised in the living room, then the kitchen, then around other people, then in the garden, and then around other dogs and cars; in other words, we started simple and then gradually increased the difficulty when we were ready. I like to take the same approach with training the mind; we begin by developing awareness and kindness through meditation, and then we gradually increase the difficulty by practising in daily life (but that comes later in the guide: we’ll get there!). 

6. What’s the difference between awareness and attention? 

It’s just like vision; we can pay attention to an object or a person, and at the same time we can be aware of all sorts of things going on in our peripheral vision. Sometimes, we can become distracted by something in our peripheral vision, and then our attention shifts to focus on it. It’s the same with meditation; we can pay attention to the breath whilst also noticing things coming and going in our awareness such as thoughts, physical sensations, and sounds. If we become distracted by something in our awareness, then our attention will move away from the breath. As soon as we realise that we’ve become distracted, we can gently move our attention back to the breath. 

7. Why is there an introduction? Why not start with the technique straight away? 

In the same way that an athlete might warm up at the start of a training session to prepare themselves for more intense activity, the introduction acts as a preparation and a transition. We start with a fairly relaxed attention on our breathing, taking in our surroundings. Then, with each step of the introduction, we gently narrow our attention more and more until we’re focusing on something very specific: the sensations of the breath. The process is then reversed at the end of the meditation: we gently relax our attention and expand our awareness, taking in more and more, until our awareness is wide-open again. 

8. Why do we remind ourselves of our motivation? 

If we have a strong “why”, I think we’re far more likely to keep showing up every day. Reminding ourselves of our motivation at the start of each meditation keeps it fresh in our minds and can help us carry on when things get tough. Our motivation doesn’t have to stay the same; it can change to reflect the difficulties that we’re dealing with and the things we’d like to work on. 

9. Why do we set an intention? 

Back in secondary school, I remember my English teacher stressing the importance of writing a quick plan before beginning an essay; she would say, “if you have a plan, even if it’s just a couple of bullet points, you’re less likely to go off on a tangent and lose track of the original question”. It’s taken a while, but I can now say that I wholeheartedly agree with her, and I think it’s the same with meditation; setting a clear intention at the start can help to keep us on track. 

I think setting an intention is very different from setting an expectation; expectations often use phrases like “I must”, “I will”, and “I should”, which tend to pile on pressure and often result in judgements when the expectations are not met. Intentions, on the other hand, are much softer and more forgiving; an intention says, “I am going to try, but I accept that it might not happen”. 

For a focused attention meditation, I like to set the following intention: 

“I intend to focus my attention on the breath, I intend to congratulate myself as a soon as I realise I’ve become distracted, and then I intend to gently bring my attention back to the breath.” 

I like to imagine setting an intention as communicating with my unconscious mind, the well-meaning friend, by saying, “hey, I’m about to meditate; if possible, I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know when I get distracted”. 

10. Why is the ending important? 

I think the ending is important for two reasons: it acts as a transition and a preparation for coming out of the meditation, and it reminds us to try and carry our awareness and kindness into whatever we’re doing next; congratulating ourselves whenever we realise that we’ve become distracted and then gently returning our attention to the present moment can be done at any time, during any activity. 

There we have it: several thousand words, some dog-training, and an homage to an English teacher later, we’ve arrived at the end of the deep dive. I’ll leave you with one more spin of the broken record: information alone is not enough; it’s consistent practise that leads to lasting change. I know how tempting it can be to believe that, “just one more article or video and I might find the solution to my problems”, but I’m yet to see this work for anyone; if we want to get better at swimming, at some point, we’ve got to swim. 

As always, please feel free to reach out if you’re struggling or have any questions - talkingwithtom@outlook.com.

In the meantime, happy practising! 

Tom