Mindfulness works, and it is hard. First, accept that you will never master it. You will never get “good enough.” So don’t even try. At the same time, you don’t need to live in, “I’ll never live up to the high standards of someone who practices mindfulness,” either. The standards aren’t high. You’ll definitely not practice it well at some point in the near future, and that’s after the obvious first attempts, which will not be easy or possibly even yield much in the way of results. What matters is that you show up, just like the idea of showing up in life. You show up to your practice. And it turns out, that is hard.

People automatically seem to believe that self-awareness leads to a better self. Why is that? Is it necessarily the case? Are there different kinds of self-awareness, and if so, how are they different? And if so, what makes a comprehensively self-aware person? And does truly lead to people who are morally better? We investigate to find out, and offer a takeaway of our own.

If you were to distill down the basics of any book on habits, it comes to this. This is the framework for understanding breaking bad habits and beginning and sustaining good ones. So, yes, you've probably heard some of this before, but it's broken down to its essence so its also easy to simply practice. Spend more effort practicing these ideas that deciding whether or not you agree with them. It's empirical, time-tested stuff. We just have to do the work. Pick a lane. Some things in our lives we want to spend time reflecting on, we may need to understand, to interpret, to develop greater awareness. With habits we're ultimately aiming to actually put things on autopilot so we don't have to spend energy thinking. We just begin to do.