If you’re like me, you feel a constant need to be doing, doing, doing. Working, improving, building, working out, consuming, investing, hustling, grinding.

The antidote to this anxiety is, go figure, not doing. Meditating, going for a walk, resting, doing yoga, journaling, making art. Doing anything that allows the mind to slow down and the body to relax.

Not vegging out watching Netflix. Not numbing out with a glass of wine. (Though, there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing either.)

Actually resting means relaxing the nervous system

Not doing is slowing the mind and relaxing the body enough to simply be with what’s actually happening in the moment. It’s getting out of your head and into sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. It’s living fully.

When the mind is slow and body relaxed, the nervous system — the connection between the brain and spine that manages stress — can calm down.

When the nervous system is calm, our heart rate eases and muscles relax even more. We’re less on edge and more in the moment. We experience the moment just as it is, not what our mind says it should be.

That’s why it’s important to have a daily practice of some kind. It might be 20 minutes of meditation in the morning or an aimless walk after lunch. (Research shows that spending 20 minutes outside three times a week has the greatest effect on reducing levels of the stress hormone cortisol.)

Even pausing and taking three deep breathes a few times a day can be enough to take the edge off.

The key is to stop doing. Put down the phone, notice the sounds around you, feel your feet on the ground, and soften your muscles — especially around your eyes, the back of your neck, and your abs.

Be with what is actually happening in the moment — not lost in thought about your to-do list or what so-and-so thinks of you.

Of course, your mind won’t stop thinking. You’re still going to worry about responding to that passive aggressive text or what to eat for dinner or how you’re going to make rent this month.

But instead of worrying yourself into more tension or distracting yourself in the ways you normally do, let go of doing.

Bring your attention back to how your breath feels and your feet on the ground. Let go, and then let go again. If you’re outside, notice the wind in the trees and the smell of flowers.

You have a hard time resting because of capitalism

I know it’s hard to not do. “We live in a culture that celebrates activity,” writes the Buddhist teacher Roshi Joan Halifax.

The public performance of busyness is how we demonstrate to one another that we are important. The more people see us tired, over-stretched, the more they think we must be somehow indispensable. That we matter.

In a capitalist society, a full-time job is required to survive — sometimes even two! Constant growth in the stock market and corporate profits is the number one priority.

We think we have to hustle to keep up. And we think that if we don’t keep up, we’ll be left behind to feel lonely, unhappy, and unfulfilled.

Because of all of this go-go-go energy, we feel anxiety about slowing down and not doing. But here’s the thing: Taking time to rest allows you to move through the rest of your day more effectively and with more intention.

Meditation not only reduces stress, but it also manages anxiety, boosts self-awareness, lengthens the attention span, reduces memory loss, and more. When we’re in nature, our brains enter a mode called “soft fascination,” which restores and builds the resources we need to think, create, process information, and execute tasks.

So, stop pretending that vegging out while watching Netflix and scrolling Instagram is relaxing.

In today’s distracted world, you actually have to put effort into getting enough rest. You have to actively not do.

Hi, I’m Jeremy, a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. Subscribe to my weekly email on how to be more mindful at your job, in your relationships, and when it comes to politics here.

Download my free ebook on how mindfulness can decrease your anxiety and transform your life.

Photo by ☼☼Jo Zimny!☼☼.

The life coach Katie Shannon (and fellow Baltimorean) recently wrote something on Instagram that made me stop scrolling and put my phone down.

“Anxiety is the price I pay for being my own higher power.”

I pay a high price for my anxiety. I’m almost always worried about something.

Most of the day, I’m either fretting about getting more work done. Or judging myself for having too little money or too much fat on my stomach. Or wishing I’d said something different. Or people-pleasing. Or craving something to numb out with, like caffeine, alcohol, weed, masturbation, or shitty TV.

There are times when I feel a relative peace, sure. When my body relaxes, and my mind’s chattering fades into the background. When what’s happening in the moment is more interesting than the content of my thoughts.

But only when I’m with the right person and they’re giving me the right sort of attention. Or when I’m traveling somewhere new and exciting. Or when I’m just drunk or high enough.

And that’s Shannon’s point. At least how I read it.

I don’t resonate with the concept of a “higher power.” So, I think of it as “something beyond myself.” Or simply, “connection.”

Anxiety shows up when we’ve lost connection and think we have to do something to get it back.

If we work a little longer, then we’ll feel fulfilled. If we drink another beer, then we’ll feel relaxed. If we post the perfect post on Instagram, then we’ll feel loved.

Like so many things, this all goes back to our first few years of life. To when we were a baby, dependent on our parents and other caregivers to care for our needs.

Somewhere along the way we lost trust that our needs would be taken care of. Which is inevitable. No parent can provide all of their child’s needs 24/7.

This childhood distrust carried forward into our adult lives and shows up in different ways for each of us.

Maybe you don’t trust in the natural unfolding of life. You‘re afraid you’ll be bored if you let things happen on their own.

Maybe you don’t trust in life’s natural abundance. You don’t believe that there’s enough love and connection for you.

Maybe you don’t trust in life’s natural perfection. You can’t see that everything is whole and complete even if it’s imperfect.

Maybe you don’t trust in life’s natural oneness. You don’t trust that everything is connected even if it appears separate.

The bottom line is you don’t trust that you are worthy of love, connection, and wholeness. So you feel you have make it happen for yourself.

The spiritual teacher A. H. Almaas writes:

You try to relax, you try to quiet your mind, you try to make yourself feel better or make yourself feel worse. You are always interfering, trying to make something happen other than what is actually happening. You can only do this if you believe you have your own separate world and you can make things in it happen the way you want, while really, it is not your choice at all. You are alive today not because you want to be, but because the universe wants you to be.

Side note: That’s what’s so fucking aggravating about this capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist society we live in.

It runs on anxiety. It normalizes a frantic energy to always be doing. To always be working, investing, building your resume, starting a side hustle, buying things, grinding, working out, vacationing in beautiful places, doing, doing, doing.

And then on top of that, the rich and powerful use fear and anxiety to keep us at each other’s throats. They use racism, sexism, and other ways to divide people to keep us from blaming them (and the political and economic systems that benefit them) for our suffering.

Luckily, I’ve found a few practices that dial down my anxiety most of the time.

Meditating regularly. Going to therapy. Connecting with nature on walks and hikes. Learning about capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Organizing in my community and workplace. Helping out with mutual aid in my neighborhood. These things help me feel stable, fulfilled, and connected, not grasping as hard for the next distraction.

But it’s when I remember that I don’t have to do anything to be okay — that I don’t have to be “my own higher power” — that I feel a simple, basic peace that reminds of how connected with everything I truly am.

Hi, I’m Jeremy, a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. Subscribe to my weekly email on how to be more mindful about your job, your relationships, and politics here.

Download my free ebook on how mindfulness can transform your life.

Photo by Mariana Zanatta.

Why should you give a damn about mindfulness? Because life sucks without it.

Think of the last time you talked to a friend who really listened. Or explored a new city. Or had great sex. There was nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. You were present, vulnerable, and connected, and you felt fully, deeply alive. You paid attention without judging your experience, comparing what it was to what it should be like. You were mindful.

Contrary to the hype about mindfulness, you don’t need to buy it, read about it, or go out and get it. You can be mindful right now, as you can be at any moment. Meditation isn’t practicing how to be mindful. It’s practicing how to let mindfulness happen on its own.

Now think about pretty much every other moment of your life. Something felt off. Your body was tense, and you didn’t even know it. You wanted to be somewhere else. You had the sense that if only you had more money, lived in a different place, had a different job, then you’d finally be happy.

Let’s call that mindlessness.

You know when you copy and paste something, but you get sidetracked by a Facebook notification, forget about what you had copied, and then think, wait, what was I doing?

You know when you have 150 unread emails, six texts, 10+ Facebook notifications, and two missed calls?

You know when a friend is telling you how much their hurting after losing their job or getting dumped, but you’re thinking of what to say and miss what they said?

That’s mindlessness.

The mindless mind thinks about one thing, then thinks about another, then thinks about another, then thinks about another… Like a teenager on YouTube, it flips through related videos without spending much time on any particular one.

When you’re mindless, you plan what to make for dinner and the thought of roasted chicken reminds you of what you ate at Brittany’s birthday last weekend, which reminds you of that awkward conversation with Brittany’s new boyfriend, which makes you think you’re a socially awkward person, which…

If you’re like me, that should sound familiar. I’m almost constantly planning the rest of the week, worrying what someone thinks of me, ruminating about how screwed up our society is, rehashing old conversations, rehearsing future conversations, evaluating whether I’m having a good day, and on and on. I wake up and fall asleep scatterbrained every single day.

Unless I meditate. If I spend 20 minutes sitting in silence, noticing the movement of my breath, feeling bodily sensations, listening to sounds, most of the time calms my mind.

Not because I stop thinking. It’s a misperception that meditation “clears” the mind. Because I’m more aware that my thoughts are just thoughts. They’re not reality — they’re not as real as the breeze on my skin, the smell of coffee, the welling up of love in my chest.

That’s mindfulness. That’s, as scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” That’s what it feels like to be alive in the body, not living inside the boundaries of limiting thoughts about how life should or shouldn’t be.

I remember the first time I got a whiff of pure, unadulterated mindfulness. A young Nepalese Buddhist monk named Tsoknyi Rinpoche guided about 200 of us through meditation and then talked about how mindfulness helps calm overwhelming emotions. Right around the first sentence, when he said something about “essence-love,” I tuned out. Looking around the airy sanctuary of a Unitarian Universalist church in fancy Bethesda, Maryland, I thought — I’m better than these people. I don’t need this hipster, rich people stuff. I’m normal.

But then Rinpoche joked about the poor quality of Indian hotels: “By the way, if you go to India, either stay in the cheapest hotel or a five-star hotel. Because the cheapest hotel is also no good.”

The muscles around my eyes loosened and my mind refocused. This monk, sporting metal-rimmed glasses and a fresh buzzcut, was normal, too. The judgmental thoughts I’d been absorbed in were now sounding at a distance, like the voice of a younger me. Mindfulness was giving me a choice whether to follow my mind’s every whim.

Instead of following those thoughts or checking Facebook or walking to the bathroom — my usual tactics of escape — I decided to re-engage and listen, which paid off. Rinpoche would go on to tell a story that’s been helpful to me at numerous times in my life, which I’ve written about.

Simply put, it feels good to be mindful. Sights are more vivid, smells more vibrant, sounds more spacious, tastes livelier, feelings deeper. In other words, mindfulness gets you out of your head and into the present moment, the only place that real life is happening.

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On Meditation for the 99%, I take mindfulness out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.