I wept when I first heard meditation teacher Tara Brach tell this story written by author Bruce Holland Rogers:

“When he was very young, he waved his arms, snapped his massive jaws, and tromped around the house so that the dishes trembled in the china cabinet,” Rogers writes in a short story called “Dinosaur.”

“‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ his mother said. ‘You are not a dinosaur! You are a human being!’

Since he was not a dinosaur, he thought for a time that he might be a pirate. ‘Seriously,’ his father said to him after school one day, ‘what do you want to be?’ A fireman, maybe. Or a policeman. Or a soldier. Some kind of hero.

But in high school they gave him tests and told him he was good with numbers. Perhaps he’d like to be a math teacher? That was respectable. Or a tax accountant? He could make a lot of money doing that. It seemed a good idea to make money, what with falling in love and thinking about raising a family.

So, he became a tax accountant, even though he sometimes regretted it, because it made him feel, well, small. And he felt even smaller when he was no longer a tax accountant, but a retired tax accountant. Still worse: a retired tax accountant who forgot things. He forgot to take the garbage to the curb, to take his pill, to turn his hearing aid on. Every day it seemed he forgot more things, important things, like where his children lived and which of them were married or divorced.

Then one day, when he was out for a walk by the lake, he forgot what his mother had told him. He forgot that he was not a dinosaur. He stood blinking his dinosaur eyes in the bright sunlight, feeling its familiar warmth on his dinosaur skin, watching dragonflies flitting among the horsetails at the water’s edge.”

I cried because I’d spent so much of my life trying to make other people happy. 

I’d half-assed college just enough to keep my parents and the professors off my back. I’d worked in the tech industry for seven years because it made me appear successful.

Not everyone can get paid to do the work they love, of course. That’s a fact of capitalism. Only a few get the freedom of owning their own business, while the many have to work for them. So, we shouldn’t shame people for not “doing what they love,” because they can’t.

But what Rogers’s story is really getting at is that the life we want is about being emotionally vulnerable, and I’d rarely been that either. 

I’d stumbled through romantic relationships on autopilot, never really saying what I felt. I’d loved, missed, and been angry at friends so many times without saying a word about it.

“Vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure,” says professor and social worker Brené Brown.

That doesn’t sound so good. Who wants to feel the discomfort of being exposed?

But now I know it’s worth it. On the other side of that discomfort is what we’re all searching for: feeling alive.

“I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad,” Brown says. “My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.”

Being vulnerable is hard because, even if we weren’t abused as a child, we learned early on that we couldn’t really be ourselves. When we showed our true self, we were shamed, ignored, or simply not understood by our parents and other adults.

This caused us to hide parts of ourselves and lead with other parts that we thought might get us attention. We started acting certain ways to avoid getting hurt again.

The problem is, when we hide our parts — our wildness, our curiosity, our passion — we aren’t vulnerable. We aren’t truly open to the possibilities of this one life we’re lucky to have. Sure, we don’t feel pain as often, but we don’t feel pleasure either. And worse, we suffer.

So, how does one actually be more vulnerable? How does one lean into the discomfort?

That’s a question with a lifelong answer. But it starts with noticing when we’re trying to appear a certain way to other people. Noticing when we’re trying to make things “certain and definite, black and white, good and bad.” Noticing when we’re trying to avoid the pain.

Then it’s about accepting that life is messy, that pain is inevitable, that we can’t control life, especially other people.

Then it’s about letting go of our thoughts and sense of control.

Then it’s about opening to this present moment and feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing. Opening is allowing the uncertainty of the present moment to be there, even resting in it. In other words, living fully.

(Noticing, accepting, letting go, and opening happen to be the four steps in mindfulness meditation, which I wrote about in my ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head.)

Sure, sometimes the pain is too much, or it’s unsafe to be ourselves around certain people. Leaning into the discomfort might not be the right thing to do at every moment.

But, where it feels possible, we can start to allow ourselves to be okay with a little uncertainty. What we’ve been waiting for, life, is in the mystery, not our thoughts, worries, and plans.

Free ebook on mindfulness meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

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

Staying mindful—paying attention non-judgmentally—is so hard because many of the thought patterns that distract us were developed during childhood.

Even if you aren’t a victim of outright abuse, you’ve experienced some level of trauma.

“You can have childhoods were no overt trauma, occurs,” says Hungarian-born Canadian physician and addiction expert Gabor Maté. “But when the parents are just too distracted, too stressed to provide the necessary responsiveness, that can also traumatize the child.”

We all—every single one of us—have stories and beliefs about how and who we need to be in order to be safe, taken care of, accepted, and loved.

The heartbreaking thing is these stories and beliefs are exactly what hold us back from connection. They disconnect us over and over again—from the present moment, from friends and family, from living fully.

You should explore your particular stories, preferably with a therapist if you can afford it.

But with even just a little bit of regular meditation, you’ll starting noticing how often they appear in your mind, which will help you take them less seriously.

They’re just thoughts, after all. As the Nepalese Tibetan monk Tsoknyi Rinpoche says, they’re “real but not true.”

I’ve included a list of some of the more notorious stories below.

One of mine is, I have to do things “perfect”—whatever that means—to earn respect, love, and connection. A few weeks ago, it popped up at in an odd place.

I was hiking near Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park when I spotted a pile of little brown balls. I knew what they were because I’d seen “moose droppings” candy before in giftshops in Maine, and I’d heard moose were “active” in the area.

Stories of moose attacks flitted through my mind. “Man dies in horrific encounter with rabid moose.” My neck and shoulders clenched. My heartbeat thumped in my ribcage.

But what really twisted me up was, I’d be judged by others for making a mistake—for bumbling around in the woods without a gun, pepper spray, or even knowing what to do if I saw a moose.

Think about that. I was more worried about being judged than the pain and even death that might come with a moose attack.

It wasn’t the fear and anxiety that overwhelmed me—emotions are part of vibrant experience of life. It was the story I was adding on top of the emotions.

Once I noticed the story, I laughed a little and continued down the trail. Mindfulness had helped me—once again—become conscious of my unconscious thoughts, let them go, and reconnect to the aliveness of the present moment.

Do any of these stories/beliefs (borrowed from psychologist Cynthia Wilcox) resonate?:

• I can lose myself when I get close to someone.
• I must earn respect/love by what I do/produce/accomplish.
• I feel responsible for others’ well-being.
• Keeping others comfortable is the most important thing.
• I have an evaluator in my mind that is almost always on duty, evaluating myself and others.
• I rely on myself.
• Most often, I am disappointed or let down by others.
• I can’t trust anyone completely.
• If I’m all that I can be, I’ll overwhelm others. I have to keep myself small.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

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

Mindfulness is all the rage. Corporations like Goldman Sachs and Monsanto teach it to employees. The meditation apps Calm and Headspace have both been valued at $250 million. Forbes recently profiled six “tech entrepreneurs” who “want to bring mindfulness to your sex life.”

But what exactly is it?—many people continue to ask.

To meditation teacher Hugh Byrne, it’s seeing whatever is arising in our experience like clouds moving through the sky—including sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, sounds, the breath. They come and go.

To scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, it’s “going beyond or behind our thinking,” like standing behind a waterfall. “We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent [of thoughts.]”

To Zen Buddhist teacher angel Kyodo willliams, it’s like sifting through “that drawer that collects everything in your house. We have no real way of being able to discern what is mine, what is yours, what are we holding collectively, what have I inherited, what have I taken on as a measure of protection, of a way to cope at some point in my life or past lives, that I no longer need? [Mindfulness] lets us begin to do that.”

To the Tibetan Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, it’s like inviting guests into your home. He tells a story of being a sick teenager on a bus. “I [meditated,] bringing my awareness to the sensations around my stomach, its bloating, and the nausea. I was playing host to these sensations, as well as to feelings of aversion, resistance, and reaction. The more I allowed these guests to inhabit my body, the calmer I became.”

To some Mahayana Buddhists, it’s also known as “Buddha nature,” which is like “a treasure hidden beneath the house of a poor family. The treasure is silent and so cannot announce its presence, yet when it is discovered poverty is dispelled.”

To the ancient Zen master Dogen, it’s a mirror: “The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? The essential teaching is fully available; how could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust; why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away?”

I like to think of it as seeing a movie in a theater. Most of the time—when we’re not mindful—we’re sitting in the front row, engrossed in what’s on the screen (our thoughts). There’s no space, no gap between our thoughts and consciousness, the thinker of those thoughts. Mindfulness is walking to the back of the theater and realized that here’s a screen and an audience.

What emerges from these metaphors is a (somewhat) simple definition: mindfulness is being aware of what’s happening in the present moment, including thoughts, in a non-judgmental way.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

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