Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

Beating yourself up inside isn’t helping

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Bring to mind a habit that you’d like to change. One that you often do unconsciously, without choice. It could be drinking, overeating, checking Facebook, or how you treat someone you love.

Really visualize yourself doing it. Imagine the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds.

How do you feel, right now, about this image of yourself pouring another glass of wine, or whatever it’s doing?

Odds are you’re feeling judgment, looking down on yourself.

It’s intuitive to think that being hard on yourself will help you stop a certain behavior. But self-judgment actually helps lock us into our habitual patterns.

I’m not talking rational thinking after the fact, like I need to stop drinking so much to be a better father. That’s very likely true. I’m talking about in the moment when we start following the habit.

Pouring another glass of wine or scrolling through Facebook is how we distract ourselves from an emotion we don’t want to feel, whether it’s restlessness, fear, loneliness, or anger. Self-judgment is a story that we add on top — it further distracts us from being present, open, and fully alive.

To break the cycle, what we really need is self-compassion. American Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön calls it “unconditional acceptance of ourselves.” Once we stop being so hard on ourselves, we can start to implement strategies and tactics to change the habit we don’t like.

First, we need mindfulness, which gives us those rare openings to notice our self-judgment.

During a recent meditation retreat I learned just how fidgety and restless I can get when I can’t work on something or read or drive somewhere.

One of the great things about meditation retreats is that they take away all the ways you usually distract yourself.

Most of us spend our days jumping from one thing to the next, from breakfast to work to vegging out watching Netflix. We even fill the spaces in between — standing in line, sitting on the toilet, etc. — with email or Instagram or talking on the phone.

Retreat is no phone, no work, no books, no talking — nothing but meditation, sleep, and three meals a day.

This gives you the rare opportunity to observe rather than ignore what’s going on inside. What do you do with nowhere to be and nothing to do? What does your mind do when you’re bored? Who are you when you’re not a 3rd grade teacher or an app designer or a mother? Who are you when making money isn’t a priority?

The first morning on retreat, I sat in the kitchen downing cup after cup of coffee. I’m a caffeine addict, for sure, but I usually have one cup in the morning. Three cups in and my restlessness had morphed into anxiety with a piercing headache.

The next morning after my usual one cup, I decided to stay put and watch the restlessness. I felt a sort-of tunnel vision set in. My breath shortened. My shoulders and jaw tensed up. My mind thought, “A cup of coffee would be nice.”

Then there was a split second of self-judgment. I never would’ve seen it if I hadn’t slowed down to watch. A voice inside of me was talking as though I were someone else: there he goes again. He shouldn’t want more coffee. Look at him. He’s weak!

Self-judgment usually comes as a thought that includes the words should or shouldn’t, which exposes why it’s so toxic: we’re telling ourselves we’re not good enough. And when we don’t feel good enough, we lose self-esteem, becoming more prone to reacting out of habit rather than responding out of choice.

After about ten seconds, the voice faded and the urge fell away. My body relaxed and I began to think about whether I should use the bathroom before the next meditation period.

I’m still addicted to coffee, but this little “win” has given me the confidence to start to dial back my daily intake. Who knows what I’ll be able to take on next?

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Listen to the podcast version

I talked about this post on my podcast, Meditation for the 99%. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and everywhere podcasts are available. Stream this episode below.

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Mindfulness is helping me finally give myself permission to relax

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I call it “striving.” I’ve heard others call it hustling, hard work, the grind, “just the way things are.”

It’s my mind’s default mode, the part of my personality that almost always jumps in the driver’s seat and takes the wheel.

On good days, it shows up as an exact and tidy to-do list, with just enough time to knock out each task one by one.

I wake up to my first alarm, roll out of bed, stretch, meditate, scramble eggs that look like they’re on a Michelin-starred chef’s Instagram, and get to writing. I finish work just before dinner and spend the evening relaxing with a book or enjoying time with my girlfriend.

Most days it gives me a gnawing sense of incompleteness, a lack of something, as if I’ve got unfinished business. It feels like I’m running from one thing to the next, like I’m leaning out of the present moment and into the future — like I need to strive to catch up.

Who or what am I trying to catch? I have no idea.

I’m Sisyphus, the ancient Greek king punished by being forced to roll a rock up a hill over and over again for eternity. I’m exhausted and don’t want to work anymore.

But ,  working more is the only way I’ll feel whole, accomplished, complete, says the striving part of me.

So, I start pushing the rock again, only to soon lose interest and get distracted. I pour another cup of coffee, pick up my phone and scroll through Instagram, turn on Netflix — anything to escape feeling the incompleteness.

(If striving isn’t resonating with you, think about what part of your personality takes the lead when you’re by yourself for a long period of time. Or ask yourself, what story do I most often tell myself when I feel anxiety?)

There are many reasons for my tendency to strive.

As a kid, I was young for my grade level, which often made me feel behind.

My parents are solidly middle class, having achieved a decent standard of living by working rather than hiring others to work for them.

I’ve been marinating in capitalist ideology my entire life, which manufactures a sense of scarcity and encourages individual rather than collective ways of achieving abundance. Capitalism is all I know — I’ve been cut off from the wisdom of tens of thousands of years of human experience with other sorts of relationships to each other and nature.

But let’s set the reasons why to the side for now.

What has helped me have more of those good days recently is that I’m changing the way I relate to my striving.

I’ve started noticing when I’m telling myself a story about being behind and needing to catch up. That’s what mindfulness is: “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally,” as scientist Jon Kabat Zinn describes it. (I’ll explain “non-judgmentally” in a moment. It’s the most important part of that definition.)

Mindfulness is the first step to changing any habit or pattern.

You must first notice the story you’re telling yourself in the moment. Then — as meditation teaches — you let go of the story and bring your attention to the sensations of your breath, how your body feels, and the sounds around you. You come back to what’s happening right here, right now.

It’s not about ignoring the stories by shooing them away. It’s about seeing if you can stay with the bodily sensations that the stories bring with them. Can you simply feel the burning in your chest or clench in your stomach without following the story?

If you stay put, usually, the storm will pass.

Sometimes it doesn’t pass. This is where non-judgment, sometimes called “self-compassion,” is crucial. You’re bound to be swept away by the story most of the time. You’ve spent years habitually following your mind’s every whim.

Sometimes it doesn’t pass. This is where non-judgment is crucial. You might’ve heard it described as “self-compassion.”

You’re bound to be swept away by the story most of the time. You’ve spent years habitually following your mind’s every whim. The stories are seductive — you created them, likely at an early age, in an effort to protect yourself. They also are reinforced by a violent, individualistic society. You’re not going to learn how to relate to them differently overnight.

So, be easy on yourself as you begin to explore the stories that hang around in the background of your life. Start by practicing the first step: simply noticing when they appear.

The good news: just a small tweak to how you relate to the part of yourself that believes a particular story can go a long way in changing your life.

As I’ve started to notice when I’m believing the striving story, I’ve started to let myself fully relax for the first time. In the past, it took the presence of someone else or alcohol or drugs or a great book or movie. The conditions had to be just right, which made it rare.

Now, if I’m particularly mindful, I can let go of the story like when I let go of thoughts during meditation. Sometimes, this little bit of space allows me to take my foot off the gas and not feel the need to be somewhere else doing my “unfinished business.”

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Photo credit: Ichiban Yada

What it actually feels like to meditate

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I’ve meditated every day for five years now, and every time is still a roller coaster ride.

But the payoff is worth the ride. In fact, it’s the ride itself that pays.

For at least the first ten minutes, sometimes even 15, my mind jumps from thought to thought. I worry about what I’ve got planned for the day. I often replay things that happened the day before, usually conversations that made me feel vulnerable.

Did I sound stupid? Did I say too much? Does she like me? I’m just destined to be lonely.

This is my mind’s default state — unsettled, questioning myself, meandering in the past or the future.

It wouldn’t be so bad if all I did was daydream. What I really like to do is find patterns, to create meaning, to tell stories.

These stories are like looking up symptoms on WebMD. A cough can mean bronchitis or lung cancer or adenoidal hypertrophy. They spiral out of control into assumptions stacked on assumptions, until I’m wracked by anxiety about something that either didn’t happen or hasn’t happened yet or may never happen at all.

Before I started meditating, the stories were in the background all day long. They’d die down if I was really engaged in something, but that something had to be really engaging — say, a good TV show or a close friend who really listens.

But during meditation, after ten or 15 minutes of this frantic thinking something shifts. My body seems to unclench deep inside. My shoulders relax back and down, my stomach muscles release, my face eases, my breath falls into a comfortable rhythm.

It’s like I’d been swimming against the current and finally let the waves just take me.

My mind lets go of whatever I was thinking about and starts to notice more, as if I took a step backwards to witness the present moment. I hear the rain falling outside. I feel the warmth of the room. I smell my roommate’s coffee brewing downstairs. I notice that I’ve slumped over and sit up straight.

Time flows by as an unbroken chain of sensations rather than something to be measured or planned or worried about.

But, sure enough, as soon as I settle into this newfound awareness — known as “mindfulness” — another story rips me away. Planning that email I need to send narrows my focus and stops the flow. A few more minutes pass as I’m lost in thought.

Then some part of me notices that my mind is wandering, and I bring my attention back to the sensations in my body. I hear the sounds in the room. I’m back! I open to the flow until, inevitably, my mind takes me away again.

The bell rings, and I bring this mindfulness off of the cushion, to breakfast, work, and whatever the day has in store.

Ready to get serious about meditation?

Sign up for my weekly email on how to be mindful about the stuff that matters most — work, relationships, and, especially, politics.

Listen to the podcast version

My podcast, Meditation for the Masses, is mindfulness for the 99 percent. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and everywhere podcasts are available. Stream this episode below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | RSS | More