Your Zen minute: There is a voice inside you, a presence that has always been there — your real, true self, so often buried under and hidden behind all the frantic, non-stop thoughts and emotions of everyday life. It’s the voice that knows what really matters to you. You can hear it so much more clearly when you learn to pause and let your mind settle down.

Every February, teacher Sharon Salzberg conducts a wonderful exercise called the Meditation Challenge, based on her book Real Happiness. The intent is to introduce folks to the practice of meditation by incorporating it into their daily lives. This month’s Mindful Minute columns will be based on excerpts from this challenge. Last week’s installment is here.

Sometimes it can really be difficult to find the strength to deal with challenges. We need to uncover and grow the positive parts of ourselves, and make it a point to pay attention to experiences that bring us happiness. Too often we focus on what is wrong with us or unpleasant events. We need to make a concerted effort to include the positive in our awareness. It shouldn’t be a phony effort or deny real problems — we just want to pay attention to aspects of our day that we may currently overlook or ignore.

Here’s a quick example: How often do you receive a compliment and your automatic response is “No, no!”? We have so many ways to distort our experiences through our mental habits. These responses distract us from the feeling itself, and distort our relationship to the direct feeling or thought. Mindfulness helps us become aware of this distortion and determine what we can do differently.

Let’s try a little meditation to help us with that. If we occasionally take just a moment to notice things that make us smile — maybe a single bright flower, a puppy playing in the yard, or a child’s hug — we can stockpile a lot of joy. This capacity to notice the positive may be somewhat unfamiliar, but that’s fine. We practice meditation for this very reason. Ready?

• Sit comfortably in a chair or on the floor and gently close your eyes.
• Think about a happy experience you had recently, one that made you smile and feel joy, comfort, or gratitude. Maybe it was a wonderful meal, spending time with your kids, a friend who is always there for you, or a pet excited to see you.
• Take time to cherish whatever image comes to mind. See what it feels like to sit with this recollection. Where in your body do you feel it? What are the sensations you feel? How do they change? Stay with that awareness, opening up to them and accepting them.
• Notice what emotions come up as you bring this experience to mind. Maybe excitement, hope, fear, wanting more? Simply watch these emotions arise and move on. All of these states are changing and shifting. Maybe you feel uneasy about letting yourself feel too good, because you fear bad luck will follow. Or guilty because you don’t feel like you deserve to feel happy. In those moments, practice inviting in the feelings of joy or delight, and allow yourself to make space for a them.
• Notice what thoughts may be present as you bring to mind the positive. Do you have a sense of being less confined or less stuck in habits? Or maybe you find yourself falling back into thoughts about what went wrong in your day, what disappointed you. These thoughts can be more comfortable because they are so familiar. If so, take note of that. Does your mind try to build stores around the positive experience? Do you tell yourself you don’t deserve the happiness until you give up your bad habit, or that you must find a way to make this last forever? Try to become aware of these “add-on” thoughts, and see if you can let them go and simply be with the feeling of the moment.
• No matter what story or add-on thought shows up, come back to your direct experience. As yourself, what feelings are present in your body? What are you feeling right now? What’s happening?
• End your meditation by simply sitting and being with your breath. Be with it gently, as though you were cradling it.

Bring this skill of gentle interest and curiosity to your encounters through your day. Notice those positive moments, even those that may seem so small.

If you do these exercises, we would love to hear how they went at shorelines@northshorebank.com. Thanks for reading! —Pat Ingelse, AVP, PMP