We are highly conditioned to creep ahead in our minds, however, and you will frequently lose track of what you're actually doing, no matter how important staying present is to you. This is why our primary way of cultivating mindfulness is to attend to very small actions, from beginning to end. A small commitment is doable, even with no mindfulness experience at all. You can be present for the entire duration of a key-turn, or a sip of water, or a single breath.

Because our impulse is to turn away, turning towards something unattractive or undesirable feels odd at first. Start by seeing what happens when you open up to very mild instances of discomfort – a room that's too warm, or an unpleasant taste in your mouth, for example. Once you know how to open up to these mildly unpleasant experiences, then you can experiment with opening up to the throbbing of a stubbed toe, or the feeling of being late for an appointment.

As Richard Carlson put it, “Be grateful for our good moods and graceful in our low moods.” Bad moods aren’t fun, but we can easily make them worse by believing that they denote something wrong with us or our lives. They are as natural and necessary as cold snaps and windy days, and they pass by in the same way.

As much as we'd prefer to skip these moments, we can't. Like it or not, we must inhabit them for as long as they take. Life is much easier when you inhabit these moments willingly. The stress doesn’t come from having to experience the physical tension or awkwardness, but from the unfulfillable need to not be experiencing what you’re already experiencing.

Keep an eye out for routine moments in which you want your body to already be past the moment it's in. If you feel like you’re “leaning” towards the next moment, that moment is a perfect candidate for seeing if you can relax into the tension that’s here now. Slow down and remember non-rushing. Come into the body and see if you can relax into its current position, however odd or unsettled it currently is. I used to become positively furious when someone would ask me to hand them something, like a pair of scissors, and then they’re still busy fiddling with something else while I’m holding out the item waiting for them to take it. Looked at rationally, this is ridiculous. It’s not at all difficult to hold a pair of scissors out for three or four extra seconds, but I made it into quite an annoying and stressful experience, because I was leaning so hard into the next moment, where they'd take the scissors from me, and I’d be relieved of this extremely minor duty. By refusing to simply let my body be where it was for as long as it was there, I created a much worse experience, as well as adding a little more anger to the world.

This habit of relaxing into tension is a powerful area of practice. Not only does it get us smoothly through the little, predictable tension points in our days (bending over to undo your bike lock, opening the laundry room door with the basket balanced on your hip) but it also trains us in the general qualities of patience and grace. Practicing this, you’ll learn to see virtually any moment as something that can be experienced willingly. Quite often moments experienced willingly turn out to be far easier than they would be if they were resisted, and sometimes they even become beautiful or gratifying in some unexpected way.

Use this simple refrain whenever you notice discomfort or tension: Can I relax into where my body is right now, at least a bit?

Notice, feel, and allow discomfort. Our impulse is to become as unaware as possible of discomfort, because it's not a pleasant thing to experience. But there is tremendous value in learning to experience discomfort fully consciously, by noticing it and allowing yourself to feel whatever it feels like. This habit overall reduces fear and anxiousness, and teaches us to stay rational and level-headed in the face of adversity.

Mindfulness is an excellent tool for allowing resistance to be there while acting in spite of it.

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