If your goal for mindfulness practice is to be more mindful (present, aware, conscious), then the first thing to remember is that good or bad practice isn’t defined by how calm your mind or emotions are.

What?!

I know. Most of us fall into that trap of thinking a calm mind means we’re having a good practice and a busy mind means bad practice.

It’s tricky because there’s a lot of (mis)information out there that says the goal of mindfulness practice is to calm your mind. And, of course, then you naturally think that should be calming your mind when you practice. Calm mind = good practice. Busy mind = bad practice.

Frankly, it’d just not true. The goal is awareness. Not a calm mind.  (Realize: Your mind can be totally crazy and you can be aware of it.)

Then it get’s even trickier!:
One of the side effects of mindfulness practice is a calm mind. And the more we practice, the more it happens.

AND it’s so enjoyable when it happens that we can start to make it the goal.

The problem is that it’s an unreachable goal, so if you start to make it your goal you will fail. Why? Because it’s your mind creating this as a goal. Your mind thinks it wants to calm itself, and this is a thought. The mind cannot calm thoughts with more thoughts. It’s sort of like fire trying to put itself out with more fire. Yikes.

What does work is to notice your thoughts, notice “I’m thinking.” By noticing your thoughts, you stop adding to them, you stop fueling the fire and it naturally calms down. This is because the part of you that notices your thoughts is actually larger than, or outside of, your mind. By practicing observing your mind you learn to naturally step outside of it into this bigger part of you. When you step out, you stop adding fuel: you take your foot off of the gas. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, rest assured that you do this all of the time without realizing it. Stepping into observation or witness mode is natural, you just don’t realize that’s what you’re doing. That’s why we practice this on purpose when we meditate – so that become aware when we’re doing it. Easy.)

This is how you get better at mindfulness: Simply, practice noticing whatever is happening.

Noticing a crazy mind is just as good as noticing a calm mind. The point isn’t to attain calm. The point is to get better and better at noticing, to be more and more aware, more and more conscious of whatever is happening. If you notice that your mind gets calm while you do this, great. If you notice that it gets even more crazy, great. You’re noticing. That’s good practice.

So, notice your crazy thoughts and emotions. Practice being aware of them. Come back to that over and over.  You will get better just by doing it. That’s how you make your practice better. Notice.

You will improve. 100% guaranteed.