The Number One Rule of Meditation is: DO IT YOUR WAY.

An important rule of mindfulness is to follow your instincts in the beginning.

Don’t let some other person’s idea of meditation interfere with a practice that makes you feel good. You can meditate (or practice mindfulness) in any way that suits you.

The words that we use - “meditate,” “mindfulness,” etc, these are shortcuts that help us communicate, but they shouldn’t limit us in any arbitrary way. If you have a mindfulness practice that doesn’t fall into traditional methods, that is cool.

I think many people get caught up in the technicalities of mindfulness. They want to “do it right” as opposed to just getting started.

The truth is that there isn’t much of a “right way” to be learned, other than a few of the absolute basics for meditation. If you want to do traditional meditation, all you do have to do is sit perfectly still and focus on your breath (usually through your nose) for 10 mins. And that’s not the only way to start practicing mindfulness, you could use the even easier gratitude priming exercise.

What matters is simply to do something if you feel the urge to. Many people want more mindfulness and calm in their lives… and I want them to know it’s accessible. These “mental exercises” exist and many apps are around for your favorite flavor of mindfulness methodology.

I’m not saying that mindfulness or meditation are absolute cures for anything, but I do think “mental exercise” is somewhat like physical exercise. If nothing is too wrong with your natural body or mind, this kind of exercise makes you stronger and can pull you up into the zone of a natural good mood more often.

If anybody tells you you’re doing it wrong, don’t worry about it. You may strive to get the definitions right for clarity’s sake i.e. “meditation” has certain definitions, but DO whatever thing you want to do.

All words aside, you can just do any mindfulness practice for a few minutes a day and its better than nothing.