She said, another deflection as she thinks to herself "I'm too broken with anxiety and depression."

The best advice I can give in these situations is, "you didn't learn to walk in a day, you built up to it, one step at a time." And that applies to anything you want to practice.

A minute a day

Take a moment to pause, focus on an object, and just practice listening to your breath. Just observe it..

In,... Out,... In,..... Out,....

Do it with intent

You know you need something, what you have been doing clearly isn't working. The intention is to slow down the thoughts racing in your mind. When you first start a meditation practice, yea, it's going to be hard to remember you aren't engaging the endless stream of thoughts racing into your head. Your intentions are to slow those thoughts, reminding yourself you are focusing on your breath and the object before you (a candle works for alot of people, it moves, looks cool and the longer you stare the more you start to see as your mind starts to fill in blanks with weird shapes and colors because eyeballs are weird like that...

Engaging

It's hard not to answer back with possible scenarios and have that inner dialog of "what ifs" that arise with thoughts, but as you practice ignoring them, it gets easier. Just as when you get angry at something and have to leave the room for a moment and count to 10 or scream or whatever, you will begin to lean away from the answering the thoughts with "no, I'm in control here, I'm listening to my breath."

100 pushups

After a time, a minute a day won't be enough, and you'll find yourself saying fuck it, I want to do it again today... eventually finding you have done it over 10 times that day. Congratulations, if this was the 100 pushup challenge and you did reps of 10, 10 times a day, you hit your 100 for the day.

• life
• depression
• anxiety
• recovery
• panicattack
• recovery
• mindfulness
• meditation
• intent
• practice