I thought mindfulness was a wellness trend—then it saved my attention

It was a Tuesday afternoon—one of those ordinary, forgettable ones. I was halfway through folding laundry when I realized I had absolutely no memory of how I’d gotten there. I don’t mean metaphorically. I couldn’t recall the last 20 minutes. Had I already made lunch? Did I respond to that email? Was this shirt clean or dirty?

I stood there, holding a crumpled T-shirt, and felt like I’d missed my own life.

That’s when it really hit me: I wasn’t living my days. I was passing through them like a ghost. Present in body, absent in mind.

And I know I’m not alone.

Most of us don’t need another app or productivity hack—we need to learn how to actually be here. To experience the texture of our own lives as they unfold. That’s what mindfulness is about. Not retreating to a monastery, not lighting incense on a mountaintop—but folding laundry and knowing you’re folding laundry.

Why ‘being present’ is harder than it sounds

Mindfulness has become a buzzword. It’s painted across wellness blogs and productivity podcasts as if it’s as simple as breathing in and out a few times. But the real practice? It’s subtle. Slippery. Often confronting.

What I’ve come to understand is that we’re not absent-minded because we’re lazy—we’re absent because we’re conditioned to be elsewhere. Our culture rewards multi-tasking, anticipates the next thing, and commodifies attention like it’s a resource to be mined.

And the mind plays along. Left to its own devices, it wanders endlessly: replaying yesterday’s regrets, planning tomorrow’s defenses, scrolling through hypotheticals and mental to-do lists. Anything but resting here, in the uncomfortable, beautiful now.

In psychology, this tendency has a name: the “default mode network”—a brain system that activates when we’re not focused on the present task. It’s responsible for daydreaming, mental time travel, and self-referential thought. Useful for creativity and planning, yes. But when it dominates, it steals our life away moment by moment.

This is where Buddhist wisdom offers something extraordinary—not a rejection of thought, but a retraining of attention.

My first glimpse of mindfulness: a warehouse epiphany

Years ago, before the book, before the websites, before I even knew what mindfulness really was, I was working in a warehouse in Melbourne. My job was repetitive, my mind was noisy, and my soul felt like it was leaking out of my boots every time I clocked in.

Then one day, a supervisor barked at me for being “distracted.” I was packing boxes on autopilot—and missing things. The truth was, I wasn’t even there. I was reliving an argument from the weekend, mentally constructing the perfect comeback I never delivered.

That night, frustrated with myself, I Googled something like “how to stop overthinking.” That led me to a YouTube clip of Thich Nhat Hanh guiding a breathing meditation. It was just three minutes long. “Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.”

I scoffed at first. Too simple. Too gentle. But I did it anyway.

And something shifted.

For the first time in a long time, I felt my breath. I realized I’d been breathing all day but hadn’t noticed even once. That small moment of awareness—so ordinary, so quiet—was the beginning of everything.

The myth of ‘mindful moments’ and what’s actually possible

One of the biggest misconceptions I see today is that mindfulness is something you “do” in short bursts—a 10-minute guided session, a few deep breaths before a meeting. Those things are helpful, yes, but they can reinforce the idea that presence is reserved for special occasions.

But real mindfulness? It’s not an add-on. It’s a way of relating to every moment. And that includes the boring, stressful, and painful ones.

In Buddhist psychology, this practice is called “sati”—mindful awareness. It means knowing what’s happening as it’s happening. When you’re angry, you know you’re angry. When you’re eating, you know you’re eating. When you’re lost in thought, you notice that too.

This isn’t about perfection. You won’t always remember to come back. But each time you do—that’s a small awakening. A reclamation of your own life.

And it starts with the smallest possible unit of attention: this breath. This step. This sound. This feeling in your hands.

So instead of striving to be mindful all the time, try this question instead:

“Can I be fully here for just this one moment?”

Ask it while brushing your teeth. Waiting at a red light. Listening to a loved one. And if you forget? Just notice that you forgot. That is mindfulness, too.

What the research (and experience) tells us about paying attention

Psychologists like Ellen Langer and Jon Kabat-Zinn have spent decades studying mindfulness, and the data backs up what the ancient traditions have long known: mindful awareness reduces stress, improves focus, strengthens relationships, and even rewires the brain.

One Harvard study by Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) found that “a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” They tracked participants in real time and found that people were significantly less happy when their attention drifted—even when they were thinking about something pleasant. Presence, not pleasure, was the key to contentment.

But here’s the rub: mindfulness doesn’t promise constant happiness. What it promises is something more stable—intimacy with reality. A willingness to face life as it is, not as we wish it to be.

And that takes practice. Ongoing, gentle, courageous practice.

Reflective questions to begin your own journey

Over the years, I’ve returned to a few simple questions that help bring me back. I invite you to sit with them—not to answer them quickly, but to feel your way through them:

• When do I most often lose touch with the present moment?

• What does it feel like when I’m truly here?

• Can I allow discomfort without immediately reacting to it?

• What everyday task could become my meditation today?

• If this moment were my teacher, what would it be showing me?

You don’t need to journal all of these. Sometimes it’s enough to just ask—and listen.

Choosing presence when it’s the last thing you want to do

One of the greatest challenges of mindfulness is choosing it when everything in you wants to escape—when you’re overwhelmed, heartbroken, or consumed by anxiety.

But this, I’ve found, is when mindfulness becomes most powerful.

Several years ago, I lost someone close to me. I remember sitting at my desk, trying to write, and instead just watching the cursor blink like a metronome for my grief. I wanted to run—into distraction, into numbness, into anything but this unbearable now.

But I remembered something a monk once said to me in Chiang Mai: “Stay one breath longer than you think you can.”

So I did.

And that moment, as painful as it was, became a portal. Not to relief, but to realness. I felt the ache fully. I let the tears come without rushing to explain or fix. And strangely, that presence didn’t break me. It held me.

This is the paradox of mindfulness: it doesn’t remove suffering, but it changes your relationship to it. You’re no longer drowning—you’re swimming in deep water, but your head is above the surface.

What mindfulness gives back: the quiet joy of being alive

Practicing mindfulness in daily life hasn’t made me immune to stress or pain. But it has made me more available to life. I taste food more deeply. I listen to my wife with less interruption. I notice the light in the room, the sound of my daughter’s laugh, the way silence feels at 6 a.m. when the city is still sleeping.

Mindfulness doesn’t give you more time—it gives you this time.

And that’s everything.

This moment is waiting for you

If you take nothing else from this article, take this: your life is not happening elsewhere. It’s not in your plans, your worries, your regrets, or your highlight reel. It’s here. In the breath you’re taking. The screen you’re reading. The heartbeat you might notice if you pause long enough.

You don’t have to change your life to live more fully—you just have to show up for it.

So ask yourself gently:

“Am I here?”

If not, that’s okay. Just begin again. Always, you can begin again.