it starts with learning to stay

I used to think that mindfulness was about finding peace. Quiet mind. A still body. Some version of peace that would settle over me like a warm blanket if I practiced enough.

It didn’t start out that way for me. Not even close.

When I was in my early twenties and working in a warehouse in Melbourne rearranging TVs, mindfulness was anything but peaceful. It was brutal. During the break, I sat on the box with my phone in my hand and read about Buddhism, while my back hurt and the same questions were running through my head: What am I doing here? When will it get better? Why is my psychology degree worthless in the real world?

I didn’t meditate my way to serenity. I was just trying to survive with my own head.

And I think that’s where mindfulness starts for most people. Not at peace. It is not clear. But in the raw, uncomfortable decision to stay with something you’d rather run away from.

There is a word in psychology for this: distress tolerance. It’s not a bright concept. Health retreats are not sold here. But research from Peking University found that distress tolerance is one of the key mechanisms by which mindfulness actually works. In other words, mindfulness doesn’t help you by relieving discomfort. It helps you by changing your relationship to it, developing your ability to stay present when everything inside you wants to disappear.

This finding did not surprise me when I read it. It described what I was already living.

Because in that composition I did not achieve enlightenment. I was just learning, slowly, painfully, to stop running from the fact that my life wasn’t what I thought it would be. To sit with the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be without being numb to the distraction and drowning in self-pity.

Here I am staying. And staying is the most difficult thing.

Most of us come to mindfulness because we are hurting. We’ve read articles, seen apps, heard that meditation reduces stress. And maybe. But what no one warns you about is that before it diminishes anything, it increases your awareness of everything. Anxieties you’ve been ahead of. Bored you scrolled. Sadness sits under your busyness.

Attention does not give peace. He hands you the mirror. And then asks not to look away.

I remember the first time I tried to sit with my restlessness during a meditation session. I lasted maybe ninety seconds before grabbing my phone. The second time is two minutes. The third, I reached five. Not because I found silence in those five minutes, but because I stopped expecting it.

This shift is more important than people realize. You don’t train not to feel anything. You train yourself to feel everything and not flinch. Or at least flinch and then come back.

When I eventually left Australia and moved to Vietnam, I thought I was making a bold, life-changing change. And in a way I was. But I also carried everything with me: restlessness, self-doubt, the habit of reaching for the next thing instead of being with the current.

Saigon didn’t fix it. It exposed him.

Living in a city of nine million people, where the traffic never stops and the noise is constant, is a special feeling. I remember morning jogs around District 1, sweat pouring off me in the tropical heat, motorbikes whizzing past, exhaust-laden air, and the smell of pho from sidewalk kitchens. Everything in me wanted to go into the air conditioning and the silence.

But during those runs, something shifted. Instead of resisting the chaos, I just started… being in it. Don’t love, don’t hate, just stay. A feeling of warmth, not wanting it to go away. Hearing the horns without straining. Allow the discomfort to be without making it a problem.

This is the practice. Not the “sitting on a pillow in a quiet room” version that looks good on Instagram. The version where your shirt is soaked and the taxi almost cuts your elbow and your legs hurt and you keep going anyway, not because you’re tough, but because you’ve learned that wanting to stop isn’t always a signal to stop.

Buddhism has a concept for this, although it took me years to connect the philosophy with my own experience. The Second Noble Truth points to craving and aversion as the root of suffering. Not the pain itself, but the desperate desire to get more of what feels good and less of what feels bad. Constant pulling and rolling back.

Mindfulness breaks this cycle. Not by eliminating craving or aversion, but by creating a small gap between feeling and response. You notice an urge to check your phone instead of just checking it. You feel the impulse to snap at your partner rather than just snap. You feel the urge to worry and you don’t follow it for a second.

One second. That’s all it takes to change the template.

But here’s what no one tells you about that one second: It doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like nothing. It feels like you’ve been sitting around suffering and haven’t even had the pleasure of a good distraction. Where did the dopamine go? Where is the relief?

He is not there. And that’s the point.

Relief comes later. In a few weeks, maybe months. One day you realize that what used to spiral you is now just… bothering you. It still bothers you, but it doesn’t consume you. You’ve stayed with him so many times that he’s lost the power to throw you off balance.

Now I see it in my meditation practice, which is very different. Sometimes I sit for thirty minutes. A few days, five. When my daughter was a newborn, some days I sat for exactly the amount of time between her falling asleep and waking up, which could be forty-five seconds. The duration doesn’t matter as much as the act of sitting down in the first place, choosing to face what’s in my head instead of running the ever-present playlist of distractions.

The truth is that she taught me to stay more than any book or retreat. Babies don’t care about your need for peace and quiet. They need your presence, right now, in the mess, noise, and chaos of 3 am. You can’t intellectualize your way out of a crying baby. You can only be there.

And this is perhaps the simplest definition of mindfulness I’ve ever come across: being present. Don’t be calm. Not in the center. Not being in any particular way at all. Just being there, no matter what happens, without rushing to the exit.

I think we’ve overcomplicated it. The wellness industry sells mindfulness as a destination, a blissful state you arrive at after enough practice and the right program subscription. But in the Buddhist tradition I’ve studied and tried to live (imperfectly) for over ten years, mindfulness is not a destination. This is the direction. You appeal to the experience, not from it. That’s all. That’s all the practice.

Turning to what is difficult. Because what you turn to is not always pleasant. Sometimes it’s grief. Sometimes it’s a failure. Sometimes it’s the quiet realization that you’ve been avoiding a conversation you need to have, or a truth you need to face, or a part of yourself you’d rather not face.

I still struggle with this. I still find myself reaching for my phone when an uncomfortable thought pops up. I still notice a desire to plan my way out of uncertainty rather than sit in it. The difference is not that the urges have stopped. It’s that I get to know them faster and give in to them a little less often.

Progress in mindfulness goes like this: You catch yourself a second earlier. That’s all. A second earlier than yesterday, than last week, than last year. It’s not dramatic. It’s not Instagram worthy. But it’s real, and it adds up.

When I sit in a Saigon cafe now, drinking black coffee and watching the street life, I sometimes think of that warehouse in Melbourne. The version of me sitting on a drawer, reading about impermanence on a cracked phone screen and trying to make sense of a life that didn’t yet have meaning. He was not peaceful. He was not wise. He just stayed.

And this, it turns out, is enough.

It turns out that it all starts with staying, with one simple, ugly act. Not peace. Not that clarity. Not a transformation. Just a willingness to be exactly where you are, feeling exactly what you feel, for one more breath than you think you can handle.

This is mindfulness. It begins long before peace. It starts with learning to stay.

2 minute practice

The next time you find yourself reaching for your phone, scrolling, or otherwise distracted, pause.

Set a timer for two minutes.

Don’t do anything. Do not meditate in any formal sense.

Just sit with what you’ve been trying to avoid. Name it if you can: boredom, anxiety, worry, sadness. You don’t need to fix it or analyze it. Just leave it there for two minutes. When the timer goes off, get on with your day.

That’s the whole practice: don’t run for two minutes.

Common pitfalls

• Assuming that “real” mindfulness is supposed to feel peaceful. If you’re restless, irritable, or bored during your workout, you’re not doing it wrong. You do it.
• Using mindfulness as another form of avoidance, turning meditation into a way of avoiding difficult emotions rather than facing them.
• Measuring progress by how calm you are, not how quickly you notice you’re not.
• Quit because the early stages are uncomfortable. Discomfort is not a sign that mindfulness isn’t working. This is a sign that it is.

Simple takeout

• Mindfulness does not begin with peace. It starts with deciding to stay present when you want to leave.
• Distress tolerance, not attenuation, is one of the primary mechanisms by which mindfulness helps.
• Progress looks like catching yourself a second earlier, not reaching an empty mind.
• It is normal to want to avoid discomfort. Noticing desire without giving in to it is practice.
• Two minutes of being with something uncomfortable teaches you more than an hour of comfortable distraction.