I often hear a common question from those who are learning how to practice mindfulness. The question is “How do I know when I’m doing it the right way?” This is often preceded by some mention of the fact that they don’t seem to be able to concentrate as well as they would like, or something about too many thoughts interfering with the concentration (sometimes they say meditation). In response, I usually ask for a description of what they are doing.

More often than not, the person describes a reasonable mindfulness practice routine, but they are still concerned with getting it “just right” or overly anxious about how many extraneous thoughts they have while they are practicing. It is sometimes difficult to convince others that there is no “just right” when it comes to mindfulness practice. Anything that involves non-judgmentally paying attention to the environment while recognizing and releasing extraneous thoughts is mindfulness practice. 

Some people focus on one thing while others focus on multiple things in succession, one at a time. There is no “right” or “wrong” thing on which to focus. Some people usually focus on some aspect of their breathing because it’s easy. Breath is something we always have with us. But you can focus on whatever you want. You don’t have to focus on the same thing for an entire practice session, but if you change your focus you should stick with the new thing for a while so you can practice gently setting aside extraneous thoughts while you focus on the new thing. There is a meditation practice that involves focusing on whatever thought comes to mind, and another one in which someone tries to have no thoughts, and still another practice where the attempted focus is everything all at once, but those are not mindfulness practices. Mindfulness practice involves focusing on one thing non-judgmentally while gently setting aside any extraneous thoughts.

Similarly, some people have a lot of extraneous thoughts, and some have only a few. There is no number of extraneous thoughts that are “too many” thoughts. Nor are there some number of thoughts that are “too few.” Everyone is going to have some extraneous thoughts, and setting aside those extraneous thoughts non-judgmentally is what mindfulness practice is all about. When you start to wonder if you are having too many, or too few, extraneous thoughts, set that thought aside non-judgmentally and return your focus to the chosen object or idea.

So long as you are focusing on something and gently letting go of anything else that comes to mind, you are doing it right; you are practicing mindfulness. Some days are going to involve more thoughts than others, some days are going to involve more distracting thoughts than others. It’s all still practice. Some days are going to feel successful, and some days are going to feel like a complete failure. It’s all good. The practice is setting aside, gently and non-judgmentally, extraneous thoughts. Do that, and you are doing it right.