Learning any new skill takes practice and exercise, mindfulness included. I recently learned a simple exercise from the very clever Ruby Wax. It's called CUES.

Focus your attention on your breathing whenever a specific environmental cue occurs. Here's how I've been using it: whenever I get an unexpected text notification, I use that cue as a reminder to bring my attention into the present moment for a few breaths.

Choose any cue that works for you. "Perhaps you will choose to become mindful every time you look in the mirror. Perhaps it will be every time your hands touch each other, or every time you hear a bird chirp." I've played around with using the hourly NPR news recap as a reminder. The options are endless and individual. 

If you're already focused on the present when a mindfulness cue hits, that's great and carry on. It isn't to distract you from the present, it's to snap you back to the present when your mind might otherwise be spinning in every other direction but now.

We've all been there. 

It's that day, that moment, when everything suddenly feels overwhelming. 

It's like that inbox you've been neglecting. The notifications are piling up for weeks, months. So many that it's almost too much to handle. You don't even want to handle. You literally can't even handle. 

It's the inbox of real life, and the messages have been piling up for some time: the to do list has gotten way too long; the little inadequacies you see in yourself keep interrupting; the friends you want to be there for you don't seem to be around. Every slight, every hesitation, every agitation piling up until one day, one moment, it boils over.

We've all been there. 
I've been there, quite recently. 

Clichédly speaking, life is full of ups and downs. Sometimes the ups are higher than you can ever imagine, sometimes the downs really fucking suck.

Knowing this will happen to you once in a while--knowing we've all been there--that doesn't make it any easier, especially when you're in the thick of it.

When you're feeling overwhelmed, pissed off, shitty, I say just feel it. Wallow in it. Don't put on a fake smile. Don't push yourself to pretend everything is fine. Just cry, scream, be angry.

This is all days, if not weeks, of pent-up negative energy you've been putting off, ignoring, pushing to the side. When you allow yourself to feel it, when you're present in your emotions, that's when you can begin to process it.

Write down how you feel. Verbal diarrhea all over the keyboard. Say it all. Say the things you've been meaning to say to yourself for years. Say the things you'd never ever tell another soul in your life. Get it out there, for yourself. Reread it. Marinate in it.

Talk to the people you love, because we've all been there. Send an text, make a call, go out to dinner. Maybe you think they won't understand. Maybe they actually won't understand. Who cares? If they love you they will care. 

That doesn't mean they'll react the way you want them to or have the advice you're looking for. In fact, they might only have horribly naive advice to give. But at least they're sitting there across from you, listening, wishing you the best. Having someone to talk to, even if they have nothing to say back, it's cathartic.

The truth is, once you allow yourself to wallow, marinate, process, and express your emotions, you feel... relief. 

Not that the problems themselves have gone away. Nope, they're all still there. But what you get from directly facing them is perspective. The fog clears, just a bit, and you begin to see a path forward. You see the potential. You get the energy to do something about it.

We've all been there and we'll all be there again. 

I can't tell you whether it will be easier or harder the next time around. But we can learn from this bout in the ring. We can learn to tackle our problems head on instead of letting them fester. We can learn how to be better people in the process.

It seems at least a few times a month I hear from someone who's considering a digital detox.

You look at the current world: notifications, apps, websites, emails, gmails, texts, tumblr, twitter, tinder, facebook, secret, instagram, hangouts, facetime, games, youtube, netflix, stream this, download that.

And then you look back to the days before all ^that^. Just 10 years ago we lived in a world that, for the most part, existed right in front of you instead of through the looking glass of the latest fad digital device.

There's a lot of problems to be found in today's digital world:

1. Addiction. That first "like" or "retweet" is like the first hit of a confidence boosting drug. It feels pretty good, so you want more. You start to think about every comment and every post, carefully crafting your online image to ensure maximum attention. You start to need those likes, and when you don't get them, you're depressed. 
   
2. Loneliness. When you first join Facebook it's exciting. You've found a way to stay in touch with old friends and learn about new friends. But somehow, that experience becomes alienating. Rather than encouraging the growth of friendships it seems to give people a pass to be passive and take friendships for granted.
3. Jealousy. The "grass is always greener" mentality has always existed, but on social media everyone is able to show off their grass so much more readily. They process it through a saturation, HDR-boost filter, making it seem extra green, extra shiny, extra perfect.

So you're stressed out, depressed, lonely, pissed off. Time to cut the digital cord, right? WRONG.

Long before the Internet existed, Buddha had this to say about it:

Deleting your Facebook account is like chopping off a huge limb of a tree. It immediately feels lighter, it lets the sunlight in, it's refreshing. But the roots, the problems you found in Facebook, they're all still there. The tree will grow back, you'll either reactivate your account or find another similar outlet. The addiction, loneliness, and jealousy continues.

Digital detox is a purge after years of binge. It's going from one extreme to another without dealing with the root of the problem.

Why not take a moderate approach? Take some small steps every day to prune the tree of our digital addiction:

• Turn off notifications. Stop the constant barrage of pings and vibrations that distract you from real life and tempt you to dive back into the digital world.
• Logout on your phone. This'll stop the notifications too, and place a small barrier between you and the lure of the digital distractions that await you on your device. 
• Turn off your phone for a few hours every day. Give yourself a break. Give yourself a chance to be present.
• Close the browser on your computer for a few hours every day. Only use your computer for soulful activities like writing.
  

Start small and trim the tree a little bit at a time. The more you do it, a little bit every day, the easier it gets. It becomes a pattern, a habit, the new norm. The craving for that digital hit becomes less and less. You replace it with a desire to experience real life.

My monthly challenge for August was to turn off notifications for non-essential apps. In September, I'm going to take this one step further: I'm logging out.

I'm not going to delete my Facebook account, I actually enjoy it and friendships and other connections I have there. But I also don't want it to be a distraction. I don't want it to feel consuming, to be the first thing I do when I'm bored and the last thing I do at night. I want trim the tree a little every day -- make my social media use smaller, more casual.

For at least 2 hours every day I'm logging out of Facebook and Instagram. Just a small pruning. Just a little a barrier between me and distraction. 

I challenge you all to do the same. Give it a try for one month, start with something small and easy. If at the end of the month it's made no difference in your life, then by all means log back in and let your phone buzz at you. Either way, you'll learn something about yourself. No harm no foul. 

#UNPLUG

The beauty, the happiness, the joy in the world doesn't come from the world. It's always there, all the time, in both the best and the bleakest. It's there on a relaxing vacation and a busy work day. It's there during a marathon run and bout with the flu. It's there in the bloom of spring and the fade of fall.

It's always there because the beauty comes from within you.

You see it when you're present. You see it when you really start to pay attention. You see it when you stop worrying about the past and the future. You see it whenever you choose to see it.

Stop whatever you're doing, pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and see the beauty. Smile. Say hello. Isn't she lovely? 

Return to your regularly scheduled program whenever you'd like, but always remember that beauty, and remember to check in with her, often.

Writing this blog is an incredibly uncomfortable exercise for me... and that's actually a good thing.

I've kept a journal and had countless conversations about these topics for years. But that was all behind closed doors. Publishing my thoughts on this website is a whole new ballgame.

Before I started this blog I knew two things would happen:

1. Posting these ideas for public consumption (and scrutiny) would make me uncomfortable.
   
2. Getting out of my comfort zone is really the best way for me to grow in life.

We all gravitate towards comfort. We follow patterns in our daily lives because they're familiar--we keep morning and evening rituals, we shop at the same stores, eat the same types of food, stick to a certain brand, visit our favorite websites, watch the same TV shows year after year, repeat the same types of exercise.

When something is familiar it's just easier--you know what to expect.

The unfamiliar on the other hand, is risky. You might hate it, or fail, or make a bad decision. When you do something unfamiliar you make yourself vulnerable.

But with the risk of the unknown also comes a lesson. What if it turns out the other store is more your style, a different news website is more balanced, or that other workout is more your speed? What if you do fail, but through that experience you learn how to avoid that failure in the future?

I got out of my comfort zone by starting this blog and sharing a piece of myself with you on a weekly basis. It's made me nervous, but I know that as I overcome those nerves it's making me stronger.

What new possibilities are you avoiding right now to stay comfortable? What are you going to do right now to get out of your comfort zone so you can finally move forward?

In this vast universe we call the internet, there will always someone to criticize or bemoan something. They are often bloggers (oh hai!), claim to be reporters, or sometimes they're even one of your Facebook "friends," but they're really just contrarians. 

Why are they stating things that are so easy refutable? The answer is simple: money. It's an advertising strategy pioneered by the likes of Drudge on the internet, Coulter in the newspapers, and Fox on the TV.

What they're giving you is not an opinion geared to spur public discourse and improve society or government - it's an effort to get more clicks/likes/shares by bucking the popular opinion, fudging the facts, eliciting anger from the masses, and creating arguments on comment threads and shared Facebook posts. 

Clicks/likes/shares/arguments = $$$

Your initial reaction is to get angry and spend your time formulating an angry response. But when you respond you're playing into their money-making scheme.

Don't do it. Don't feed the beast.

Observe your anger, shrug it off, and move along.