Moments of Stillness
Moments of Stillness
30 Day Reset Reflection - Starting a Mindfulness Practice
At the end of my last newsletter, Reset and Refine, I encouraged anyone taking part in the 30 Day Reset to notice what changed, what they learned about themselves and, when the 30 days were over, decide what they were ready to carry forward.
Having just completed the 30 days, what I am choosing to carry forward is probably not what I expected.
I am very comfortable with many of the foundations of health. I enjoy training, I prioritise good nutrition and I understand the value of sleep and recovery. The Reset gave me an opportunity to revisit and refine all these things, but the area I became most curious about was mindfulness.
I have tried meditation several times before, usually with an app or guided practice, but it has never really become part of my routine. This time I wanted to approach it a little differently. I did not want another app or another voice in my ears. I wanted to see whether I could simply sit quietly and become comfortable with stillness.
That sounds simple, but I quickly discovered that, for me, it was not.
Learning to Sit in Quiet
I started with a timed five minutes.
I am someone whose mind is always busy, thinking about or listening to something. I train, coach, study, plan, read and listen to podcasts. Even when I walk or run, there is often something playing in my ears. I journal regularly and value the time that gives me to reflect, but journalling still involves actively thinking, processing and trying to make sense of things.
Sitting quietly asked something different of me. For five minutes I was not trying to learn anything, work anything out or achieve anything. I would close my eyes and bring my attention to my breath, move through a body scan or simply listen to the sounds around me.
Those first five-minute alarms felt surprisingly long. My mind wandered constantly and I became distracted by thoughts about what I needed to do, things that had happened and things that might happen next.
One of the things I have learned is that the wandering mind is not evidence that meditation has failed. When I listened to Jon Kabat-Zinn, a renowned mindfulness teacher and researcher, speaking with high-performance psychologist Dr Michael Gervais on the Finding Mastery podcast, they explored the idea that mind wandering is part of the practice.
The skill is becoming aware that our attention has wandered and learning to return.
I began to recognise that this was okay. I could simply notice where my thoughts had gone and come back to my breath, my body or the sounds around me. Soon, five minutes became ten or sometimes longer, but there was no longer a particular target I was trying to reach.
Finding the Space to Pause
As I continued with the practice, I noticed a sense of calm and awareness that I had not found in my previous attempts at meditation practice. It was not dramatic and it certainly was not present every time I sat down. Life did not suddenly become quieter because I had started meditating. What began to change was my awareness of the space between what I was thinking or feeling and how I responded to it.
I have long loved this quote, often attributed to Viktor Frankl:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Perhaps that is why this part of mindfulness has resonated with me so much. I was not learning how to stop thoughts or feelings from appearing. I was learning to notice them without necessarily needing to react to them or work them out immediately. Sometimes there was an opportunity to pause.
Around the same time, something I read in a Finding Mastery Newsletter from Dr Michael Gervais stayed with me. He described letting go as a skill. It does not mean giving up, but creating enough space for clarity, flexibility and authenticity to show up.
I could see how closely that connected with what I was beginning to experience. During meditation, a thought would come, my mind would wander, I would notice it and then come back. I did not have to follow every thought simply because it was there or work everything out in that moment.
Perhaps that is part of what I am learning to practise: the ability to pause, let go of what I do not need to hold onto in that moment, and come back to what is in front of me.
Finding Stillness in Other Places
I also started noticing those moments beyond the time I had deliberately set aside to meditate.
I found them at the end of a walk or run when I resisted the urge to immediately move on to whatever was next. I noticed them in the sauna and even in the ice bath, where focusing on my breath and being present changed my experience of the discomfort. I became more aware of the little spaces during my day that I might previously have filled without thinking about it.
The practice itself might have been five, ten or fifteen minutes, but it was making me more aware of opportunities to pause throughout the rest of my day.
I also started sharing what I was doing with my Longevity classes. At the end of a training session, we would spend three to five minutes being still, closing our eyes if comfortable and bringing our attention to our breathing. After spending the class moving, lifting, balancing and challenging ourselves physically, it gave us a few minutes to slow our breathing and settle before heading back into the rest of the day.
I liked the contrast. We spend a great deal of time talking about what our bodies need us to do as we age. We need to maintain muscle, challenge our bones, protect our cardiovascular fitness, eat well, sleep and continue doing things that require effort. I believe strongly in those things, but I am learning there is also value in practising the ability to stop.
Research in older adults suggests mindfulness practices may provide modest benefits across areas including stress, anxiety, sleep and mental wellbeing. We spend so much time thinking about how to live longer and stay physically capable, but perhaps another worthwhile question is:
How present are we for the life we already have?
What I Am Carrying Forward
The intention of a 30 Day Reset is not to immediately solve a problem. What 30 days can give us is an opportunity to explore something deliberately, notice what changes and learn something about ourselves. I certainly have not mastered meditation. My mind is still busy, it still wanders and I still get distracted, but I no longer see that as evidence that I am doing it badly.
What I have learned is to keep coming back. My attention wanders, I notice and I return. Life gets noisy, I notice and I find a moment to pause. Sometimes I can let go of a thought or feeling rather than holding onto it so tightly. It does not require perfection, just awareness and a willingness to practise.
At the end of Reset and Refine, I wrote that we will not know unless we are willing to challenge our normal. This Reset has made me see that a little differently. Challenging our normal does not always mean doing more. Sometimes it might mean turning something off, leaving the headphones behind, putting the phone down or simply giving ourselves five quiet minutes without needing to fill them.
Meditation or mindfulness will look different for everyone, but perhaps there is value in becoming curious about where moments of stillness already exist in our lives and what we might notice if we stayed there a little longer.
For me, the most unexpected lesson of these 30 days has been discovering the value of the pause. That is something I want to keep practising.
References and Further Reading
Rajan, A., Kumar, M. & Raj P, P. (2026). Effects of mindfulness-based interventions on perceived stress among non-clinical adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. npj Mental Health Research, 5, 9. DOI: 10.1038/s44184-026-00188-4.
Mindfulness Interventions in Older Adults for Mental Health and Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Volume 80, Issue 4, 2025. DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbae205.
Kabat-Zinn, J. with Gervais, M. (2026). The Psychology of Awareness. Finding Mastery Podcast, Episode 567.
Finding Mastery. Friday Focus: The Art of Letting Go. Dr Michael Gervais and the Finding Mastery Team.
