If you take a moment to imagine your mind as a puppy, mindfulness training becomes a bit clearer. Like our minds, puppies are chaotic and constantly getting themselves into trouble. One moment they’re investigating a bug. The next moment, they’re chewing on the sofa, and a moment later, they’re stuck behind the washing machine. Does that sound familiar? Our minds are just like puppies. They’re constantly darting between distractions, creating imaginary futures, replaying past events, and getting lost in over-analyzing every experience.
When training a puppy, one of the first things we do is teach it to sit and be still. We hope to accomplish something similar for our minds during mindfulness training. In practice, we choose to focus on one thing. Maybe it’s our breath, a mantra, or an image. Whatever the object, the purpose is to be mindful and fully in the moment instead of chasing after thoughts and feelings.
Everyone gets distracted, but when we catch ourselves being distracted, we reward our puppy mind. It’s common for people practicing mindfulness to become discouraged when they can’t get the puppy in their head to stay perfectly still, but how many of us have ever met a perfectly behaved puppy? If you have, you’re luckier than most! It’s called mindfulness “practice” for a reason—we’re working with our mind and encouraging it to sit more frequently and for longer periods.
It’s a moment of clarity when our mind catches itself overthinking. That’s when we reward the puppy in our head with a pat and a smile. Puppies respond best when rewarded and not when unnecessarily punished. This brings us to another important point. The first day we get a puppy home, we don’t hope to have it trained in 24 hours. Pushing a puppy too far and too fast rarely has positive or beneficial results. When practicing, consider stopping while still enjoying the practice and before it becomes too frustrating. This will ensure the puppy mind wants to return for more training.