The Hidden Key to Informal Meditation: Unlock Your Brain’s Urge to Be Happy Anytime, Anywhere

I love my formal meditation. It’s taken me more than a few years to get there, but I love connecting every morning to a basic sense of okayness that is always there. I find this easiest to recognize early in the day when my body is still and my mind is free of distractions.

Informal meditation, the practice of bringing awareness to daily activities, has always been more of a struggle. It’s only recently that I’ve figured out how to bring it alive and make it stick.

I’m not sure how I got it into my head that informal meditation is exclusively about bringing awareness to mundane activities in such a way as to slow them down. No matter how many times I’ve tried to get my brain to believe that this will juice my curiosity and make life more interesting, it remains stubbornly attached to the idea that this is just making already boring things even more boring.

Then one day my meditation teacher encouraged me to focus on the intention behind the daily actions rather than action itself. He challenged me to notice how the intention behind every activity, no matter how mundane, is driven either by the desire to be happy, or the urge to reduce suffering.

I tried this out first in the transition between formal meditation and morning writing. After meditation, I make some tea, and while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, I check in on the dishes situation. Does anything need to be loaded into or unloaded from the dishwasher? Do I need to run it, etc.

I used to do this all while my mind drifted off to whatever excitements or anxieties it was already anticipating for the day ahead. But these days I ground my attention in the comfort I anticipate from the tea, and the suffering I imagine from the specter of a sink full of yuckiness. If I remember, I appreciate that I care enough about myself to take these small actions. Then in my sustained state of mild happiness, I take my tea to my desk, settle into my comfy egg shaped office chair, and jot down any insights that might have drifted up so far from my morning activities.

It’s definitely working. The secret sauce to a good informal meditation is the warmth of loving kindness and compassion. Tibetan Buddhists believe that the mind is more present in the heart than in the head. Locked into your heart somewhere is the reason you do what you do and when you take the time to connect with and appreciate it, that flow of basic goodness gradually opens up a little stronger.

There’s good neuroscience behind this practice. Compassion meditation is strongly correlated with the release of dopamine. But one thing that’s easy to forget is that dopamine is released not only when an action is complete, but when the body is anticipating an action. It rewards us right before we do an action. So when we pay attention to our intention, we amplify those smaller releases of dopamine that we experience with routine activities. This sustains our motivation to stay with healthy routines, and leaves us less vulnerable to the need to level up our dopamine with more intense, but potentially draining activities.

The Buddhist sage, Longchenpa, wrote:

“You may recognize your own nature, but if you do not meditate and get used to it, you will be like a baby left on a battlefield: you’ll be carried off by the enemy, the hostile army of your own thoughts!”

Meditation may help you recognize your basic okayness, but if you don’t protect it with a robust, sustainable informal meditation practice, it’s like having to be born again everyday. And who wants that life!