Tool of the Week: The Mindfulness Scale Exercise
An exercise for noticing meaningful progress in our mindfulness practice
This week on The Practice Plan, we’re taking on one of the trickiest parts of building a mindfulness practice: knowing if it’s actually working.
In my experience, when I slow down and take a few deep breaths in a hard moment, the benefits feel pretty immediate. I can feel myself regulating, centering, feeling calmer. But many of the more prominent benefits we talk about with mindfulness, like reduced stress, enhanced creativity and self-awareness, higher job satisfaction, and more open-mindedness, are built slowly over time as grey matter is created in the brain. These benefits rarely announce themselves.
And because the progress is so gradual, we are usually not the first to notice it. It’s the people around us who notice we’re showing up differently.
It’s the gap between doing the work and seeing the payoff that makes mindfulness feel so nebulous. There’s no scoreboard.
That’s why I wanted to introduce what I like to call the Mindfulness Scale Exercise. This exercise gives us a way to benchmark where we are right now, using things we actually experience day-to-day, so we have a signal to track over time.
Before We Begin
Remember, the power of this work comes not only from understanding it, but practicing it.
If you’re an annual subscriber, utilize your 90-week workbook to capture reflections and track your practice.
If you’re an Elevate Program Alum, this can also be done in the Cohd Learning Portal.
Monthly subscribers can download the practice template below.
