How everything you do can be enhanced by mindfulness

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• GWEN IFILL:

  Now to our weekly feature Brief But Spectacular.

  Tonight, Trudy Goodman urges to take — step back and take a deep breath.

• TRUDY GOODMAN, Founder, InsightLA:

  Meditation is a way to be mindful without mixing it up with other activities, because we're always doing other activities. We're on our devices. We're connected. We don't ever have to be with ourselves.

  That sense of both all the time in the world and the urgency of what we need to do right now, they can peacefully coexist and they can come together. The trouble with explaining this work is that it is so simple that we don't want to believe it.

  Mindful walking. Mindful eating. Mindful listening. What activity wouldn't be helped or enhanced by bringing more focus and care and attentiveness to it, as well as lessening the grip of ego of our investment in everything we do, because that is the biggest source of stress.

  It's like building muscle with repetitions at the gym. Each moment that we do this, each moment that we are here for it and stay with it builds the strength to endure moments that we might not have any choice about enduring.

  We become aware that we're operating through this frame of expectation and comparing what is to what should be. And the awareness of that itself seems to just sort of polish and clean the lens, and that polishing of the lens, the light-gathering device, helps us appreciate what is here, instead of longing for what isn't.

  My name is Trudy Goodman, and this is my Brief but Spectacular take on mindfulness meditation.