Formal meditation is only one part of mindfulness training. If you want to become more aware and present during the ordinary moments of life, you have to practice noticing.

Our assignment in the third week of MBSR was to keep a daily log of pleasant events, noting our physical sensations, feelings, and thoughts. We also paid attention to how we were “relating” to each experience. Were we pushing it away or hurrying through it? Holding onto it? Or just “being with” it—that is, staying in the moment and observing, not judging.

Most of us rush through our days oblivious to our moment-to-moment experience. When you start looking, you might discover, as I did, how many opportunities for pleasure slip by.

My week of recording pleasant experiences was perfectly ordinary. I wasn’t on vacation in an exotic locale. There were no birthdays to celebrate or parties to attend. I drove to work every day on the Beltway. I came home after work and cooked dinner. I packed lunch for the next day. I paid bills, booked dental appointments, scheduled household repairs, and vacuumed up the dirt the dogs tracked onto the living room rug.  Sometimes the weather was dreary and unseasonably cold.

But I was able to discover pleasure in small, everyday events. I enjoyed drinking my coffee on Saturday morning, noticing the aroma of the freshly ground beans and feeling content to have some time to myself. I relished my Sunday ritual of completing the NY Times Crossword (in ink), feeling focused, engaged, and proud to be continuing my father’s tradition. I took in the bright yellow forsythia when I walked out onto the deck one day before work and appreciated the coming of spring. I even observed, while sitting in traffic one morning on the route taking me into the city, the sun glistening on the Potomac, the rowers gliding through the water in their skulls, and the greenery budding on either side of the road. Not a bad way to start the day.

The following week’s home practice was to observe unpleasant experiences in the same way, recording physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings, as well as how we related to the events. Not surprisingly, the predominant way of relating to unpleasant events is to push them away.

But here’s where it gets tricky. If you want to cultivate mindfulness and acceptance—attitudes helpful in dealing with pain, stress, and other aversive emotional and physical states—you need to allow yourself to “be with” the unpleasant experiences rather than avoiding them, bracing yourself against them, or actively pushing them away.

Why, you might ask, would you want to let yourself feel bad? Because, counterintuitive as it might seem, allowing the full range of internal reactions to unfold and observing them without piling on the negative interpretations we usually make can lessen the distress.

My unpleasant events for the week were mundane. They mostly involved driving:  sitting in rush hour traffic on the way to work when I was running late, having the driver next to me speed up and cut me off when I was trying to merge into his lane, seeing another car beat me to the parking space I’d had my eye on.

So I noticed my chest tightening and my jaw clenching.  My hand balled into a fist and pounded on the steering wheel.  I heard myself cursing out loud once or twice. And I tried just to observe.

I can’t say I ever achieved a total Zen state of calm during my commute. But practicing being mindful made the experience a little more interesting and maybe even a touch less frustrating.

In my next dispatch from the mindfulness front, I’ll talk about another challenge: how to keep up with all the mindfulness exercises.