Mindfulness is a powerful way to get back in touch with your authentic self. By cultivating mindfulness and awareness of your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, you start to deepen your connection with yourself. Mindfulness helps you heighten your ability to “hear” your truth under the noise of everyday information overload, societal pressure, family expectations, and even your own protective layers. Through mindfulness, you take yourself off autopilot and begin to discover things that would otherwise escape your attention.

Meditation is one of the simplest and most accessible ways of bringing more mindfulness to your daily life and tapping into your authenticity. It allows you to meet yourself where you are and invites you to be with whatever comes up. It creates a safe and judgment-free space for parts of yourself to reveal themselves to you.

On top of increasing awareness and strengthening our connection with our authentic selves, meditation has many other benefits — like lowered stress, anxiety, and blood pressure, improved focus, memory, and sleep, and a boost in empathy and kindness — according to research.

I also know meditation is helpful from personal experience. I’ve practiced meditation off and on for years. I would love to tell you I have a strong and supple daily practice of 20+ minutes, but that would be a stretch. The truth is, some days I only get in half that time.

It helps me get in touch with myself and my truth. When I practice meditation regularly, I’m more centered, grounded, and rooted in myself. I find it easier to come back to what I’m really feeling, thinking, wanting throughout the day. It even helps me make decisions, because the awareness I cultivate through meditation lets me cut through what I think I should do and right to what I truly want or need to do.

And, whenever I skip a day, I feel it. I can tell. I feel less in touch with myself. Disconnected. A little cloudy and distracted.

So, for the first full week of helping you getting more authentic, as part of our Let in the AER Challenge, I’m inviting and encouraging you to practice 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation. You can do a guided meditation through an app like Headspace or Insight Timer, or just set your own timer and go for it. Below, I’ve included instructions based on what I usually do.

10 Minute Mindfulness Meditation for Authenticity Instructions

Sit in a comfortable upright position. A chair with back support or crosslegged on a cushion both work well. (The goal is to be comfortable enough that your body isn’t going to ache and stiffen as you tune into yourself. But not quite “ooh, I could nap” comfortable.)

Place your palms on your thighs wherever feels natural and easy.

Set a timer for 10 minutes.

Take a few long intentional breaths. Inhale deeply until your breath fills up your belly and chest and expands your rib cage. Exhale long and slow.

Let your eyes close gently or come to a half-closed, soft gaze.

Begin to scan your body from the top of your head, down through your toes. Just notice any sensations, then move downward with your next breath. Acknowledge any tension or discomfort you feel. Notice any tightness tension or discomfort you feel.

Feel the surface beneath your legs and feet. Know that you are supported by the chair, cushion, or ground beneath you.

Bring your attention to one spot where you feel your breath easily and strongly. This could be in your belly, the tips of your nostrils as you inhale, or your chest. There’s no wrong place to notice your breath.

Inhale and exhale normally without forcing any particular cadence or pattern.

Notice how each inhale feels in your body and how each exhale feels leaving.

If it helps, you can count each exhale. Inhale-exhale-1, Inhale-exhale-2. All the way to 10, then begin again at 1. (We count on the end of the exhale to avoid the urge to manipulate or force the breath into any kind of rhythm or to follow the count. The counting simply acknowledges the breath.)

When a thought comes up, just notice it and return your awareness to your breath. You do not need to engage or follow your thoughts. If it helps, you can label them by noting “thinking” or “thought”. Begin counting again from 1 if you lose your place. And know that it’s normal and OK to lose your place.

Notice any sensations in your body that accompany a particular thought or the return to the breath. You do not have to analyze it, just observe.

Keep coming back to your breath, in and out, until your timer goes off.

When your timer goes off, take a deep breath in and slowly open your eyes on the exhale. Stretch and shift to bring movement back to your body.

Notice how you feel as you move on to the next part of your day.

A few tips and reminders:

1. Make meditation a judgment-free space and time. Don’t judge yourself for what comes up. Just notice the thoughts and let them go on their way. Your goal is just to come back to the breath. Don’t judge yourself if you lose yourself in your thoughts or if it takes you a long time to return to the breath or if you’re having to start the count at 1 often. No matter what happens, you aren’t “doing it wrong”. Meditation is a practice-built skillset. The more you do it consistently, the more you build the muscle that lets you do it with more ease.

2. It’s OK if you don’t feel any different after you’ve meditated or throughout the rest of your day. It’s OK if you don’t feel any different after a few days in a row of meditating. It’s all OK.

3. Play around with finding the time of day that works best for your schedule and natural rhythms. For me, the best time to meditate is in the morning, before my brain is caffeinated and starts revving. But midday / lunch break meditation is a great way to recenter and recharge for the afternoon. And some people find meditating at night helps their minds settle easier before sleep. Maybe you’ll find a sweet spot or maybe you’ll find it shifts depending on the day.

4. Remember that you deserve you-time. No matter what else you have going on, what responsibilities you have and to whom, you’re doing right by everyone and everything in your life when you make yourself a priority.