“Habituation” is the phenomenon where we become desensitized to the same repeated stimuli. Right now, take a moment to notice the feeling of your clothes on your body. For the majority of us, we were not attuned to this sensation until we deliberately drew our attention to it. We experience the stimulus of our clothes on our skin all day long, so it becomes undetectable. For any stimulus that the body experiences consistently, our brains deem it unnecessary (and overwhelming) to respond. It’s a nifty trick our brains often do to keep us from being constantly overstimulated. However, this is also what makes staying mindfully present so challenging. If we wake up in the same bed, make the same coffee, take the same route to work, sit in the same office, and go home to the same living space, we become more “habituated” to our own lives. The stimuli we are so used to do not warrant our attention. They fade into the background.
We can break this “habituation” by drawing our attention to our surroundings with mindful intention. Can you pick up the coffee mug you use everyday and find every little thing you have never noticed about it before? Can you feel your chair underneath your legs? Can you even feel your own breath? These are invaluable mindfulness exercises. And yet, in my experience, the more familiar my surroundings, the more challenging it is to remind myself to practice.
The most natural moments to engage in mindfulness are when I am having a new experience and therefore receiving new stimuli. We may feel this most starkly when we make grand changes – moving to a new house, starting a new job, or traveling to a new city. We are more acutely aware of how everything feels anew. However, substantial changes are not required to evoke this sense of “newness” and vivacity. We have the opportunity to foster this sense in our everyday lives. If I’m walking down a street I’ve never seen, listening to a song I’ve never heard, or rearranging my bedroom in a new way, I am instantly more awakened to the present.
A personal challenge I have set out for myself this summer is to find opportunities to experience something new. It can be anything from a new route on my walk, a new menu item I have never tried, or a new place to read. This is a practice that does not require any particular landmark to begin, so give yourself permission to participate on any random day and tune into your new experience. The more variety of experiences we have, the wider life gets. The more mindfulness we practice, the deeper our present experience gets.
