alt Hacker NewsI'm trying to. I don't know how you know it's working. Maybe, sometimes I do feel present like I am in this building, this town right now.
It is funny, I bought an old phone of mine from the 2010s, I had a different mindset back then (try to make a shit ton of money through ads on a website). That did not happen but I had this ambition/tried to make a lot of dumb apps. I'm trying to get back to that mental state as now I can make like anything, back then I didn't even know how to generate a CSR like come on you amateur!
I use the phone as a grounding tool for meditation/try to go back in time what I was thinking back then. I also loaded it with old cloud photos from that time. It doesn't have internet.
Oh yeah, what does work for grounding you to reality is when you lose internet. Then you're grounded in reality, bored. What do I do with myself now.
> I don't know how you know it's working.
after a while it should feel like a refreshing nap. during the meditation itself, you're just doing a simple task and going along with it without resistance, like when sleeping. eventually the idea of "non-doing" will make more sense.
another way to look at it: upon waking each morning, you start with an empty glass. from this point, everything that enters your realm of awareness accumulates in this glass and at some point it will start overflowing if you don't manage what you're accumulating. meaning you can only effectively work with a certain amount of "stuff on your mind". So you shouldn't make a habit of carrying stress from the morning commute all day into affecting your afternoon meetings, for example.
take a few deep breaths and let the morning commute pass, and your glass is empty again. allow the glass to fill up with morning work, noticing and managing points of friction so they don't linger more than necessary. if you notice yourself getting overwhelmed or stressed about everything that comes up, you're overflowing and would likely benefit from some meditation. as you meditate more, it becomes more effortless so you won't be reliant on "doing meditation" as much.
the Plum Village app has a meditation bell that rings on a schedule (default is every 15 minutes). they recommend you take a few deep breaths to re-center and state your intention(s) for the moment. I started using it earlier this year and it has a noticeable effect over time, would highly recommend trying it out all day if possible. or at least during times where you're trying to do focused work but have a tendency to get distracted.