The fear itself

What actually makes something unpleasant?

I was on the rowing machine this morning and drudging through doing a mile on it (not a big deal). It was unpleasant in a way that I often find cardio exercise unpleasant when I am not in a rhythm of doing it: it took effort and I felt a certain level of anxiety because I knew it would be tiring.

When I thought more about it, the thing I found unpleasant was not actually the exertion or the fatigue. Instead it was the anxiety I felt about the exertion and fatigue. And anxiety is inherently future-focused. When I managed to simply focus on the feeling of my body as I rowed a mile (again, not a big deal at all), it felt nice and clear and easy. Taking in only the raw, unprocessed data of the rowing as it was happening made the experience a much better one.

It is not easy to remain in this state. I find that I can do it for a few seconds at a time before my mind starts pulling the future forward again. But it makes many negative experiences better and I find it empowering to feel like I am not entirely captive to my mind’s interpretation of the world.

I believe that thinking this way is an outcome of several years of a modest but fairly consistent meditation habit (perhaps an average of 10 minutes per day, three days per week for ~5 years). This is how I have come to understand “mindfulness:” allowing yourself to purely take in the raw inputs of an experience instead of letting your mind default to interpretation and feelings which sit on top of the raw inputs.