Embrace Your Life

Can you welcome all experiences in your life for what they are? Barry Boyce finds, with practice, it’s a lot more doable than we may think.

Illustrations by Min Ahwon

The word “savoring” crops up a lot in instructions for mindful eating, but why stop there? Inspired by the notion of taking more time to appreciate things, I recently decided to challenge myself to a week of savoring.

As I started out, I began to see that I was automatically leaving lots of things out—things that were, well, unsavory, less than pleasant—so the challenge had to undergo some immediate reengineering. It would have to become about savoring everything. Yikes.

That immediately led me to the understanding that if I was going to savor the unsavory I would have to be thankful somehow for whatever came my way. I would have to make “thankfulness” the default mode. And not just a “Yeah, thanks,” kind of thankfulness, but a fully welcoming kind of thanking, what I came to call “savory thankfulness.” A mouthful, yes, but it captures the spirit of the thing.

That immediately led me to the understanding that if I was going to savor the unsavory I would have to be thankful somehow for whatever came my way.

If I were to do this, I would have to embrace the artificially sweetened (but still valuable)…

GROW YOUR MEDITATION PRACTICE


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About the author

Barry Boyce

Barry Boyce is Founding Editor of Mindful and Mindful.org. A longtime meditation practitioner and teacher—as well as a professional writer and editor— he is the editor of and a primary contributor to The Mindfulness Revolution: Leading Psychologists, Scientists, Artists, and Meditation Teachers on the Power of Mindfulness in Daily Life. Barry also worked closely with Congressman Tim Ryan, as developmental editor, on A Mindful Nation and The Real Food Revolution. Barry serves on the board of directors of the Foundation for a Mindful Society and the Centre for Mindfulness Studies in Toronto as well as on the advisory board of Peace in Schools, in Portland, Oregon.