YEAR OF ZEN: WINTER: DAY 44

M51 (MIRI image)

Q: How might you encourage someone new to practice when boredom is making it hard to remember that it is part of the practice and process?

A: By giving the same encouragement I give to myself and have learned through experience: make something routine and the assumed boredom will fall away as it becomes a true practice. A lesson from recent experience: when I was making alcohol consumption a routine part of my week during the pandemic I couldn’t envision how evenings without it would be anything but boring. And then I committed to scaling back and the new non-alcohol routines and patterns that have emerged have become a bright spot and simply part of my practice and process.