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A “Beautiful” Acronym to Build Resilience and Endurance Through Difficulty
A Simple Acronym: B.E.L.L.A.
Staying mindful is no easy task. Whether you’re sitting and meditating, or attempting to do an activity mindfully, certain things tend to get in the way of being present and basking in the moment. The Buddhists have a name for these things: hindrances. There are 5 of them, but I won’t break them all down here. Suffice it to say, they are negative thoughts and feelings. We’ve all experienced them, and they can take many forms. We get physically uncomfortable, we get bored, an attractive or compulsive thought or urge pulls at our mind to run away from the moment. And so on.
Our minds will never completely stop doing these things; it’s just how they are. So the idea is not to try to force our minds to act as we’d like them to, but rather to be welcoming of adversity in our thoughts and feelings. One of my favorite meditation teachers, Gil Fronsdal, once gave a talk about an acronym that he came up with called BELLA. It describes what he suggests we do when we face difficulties with staying mindful. I lay out my own explanation of the process below.
Be
You may be peaceful and happy one second, and all of the sudden feel anxiety, sadness, or an urge to jump up and do something else. When that…
