How to find the steadiness that holds when life won’t stay still.

I used to be addicted to the highs. But the highs were followed by lows.

I chased happiness the way you chase anything you’re hooked on. And because nothing lasts, the moment the high passed, I suffered.

Over the past few months, there has been much uncertainty and chaos in my life. Unfortunately, I allowed my practice to take a back seat instead of taking the more obvious and effective route, which would have been to invest more deeply in meditation, present-moment awareness, and yoga.

I learned the hard way.

Or maybe I needed to test what I preach and discover for myself just how essential this practice really is, and how much consistency matters.

Although we can’t beat ourselves up or give up if we’re not consistent. We simply have to keep coming back.

Just as with meditation, the practice is to keep coming back to the breath. Away from the mind. Back to the body. Back to the present moment.

There will always be things that happen in life, and there will be times when we can’t be as consistent as we’d like. But the important thing is to come back.

I want to talk about how practice is a path to equanimity.

Equanimity is essential in this world. It allows for clearer thinking under pressure, better relationships, and a lot more ease and peace of mind. The idea is not to get caught up in the unfolding of life, which is often chaotic, impermanent, and uncertain.

A key to living well during these turbulent times is the ability to access this equanimity, or inner stability.

It allows us to function from a place of presence without getting pulled around emotionally or psychologically by the reality unfolding in our lives.

It’s the ability to endure. It’s a resilience that enables us to return to a more natural, peaceful state that is inherent in our true nature.

From this balanced state, adapting becomes easier. We don’t resist as much, and we don’t react automatically. Instead, from this place of stability, we’re better able to respond to life in a grounded and balanced way.

This doesn’t mean uncomfortable things won’t happen. It doesn’t mean reality doesn’t exist. It means our relationship to reality is different. 

This doesn’t mean we stop working, stop making an effort, or stop making meaningful change in our lives. It simply means we do those things from a better place. A more balanced place. A more centered place. A more grounded place.

Equanimity isn’t something radical. It’s an underlying natural state that isn’t overly happy or overly sad. It isn’t caught up in everything that’s happening. It’s a kind of stability that exists beneath everything that’s constantly changing.

The more connected we are to that, the better we’re able to experience life as it is.

Equanimity has a long history. In Buddhism, it is one of the four sublime states, alongside loving-kindness, compassion, and joy in the good fortune of others. It is the one that holds the other three steady. Without it, loving-kindness turns into clinging. Compassion turns into drowning in someone else’s pain. And joy in someone else’s good fortune turns into envy. 

Equanimity is what lets us care fully without getting lost. 

I don’t think equanimity means we won’t experience the highs and lows of life. That addiction to the highs —  that’s what equanimity loosens. 

Without equanimity, we experience a high and become attached to it. But it doesn’t last because nothing lasts, and attachment to something that is always changing becomes suffering. 

Everything is impermanent, including our emotions and our thoughts.

One of the gifts of equanimity is that we don’t become as attached to those highs because we develop a more consistent relationship with that underlying steadiness.

Instead of constantly chasing happiness, we begin living from a place of contentment and ease. That’s a much more sustainable way to live than riding the roller coaster of constant highs and lows.

It works like addiction. The high doesn’t have to come from a substance. We can get hooked on a person, success, money, validation, or countless other things.

Because nothing stays the same, because everything is constantly changing, because uncertainty and impermanence are part of life, whatever we’re attached to will eventually change or disappear.

The moment that happens, we suffer.

This is not a new idea. The Buddha named this thirst, the constant reaching for the next thing, as the root of our suffering. And the thirst is not only for pleasure. It is for people, for success, for our own ideas about how things should stay.

So, how do we cultivate equanimity?

Practice Meeting What Is 

This is a short sitting practice, five to twelve minutes. The only instruction is to let everything be exactly as it is. Nothing to fix. Nothing to manage.

You sit, and you stop steering. Instead of focusing on one thing, you open and let everything in at once. The sounds in the room. The breath. Whatever you feel in the body. You feel into the moment with your senses. You don’t reach for any of it. No effort is involved. You let it come and go on its own.

When the mind wanders, and it will, you come back to a sound, a felt sensation (like the wind if you’re outdoors), or your breath. Those are your anchors. You don’t fight the wandering mind. You return to the present moment, to sensation, to breath.

If you notice tension in the body, don’t try to solve it. See the tension itself as a resistance to letting things be. Let the tension be there too.

When the mind starts narrating, or tries to run the meditation, notice it and settle back. Over time, you stop holding onto anything in particular and rest in the present moment. 

*If you’ve never meditated, treat this as a ten-day challenge. If you’re coming back after some time away, you might want to give it sixty days. The point is to begin, and to keep going past the day you set. There might be days you miss. That is not failure, and it is not worth judging yourself over. The practice is the returning. You miss a day, you come back. That is the whole thing.

This is the second essay in a series on how presence changes the way we live, relate, and create. If you missed the first, The Truth We Spend Our Lives Resisting is where it began, on why we suffer when we resist the nature of life.