A Meditation to Help You Make Any Decision—Big or Small
Release Date: 05/23/2025
A Practice for Turning Toward Difficulty
12 Minute Meditation
When we are experiencing difficult emotions or situations, our first impulse is often to look for a way out—usually through distracting, numbing, running, or denying. But what if the key to getting to the other side of difficulty is to simply be with it, offering the discomfort our courageous awareness and presence? In this week’s practice, author and meditation teacher Ed Halliwell guides us through a meditation we can lean on when things get tough. Note that this practice includes longer pauses of complete silence for reflection and presence. If you want...
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A Meditation to Help You Make Any Decision—Big or Small
12 Minute Meditation
You might not think of mindfulness as being a resource to help with decision-making, but moments of intentional silence can sharpen our mental clarity and help us discern which choices feel most aligned. In this guided practice, meditation teacher Toby Sola offers a simple technique you can use, whether you’re facing a life-changing choice or are just feeling overwhelmed by all the small decisions that often crowd our busy lives. Note that this practice includes pauses of complete silence that might be longer than our listeners are accustomed to. This is to give you time to...
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A Meditation to Ease Into Sleep
12 Minute Meditation
If you’ve ever been awake at three a.m., tossing and turning and wishing you could snap your fingers and get back to sleep, then you know: the more you try to fall asleep, the less likely you are to drift off. In this week’s guided practice, we’re revisiting a meditation with Mark Bertin that can release the striving, let go of tension, and make it easier for body and mind to settle into rest. A quick note: Since this is a sleep meditation, you won’t be hearing a closing bell or statement like usual, but instead just a drifting off into silence. If you’d like the...
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Explore 3 Techniques in This Meditation Buffet
12 Minute Meditation
Have you ever wondered why there are so many varieties of meditation practices, and why some of them seem to contradict each other in approach, style, or even objective? In today’s guided practice, meditation teacher Toby Sola walks us through three common types of meditation. Plus, he explains why the word “meditation” is very much like the word “sport”—and how all these different practices actually share the same overarching purpose. If you’re new to meditation or curious about trying new approaches, you’ll love this week’s practice. Note that there are...
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A Meditation on Connecting Lands and Stories
12 Minute Meditation
Many modern Western cultures don’t have a deep understanding of land as a source of collective identity, story, or purpose. There is a sense that, yes, land can be lovely—but it is mainly seen as a source of recreation or extraction, not necessarily as an integral part of what shapes us and future generations. In this guided practice, Indigenous scholar and teacher Yuria Celidwen introduces a fresh way to consider our connection to the natural spaces around us. This is a practice that invites reverence, gratitude, and belonging, where our experience of the earth moves from...
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A Meditation for Clarifying Your Motivations for Using Tech
12 Minute Meditation
Recent studies have confirmed that the constant presence and use of tech in our lives have become a hazard to our well-being on multiple levels. Meditation teacher, mindful tech designer, and self-identified tech lover Jay Vidyarthi observes, “It’s okay to enjoy technology. Tech becomes a problem when we get so attached to it that our lives fall out of balance—and this happens because a certain device or app or game or even your work email might satisfy a specific, lacking, healthy emotional need.” So how do we mindfully hold that tension and seek balance in our relationship to...
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An Interbeing Meditation for Connection and Understanding
12 Minute Meditation
If you’ve faced challenging or polarizing conversations lately, you likely know how difficult it can be to connect and cooperate with the person on the other side of that interaction. In today’s guided practice, Dr. Shalini Bahl invites us to explore our innate interconnectedness by recognizing our needs and those of others, so that we can be empowered to work together in new and creative ways that benefit all involved. This meditation is part of our Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement series, where we're sharing guided practices from the women featured in our 2025...
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A Forgiveness Meditation with Will Schneider
12 Minute Meditation
Forgiveness is a cornerstone practice of mindfulness, and it’s also one of the most difficult. Extending forgiveness to others and to ourselves requires a kind of awareness and vulnerability that can feel deeply uncomfortable, especially if we are carrying heavy stories of shame, anger, or resentment connected to that experience. In today’s guided practice, Will Schneider from Men Talking Mindfulness walks us through a forgiveness meditation filled with kindness, grace, and surrender that’s designed to help us walk a little lighter in the world. If you’d like the...
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A Meditation for Finding a Middle Way When We Are In Pain with Vidyamala Burch
12 Minute Meditation
Being in pain makes being present extra challenging. On a physical level, being in the present moment while our body is in pain is often extremely unpleasant. There is a part of us, understandably, that wishes we could escape from it entirely. At the same time, the experience of pain itself can be overwhelming—to our senses, our thoughts, our emotions. It can feel like drowning, when what we long for is just a moment of peace to rest in. In today’s guided meditation, longtime meditation teacher and pain expert Vidyamala Burch offers a tender practice to find a middle...
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A Meditation for Creating an Anchor of Inner Strength with Melli O'Brien
12 Minute Meditation
What does it feel like to experience ourselves—in our own minds and bodies—as a reliable place we can come home to in order to feel grateful, calm, and resilient? In this week’s guided meditation, Melli O’Brien walks us through a practice we can return to in times of uncertainty or challenge to remind us of our own inner strength. This meditation is part of our Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement series, where we're sharing guided practices from the women featured in our 2025 special edition of Mindful magazine. If you’d like the transcription of...
info_outlineYou might not think of mindfulness as being a resource to help with decision-making, but moments of intentional silence can sharpen our mental clarity and help us discern which choices feel most aligned.
In this guided practice, meditation teacher Toby Sola offers a simple technique you can use, whether you’re facing a life-changing choice or are just feeling overwhelmed by all the small decisions that often crowd our busy lives.
Note that this practice includes pauses of complete silence that might be longer than our listeners are accustomed to. This is to give you time to spend in contemplation. If you want more time, feel free to pause the recording as you go.
If you’d like the transcription of this guided meditation, it will be online on Mindful.org next week.
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Show Notes
Find more from Toby Sola and his company Brightmind here.
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