Only two simple words define the foundation of all there is: everything changes.

The trick – and it’s not magic – is learning to accept change with mindful clarity, especially when that change catches us off guard.

Here’s a very recent “Bruce” example. My laptop screen came up black the other night. None of the fixes I found online with my phone worked. The only remaining answer: get the broken machine to a repair shop. That was “acceptance one”. The proof: I slept as still as a brick in a wall that night.

The next morning, I shot off to Asheville expecting a “we’ll get it done while you wait” turnaround. Wrong. Michael at the shop told me I wouldn’t get a call with a diagnosis about the problem until Monday – maybe. That was “acceptance two”. The proof: a questioning “Really?” came to mind, and I felt it, but I let it go and barely skipped a beat. (I’m still definitely learning.)

In a recent post, I laid out the three ingredients that make us who and what we are: what we eat, how regularly and rigorously we move our bodies and how we manage what we think and how we behave. Not too long ago, I would’ve waisted a lot of energy bemoaning the “REALLY?!?” of the situation, and I’m certainly not now slapping myself on the back with a self-congratulatory “Good job, Bruce!” for not bemoaning. Instead, I owe a wholehearted thanks to the mindfulness and awakened consciousness training I’ve been practicing daily for the past two years through both the “Waking Up” app, which I came upon through the persistent urging of my darn good bud, Jay, and incorporating that training in my daily life as “moment-to-moment” as I can.

Again, there’s no magic to mindfulness/awakened consciousness. The concept is simple; everything changes, and those changes are never the same from one moment – or fraction of a moment – to the next.

For proof, and that’s the beauty of this; there really is proof: just notice what happens to all that you see, hear, touch, smell, taste, think and feel inside from just one breath to the next. Nothing is the same – ever. On a vastly larger scale, look at what happens in our cosmos. Everything is moving forward at both greater speed and toward greater disorder (aka “entropy”) from one fraction of a fraction of a second to another. You can then flip that scale around from the incredibly huge picture of the cosmos to the equally but oppositely extremely high-powered microscopic view of what happens at the quantum mechanical level. Every infinitesimal wave of energy is moving at near the speed of light, and nothing is ever the same.

Mind bending? Sure. But what does this mean to you – or to me as a guy who was told he won’t have a primary work tool, his laptop, for days or longer? It means accepting that reality that can’t be changed, not wasting energy sweating about it and then either letting it go, if the problem is completely out of your hands, or adapting to it, if the problem allows for that. In my instance, it meant learning how to use my phone to do a good part of what I’d normally do on my laptop, like writing this post and then promoting it on social media. Sure, that takes more time than it would on my computer, but I’m just as sure learning a lot about how to work better with my phone that has real and very practical application.

One last thing about practical application and where the rubber really hits the road. Sam Harris, “Waking Up” founder, often says at the end of his guided meditation sessions that the purpose of practicing meditation formally, during which he encourages listeners to find themselves in seated still position, is connecting and incorporating that formal practice with daily life. A few months after starting the formal guided meditation sessions in a still position, I thought closely about how I make that practice-to-living connection and how I could amp up how I incorporate it moment-to-moment in my daily life, as Sam Harris rightfully teaches.

Right away, I changed how I practice, and it has made – and continues to make – all the difference to living mindfully and consciously. Instead of being still when I listen to guided meditation, I move my body and go through my morning stretching & strengthening exercises while paying attention to what I hear. My reasoning for doing that: I’m barely ever still during my waking day. Even now, as I write this on my phone, I’m moving my fingers and my eyes and concentrating on what I’m doing. None of that is static.

Regarding how I adapted to my improvised change to formal practice, yes, I recognized a fall off in attention to guided meditation thoughts and ideas as they were being expressed the first week or so after starting to combine formal practice with movement, but that quickly turned around, and I credit that to the still-position practice I’d already had (and would highly recommend as a foundation to anyone else interested in varying or personalizing how they practice). Through practical application of what I’d learned in still-position formal practice, I learned to listen more attentively, and just as quickly recognized how much more richly the transition from practice to application was affecting my daily life, like realizing I couldn’t fix my laptop black screen and learning that a tool I rely on for many hours daily would not be available for days, which then gave me the opportunity to adapt.

Bottom line: Through daily mindfulness training, I now much better realize and accept that everything changes, just as I know that same recognition and acceptance will always be a work in progress. Now, when change happens, especially change that catches me off guard, I ask myself two things, “Will life go on, and will I be ok?” To answer with a merely obvious “yes” to both would be settling for a disappointing understatement. My answer: you bet, life will go on and both it and I are and will be better than ok.

Right here and now, I very much wish the same to you!