There’s a million YouTube videos about how to meditate, and apps, and gurus running around, and a lot of that stuff is great. I wanted to offer something that isn’t great: awful meditation for super-harried, overwhelmed, ordinary people like you and me.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty ordinary. I’m trying to get through the day, and making a mess of things half the time. It’s a good life, but something’s always going sideways.

Maybe you’re not as ordinary as me, maybe you’ve got your s**t together. But maybe you, too, are just trying to get through today, trying to live a meaningful life, trying to be slightly sane and grounded and clear-seeing.

From a Buddhist point of view, the important thing is to practice grounding ourselves in peacefulness before we jump into the surf of everyday life.

It’s like we’re below the ocean. Everything’s calm, moving around a little. Then we come up to the crashing waves. We want to be prepared for that moment.

The idea is basically that when we first wake up, no matter what’s happening, we can do 45 seconds of sitting meditation. We can do two minutes of meditation. It can be awful meditation, without flashes of insight or lightning bolts of enlightenment…but it’ll change your whole, ordinary day.

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