Sixty seconds. That's the whole thing.

I want to give you something I actually do, not something I read about. It takes one minute. You need no app, no cushion, no quiet room, no idea what you're doing.

Sit down, or lie down. Eyes closed or open — it truly doesn't matter. Then count silently backwards from sixty to zero. One number per second, roughly. That's all of it.

Here is the only rule: each second is the point. Not reaching zero. You're not achieving anything. You're spending sixty seconds on purpose, awake, while nothing is asked of you.

Thoughts will show up. That's fine, they always do. Just go back to the number you left. If you lose the count, start wherever you think you were. Nobody is checking.

And when you get to zero: your heart is still beating. Your lungs are still working. Life is still happening. You just watched a minute of it instead of missing it.

I use this in the middle of bad days. Before difficult calls. In a bathroom at an airport. On the days I feel furthest from myself, it's the one thing that still fits — because a minute is small enough that no part of me can argue with it.

Try it once today. Not because it will fix anything. Because sixty seconds of being awake in your own life is a strange and good thing to give yourself.

Where focus goes, energy flows.