The Art of Noticing: How Mindfulness Helped Me Move from Discipline to Dedication

By Nyrobi Manuel

September 1, 2025 marked the first day of my six-month transformation plan which was really a personal experiment in rebuilding my life with intention. I decided to focus on three main areas: nutrition, health and wellness, and spirituality. I’ve started too many “get my life together” plans before, but this time felt different. I knew that if I wanted lasting change, I had to rethink my relationship with discipline. I used to believe discipline meant pushing through no matter how I felt, but as I began this journey, I realized sustainable growth is about noticing. It’s about listening to my body, being adaptable, and paying attention to the small shifts that signal what I really need.

Meditation Seeping Into My Life

I sit for ten minutes each morning, attend Buddhist meditation meetings, and help co-facilitate a DBT Mindfulness Skills Group through my internship at Mindful Insights. In our weekly supervision meetings we complete mindfulness homework. Somewhere between sitting on the mat, guiding others, and doing these assignments myself, mindfulness stopped being something I practiced and became something I lived.

On the mat, I learned how to name and describe sensations in my body without judgment. I used the “observe and describe” skills from the wise mind concept in DBT. One week, our group focused on smell: the sting of onion, the sweetness of orange. I noticed how my body reacted: the onion tightening my chest and the orange softening it. Another week centered on sight. As I stared at a photo of my family from graduation, tears welled up. Instead of asking Why am I crying?, I simply let it happen and gave it space. For someone who often lives in my head, these small exercises restored feeling and realness back into my body.

During a loving-kindness practice at my Buddhist group, I felt that lesson deepen. Sending warmth to people I love made my chest feel open and bright; sending it to people I struggle with made my heart harden. That physical closing told me something words couldn’t. That compassion and emotions are not  just an idea; my body tells the truth.

The Art of Noticing

That awareness carried into daily life. This one mindfulness exercise, “The Room You Know So Well”, asked me to observe details I’d never noticed in a familiar space. I paired it with my goal of one screen-free hour before bed. Without my phone, I saw things I’d missed like a price tag still stuck to my lampshade, and the way it constantly shook with the AC vent above it. I also noticed my thoughts. Instead of drowning in them, I started seeing them as information. I could sit with an anxious thought without feeding it. That practice followed me everywhere: when I felt cravings, when I didn’t want to go to the gym, when I was overwhelmed. I realized that noticing my thoughts gave me a choice.

That realization deepened during a meditation retreat, when I left with the mantra: I choose my beliefs. I notice my thoughts to change my story. Just because I have a thought doesn’t mean I have to believe it. By noticing, I could decide which beliefs aligned with who I’m becoming.

From Discipline to Dedication

I began noticing my body, too. How fried food made me feel heavy, how whole meals made me feel clear; how my energy shifted across my cycle; how lack of sleep dulled everything. I stopped forcing myself to meet unrealistic standards and started trusting my rhythms. My body became an information center that tells me when to pause, when to move, when to let go.

Those small shifts changed everything. When I felt drained, I rested. When something felt off, I listened instead of ignoring it. When my mind was noisy, I slowed down enough to hear it. Each act of noticing became an act of devotion. It’s not about perfect discipline anymore, it’s about flow. Noticing helped me soften control into care, turning routines into rituals and goals into a lifestyle.

I used to think transformation meant becoming someone new. Now I know it begins with something much simpler: noticing the life that’s already here, and meeting it with awareness.