5 Ways to Practice Detachment, the Skill That’ll Get You Through the Day

Any day, really

Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash

Whenever our elementary school teacher handed out homework, a murmur went through the crowd: “Ugh!” “Oh no!” “Not again!” Inevitably, one kid would shout, “We don’t want to!” and, without fail, she would say: “Then you’ll just have to do it without wanting.”

Part of life is that life sometimes sucks. To accept this and not be swayed by it is a skill you can learn. That skill is called detachment.

Detachment has many benefits, but the biggest one by far is that it’ll get you through any day, no matter how bad that day gets. Even when things look bleak, detachment allows you to go about your day — to go on, and that’s the part that matters.

At its core, detachment is not adding more suffering in imagination to what you endure in reality. It’s not about disconnecting from said reality or ignoring your emotions; the opposite is the case. When you stay in the moment and acknowledge your feelings, it becomes easier to move past whatever that moment brings and however you feel in it.

Here are five ways to practice detachment. I hope they’ll help you get through even the toughest of days.

1. Don’t judge things before they happen…

…especially the things you know will have to happen but don’t want to do — like your homework, for example.

I can waste a great deal of time, thoughts, and energy on the fact that I don’t want to spend yet another three hours staring at my tax spreadsheet — or I can just start staring. Once I make some coffee, play some music, and get going, it might not be so bad. How can I know before I start? I can’t, but I think I do, and that ruins the experience before it’s even begun.

This goes as much for things we’re excited about as it goes for events we deeply fear. When I spend eight hours thinking, “Getting ice cream will be great!” I set myself up for disappointment if the shop happens to be closed. When I worry about my plane crashing, it doesn’t make a plane crash more likely — it just makes me worried.

A judgment made in advance is nothing but an expectation, and when we form expectations about what’ll…