By the third winter of living in Brooklyn, I’d grown used to the 2 a.m. L train—its cars filled only with the snores of a homeless man and the half-finished PPT in my hand, my coat still carrying the stale, stuffy air-conditioning smell of Manhattan office buildings. Back then, I thought pausing in a city like New York meant getting left behind: my colleagues spent weekends networking at industry mixers, my boyfriend complained, “You’re always working overtime—it feels like we’re in a long-distance relationship,” and even my mom asked over video calls, “Should you just come home and find a stable job?”
Then came the panic attack—at 4 a.m., my heart raced so hard I couldn’t breathe, my hands numb to the point I couldn’t hold a cup. The doctor said, “You need to stop, or your body will break down.” Huddled on my apartment couch, staring at a cold slice of pizza in a takeout box, I called my roommate in tears for the first time: “I don’t think I can keep going.” In that moment, thoughts of “I’m ruined” flooded my mind: my boss had rejected another proposal, saying it “lacked New York’s edge”; my boyfriend had broken up with me the week before, admitting, “I need someone who can actually have dinner with me”; and I even hated myself for binge-watching Sex and the City under the covers on weekends, gorging on junk food while a pile of work sat untouched. I took this listlessness as proof I was “hopeless,” and this temporary slump as a sign “this is how my life will always be.”
My roommate didn’t lecture me—she just handed me a flyer for a community meditation class: “Thursday evenings, let’s talk about how to breathe easy in New York.” She added, “I went once before—everyone there is just like us.” Figuring I had nothing to lose, I pushed open the door to the community center that Thursday night. No solemn monks here—just a circle of folding chairs, filled with tired-looking young people in headphones: an investment bank analyst, a café barista, even another girl who worked in advertising like me. We sat around a space heater, holding printed sheets of text, talking not about esoteric Buddhist teachings, but about “how to stop insomnia after overtime” and “how to quiet the voice that says ‘I’m not good enough.’” It was in that tiny room that I first felt the warmth of “not being alone”—and slowly, using simple Buddhist practices rooted in the Buddha’s teachings, I started pulling myself out of the mire of anxiety.
The class leader, Mia, had struggled with anxiety too. On the first night, she didn’t hit us with dense sutras—she just held up a slip of paper with words the Buddha spoke on his deathbed: “All conditioned things are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, or shadows; they are as fleeting as dew or lightning. Contemplate them thus.” She laughed when she saw our confused faces. “I used to think this was just ‘ancient wisdom’ too—until I realized he was talking about the exact thing making us miserable: clinging to what doesn’t last.”
She told us a story from The Diamond Sutra: A man named Brahmā brought two bouquets of flowers to offer the Buddha. The Buddha said, “Let them go.” Brahmā set the flowers on the ground. Then the Buddha said, “Let go again.” Confused, Brahmā replied, “My hands are empty—what more can I release?” The Buddha answered, “You must let go of the world’s noise, your own harsh judgments, all the ‘shoulds’ weighing on you. Only when there’s nothing left to cling to will you stop hurting.”
This hit me like a punch. I thought about how I’d clung to “making it in New York” like a lifeline—rescheduling my boyfriend’s birthday to revise a proposal, working through stomachaches to “prove I’m tough,” even forcing myself to read industry reports on weekends when my eyes burned. I’d treated others’ ideas of success (a corner office, a compliment from my boss, Instagram photos of Manhattan sunsets) as permanent treasures, but they were just bubbles—here one minute, popped the next when a client rejected my work or my relationship fell apart.
Mia handed each of us a copy of another of the Buddha’s teachings: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, focus on the present moment.” She suggested a tiny practice: Each morning, sit for 10 minutes and simply notice your breath—just as the Buddha taught his disciples in The Anapanasati Sutta (the Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing). No fixing, no judging—just feeling the air cool as it enters, warm as it exits. That weekend, I wandered Brooklyn’s flea market and found a thin silver bracelet etched with the Six-Syllable Mantra. I bought it not as a “talisman,” but as something to hold onto when my mind spiraled back to “I’m not doing enough.”
From then on, I’d sit on my windowsill each morning, clutching the bracelet, and just breathe. At first, my thoughts would drift—to the unfinished PPT, to my ex’s face—but when I felt the engraving under my fingertips, I’d return to my breath, remembering the Buddha’s words: This thought, like this breath, comes and goes. It doesn’t define me.
One day, I burned a batch of cookies and sent a photo to my mom. She wrote back, laughing: “Better than when you dropped eggshells in the bowl as a kid.” I sat there, twisting the bracelet, and suddenly cried. I’d spent so long thinking I needed to be “excellent” to be loved, but my mom didn’t care about my proposals—she cared if I ate. My roommate didn’t care about my overtime—she left a light on for me when I came home late. These were the real, unshakable things the Buddha spoke of: connection, kindness, presence—not the “success bubble” I’d chased so hard.
Right after the breakup, I’d fallen into a vicious cycle: the more anxious I got, the less I wanted to do; the less I did, the more I called myself “lazy.” My laptop had three reminder emails about a proposal, but I’d binge Sex and the City all day, takeout boxes piling up on the coffee table until I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch. When I mumbled about this in class, Mia shook her head. “The Buddha never said we have to grind nonstop. In fact, he warned against such extremes.”
She told us about the Buddha’s journey before enlightenment: Back then, he was still Prince Siddhartha Gautama. To seek wisdom, he’d tried asceticism—eating only one grain of rice a day, starving until his ribs showed, weakening his body to the point he could barely stand. He thought “suffering” would lead to enlightenment, but it only made him more miserable and angry. Then one day, a shepherd girl offered him a bowl of milk porridge. He drank it, bathed in the Nairanjana River, and sat under the Bodhi Tree. It was there he realized the “Middle Way”: A string pulled too tight breaks; one too loose plays no music. Life needs balance—not indulgence, but also not cruelty to oneself.
“What you call ‘laziness’ is just your body crying for help,” Mia said, looking at me. “Just as the Buddha didn’t need to ‘keep suffering’ to find wisdom—he needed that bowl of porridge to survive—you don’t need to ‘push through’ your exhaustion. Your body is saying ‘I need to rest’—this isn’t ‘laziness,’ it’s self-preservation.”
After that, I started being gentler with myself: If I couldn’t get up early, I’d sleep in for 30 minutes instead of forcing myself to catch the first subway; if I didn’t feel like revising the proposal, I’d sit at the café downstairs and chat with the barista about “how nice the sun is today”; even if I stayed home on weekends, I stopped calling myself “wasting time”—instead, I tried to “accept the present moment” as the Buddha taught. I still held the bracelet for my breathing practice, but I no longer demanded “perfect focus”—if my mind wandered, I’d gently pull it back, no blame, no anxiety.
Slowly, I realized those “unproductive” days made me clearer: Progress isn’t “never stopping,” but “knowing when to walk and when to pause”; “excellence” isn’t “never failing, never resting,” but “being kind to the part of you that’s tired.” Just as the Buddha had to let go of the 执念 (attachment) that “asceticism = enlightenment,” I had to let go of the idea that “only nonstop hustle means I belong in New York”—and that’s when I finally made peace with myself.
Now, I still squeeze onto the morning subway in New York, still work overtime on proposals, but I have a new habit: Every time I feel the urge to “push harder,” I touch the bracelet on my wrist and remember the Buddha’s teaching—“Being kind to yourself is also part of the practice.” I no longer use self-hatred to “motivate” myself; instead, this gentleness has let me move forward more steadily, more calmly.
If you’re like I was—thinking “being hard on myself is motivation,” seeing “pausing” as “failing”—try that simple breathing practice. You don’t need to understand complex Buddhist teachings or seek “enlightenment.” Just for a moment, stop, and feel your breath—as the Buddha said, “Living in the present moment is the best practice of all.”
