Inner Peace Won’t Save You (But Knowing This Might)
Stillness Doesn’t Come in a Subscription Box
When Mindfulness Feels Like a Luxury
At first, mindfulness felt... foreign.
Growing up in a third-world country, it seemed like a luxury reserved for the privileged — something distant, impractical, even indulgent. Where I’m from, survival was the priority. No one talked about “sitting with yourself” or “being present.” Life demanded motion. Stillness wasn’t a concept; it was a risk.
For years, I carried the belief that mindfulness belonged to someone else — someone with time, resources, and space. It wasn’t until my mid-20s that I began to unlearn that. I realized mindfulness wasn’t locked behind $3,000 retreats or sleek meditation apps. It was something much more accessible, profoundly human — yet no one had taught me the free and deeply personal ways to reconnect, to simply be.
Don’t get me wrong — courses, tools, apps — they can all help. But I often wonder how many more of us could benefit if mindfulness wasn’t wrapped in consumerism, but grounded in simplicity and truth.
As both a therapist and someone who’s walked this road, I’ve seen — in my clients and in my past self — how mindfulness can feel hollow or performative. Often, it’s been reduced to “just breathe” or “try meditating” without context or compassion.
But mindfulness isn’t just breathwork. It’s not about curating calm for display.
It’s about healing — from the inside out. It’s about feeling without judgment, being without needing to perform or prove.
The Rise of Marketable Mindfulness: A Brief History
Mindfulness wasn’t always a business.
Its roots stretch back centuries — born from Buddhist traditions and other ancient spiritual lineages, rooted in presence, compassion, and liberation. In the late 1970s, Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced these principles into the mainstream through Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), later followed by Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), blending mindfulness with psychology to prevent depression relapse.
These approaches built a foundation for mindfulness in clinical spaces, backed by evidence:
Anxiety: Moderate to large reductions (Hedges' g ≈ 0.60)
Depression: Moderate improvements (Hedges' g ≈ 0.55)
Stress: Noticeable relief in high-stress groups
Plus: gains in emotional regulation, sleep, chronic pain, rumination, and focus.
But somewhere along the way, the heart of mindfulness got swept into capitalism’s current. Today, it’s been reshaped — sold to us like a brand, a product, a lifestyle to achieve.
Performance vs. Practice: When Mindfulness Becomes Aesthetic
I’ve lost count of the times I felt like I wasn’t “doing mindfulness right” — especially in comparison to friends or influencers in perfectly curated wellness spaces.
It stopped feeling like an internal sanctuary and started feeling like a performance.
As if I needed the right journal, the right playlist, the right aesthetically pleasing corner of my home to “achieve” presence.
It took time — and a lot of unlearning — to realize how disconnected I felt from my actual self because of that.
Mindfulness is not a performance. It’s a personal, messy, evolving journey. My peace isn’t validated by how it looks to others — it’s defined by how it feels within me.
Now, I’m in a space where I trust my own rhythm, my own ways of being still. I take what resonates, and I leave the rest. That’s what I want for others too: to trust their own connection to self — no filter, no need for external validation.
You are already enough.
The Consumerism Cycle: Feeding the “Not Enough” Wound
I see it in therapy. I’ve lived it too.
This quiet, pervasive message:
You’re not enough — yet.
And there’s always something new being sold to fix it:
A new app to “optimize” your mindfulness.
A luxury retreat promising transformation.
A $50 guided journal to “shift your mindset.”
These tools aren’t inherently bad. But the message underneath is what harms:
"Buy this, and you’ll find peace."
"You’re not whole — but maybe with just one more purchase..."
It becomes a self-improvement trap — a consumerist loop that masks itself as healing.
But peace? It’s not something we achieve through consumption. It’s something we nurture by allowing ourselves to be — imperfect, unpolished, enough.
Reclaiming Mindfulness: No Purchase Necessary
What if presence wasn’t something to “earn”?
What if being here, now, didn’t need a price tag?
Here’s what I’ve learned — both in practice and in life:
Some of the most healing moments are the simplest:
Feeling the ground beneath your feet, your body anchoring you.
Placing a hand on your chest, listening to the rise and fall of breath.
Noticing the warmth of tea in your hands, the color of the sky, the rhythm of your heart.
Walking barefoot on earth, feeling whole without effort.
No cost. No subscription. Just you, in your body, in your life. That’s powerful.
Closing Reflection
So I leave you with this:
What parts of your mindfulness practice are truly yours — and what have you been sold?
You don’t need permission slips. You don’t need aesthetics. You don’t need optimization.
Your presence isn’t a product. Your peace isn’t for sale.
It’s already within you.
💡 Check out my Etsy shop, Mental Nesting! Thoughtfully designed mental health-inspired mugs, tees, and more to inspire self-care and connection. 👉 Visit here
