The problem with mindfulness is that it spread across the world unhinged from the philosophy of human goodness that was supposed to underpin it. A sniper has to be mindful, in the sense of living in a state of complete presence and awareness; but he wouldn’t do much for the Dalai Lama. It doesn’t have to be religious necessarily, but mindfulness has to be principled, otherwise it’s just a guy in California eating a raisin really, really slowly.

This was the starting point for the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom, a modest but global organisation calling itself Buddhism’s “secular wing”. It’s just round the corner from my house, as fortune would have it, and I’ve imbibed the benevolent self-acceptance that suffuses its scruffy south London headquarters – above a vegan cafe, next to a Buddhist film archive – but you do your own work on the 16 Guidelines app. Every day, you choose a value to live by and spend five minutes thinking deeply about what it means.

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I began with “patience”. Think for a moment: what does it mean to you? I couldn’t do that, since everyone knows what patience means. It’s so unambiguous. It’s like thinking about salt. I skipped to the app’s definition, “to cultivate a calm and spacious mind”, which is not what I’d have said (“to wait for stuff without being bad-tempered”), and realised I lacked the patience to competently define patience. That was sobering, which was a bonus, as “sober” isn’t one of the guidelines.

Then I took some time to think about how I could live my day in patience, and what effect that might have, and I was still trying to concentrate and check Twitter at the same time, when I chose my “practical and stimulating” tip (it was that or “calming and inspirational”): “Do you have any personal hesitation or resistance around this guideline?” Yes! I would rather eat earth than meditate on patience for 17 more seconds. “Go gently. If difficult emotions such as anxiety, frustration or fear come up, it’s important to treat yourself with kindness and sensitivity.” There was a short homily in which a velvety voice asked me to imagine any situation that was actually improved by losing your cool, and I had to admit, no, none.

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I vowed to be better, then lived the day uneventfully – it’s hard to test any virtues when it’s just you and dog, maybe “delight” – picked up the kids from school, got resistance to my planned non-visit to a sweetshop, and I’ve never been such an arsehole in my life, stomping ahead of them up the road like a sulking horse. The very opposite of patience, like I’d used it up by thinking about it. “Gratitude” and “aspiration” were OK, “service” and “humility” were exhausting. It is surprisingly hard and so, inevitably, also testing, fascinating and revealing. “More mindful” is hard to measure; “better person” is a bold claim. But I can imagine, if the right situation bisected the value of the day, behaving fractionally better in it. And this is huge.

This week I learned

“Right speech” is one of the guidelines, and means “to speak with insight and sensitivity”. If I take this too far, I’ll be out of a job.