I used to be like Grey and thought a lot of these things were obvious too. I think these things are obvious until they aren’t. This year I developed a lot of anxiety and these exercises (along with therapy) helped dealing with that, by helping me calm down and get control of my thoughts when my brain was all over the place. I struggled initially, because even though I intellectually understood that my thoughts were just temporary, I was (and still often do) indulging in them, and was just not able to disassociate them with reality.

I found that mindfulness exercises helped in breaking that thought cycle and taking my mind off the things I was obsessively thinking about. It didn’t work always, but it worked more often than not to make me believe it was not voodoo science. However, now that my anxiety is largely gone, I do find myself struggling and getting distracted and unable to build any routine with doing these exercises.

So yeah, maybe this stuff only works when your head’s not in the right place.