When meditating, I try to notice how is my breath as a gateway to awareness on the moment.

Quite often, when the notice was "successful", I would try to hold onto this awareness, and then it would slip away. It would barely last a few seconds. Either that or I would begin managing how I breathe, instead of just observing.

It was a constant loop:

1. Notice.
2. Hold.
3. Control (not just observing).
4. Feeling frustrated for "losing focus".

But a shift that happened while meditating was that, words appeared in me saying "if the present moves, then I have to renew my intentions, they cannot be static". Which writing it now feels "duh" - revelations can find you in funny positions at times.

In one of his short essays Miroslav Holub (translated by David Young) of his book "The Dimension of the Present Moment" writes:

I strongly suspect that we simply happen in segments and intervals, we are composed of frames flickering like frames of a film strip in a projector, emerging and collapsing into snake like loops on the floor, called the just-elapsed past.

So now, when meditating, if my intention is to give awareness to my breathing or any other state, it goes as the following:

1. Notice.
2. Notice.
3. Notice.
4. Notice.