Have faith or confidence that even when you feel like you’re totally wasting your time,
you’re not.
As Bob Roth, a prominent teacher of Transcendental Meditation has said, “Even in a shallow
dive, we get wet”.
Hi this is Supreet.
I am an engineer-turned-leadership trainer.
I make videos about personal growth, meditation and self-help book summaries every week.
For many of us, when we meditate, we find it hard to focus on our object of focus, which
could be the breath, the body, a sound, a mantra etc.
Our monkey mind takes over and we get non-stop thoughts.
Our attention wanders away from our object of focus and we get carried away by our thoughts.
Just like this!
When we get distracted during meditation, we think we’re doing it all wrong.
I used to think exactly that.
That I suck at meditation.
That I am wasting my time doing “bad meditation”.
I used to think that I am unique in having non-stop thoughts and that with my monkey
mind, I can never meditate.
That was the reason I gave it up so many times.
My first 2 years of meditation were on and off, on and off.
Something I didn’t know then, is that we are not supposed to stop our thoughts in meditation.
We are supposed to just observe them, without any judgement.
Just like you cannot stop your heart from beating, you cannot [insert pic brain] stop
your mind from generating thoughts.
Each time you notice that your attention has wandered, simply bring it back to your object
of focus, without beating yourself up.
Bringing our wandering attention back, as many times as needed, is a good exercise because
every time we do that, we are growing our muscles of attention.
So instead of getting frustrated, reward yourself for noticing that you got distracted by thoughts,
because the moment you notice you are not present, you are present!
The more you practice bringing your attention back, the less you will need to do it.
Even when you have become good at meditation, you will still get distracted, but because
your attention muscle has become strong, you will be able to recover a wandering attention
quicker and often.
I have been meditating for 6 years now, and I still get lots of thoughts.
On some days, my sessions are 99% monkey mind.
And that’s ok.
In fact, such “bad” sessions can often be where you grow the most.
Have faith or confidence that even when you feel like you’re totally wasting your time,
you’re not.
As Bob Roth, a prominent teacher of Transcendental Meditation has said, “Even in a shallow
dive, we get wet”.
Another reason why you may think your meditation session went bad is that at the end of it,
you didn’t feel relaxed.
Maybe you felt even more agitated and perhaps angry at yourself, for not doing it right,
or for wasting your time.
I have certainly felt like that, when I was new to meditation.
The problem here is …Expectations!.
Expectations are the cause of misery in life, and also in meditation.
Meditation is not about feeling a certain way.
It’s about feeling the way you feel.
Letting thoughts and emotions come, and observing them without judgement.
Often times, you’re not actually struggling with meditating, you’re struggling with
unrealistic expectations and an idealized image of what you think “should” be happening.
In the book Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics, Dan Harris says that “If you’re expecting
meditation to be a bubble bath or a blissful, laser-focussed escape from your relentless
inner news crawl, you’re likely setting yourself up for disappointment.”
So try to go into meditation without any expectations.
Generate an attitude of faith, trust and confidence in your own ability.
Rather than striving and straining, focus on the positive, pleasant elements of each
session.
Joyful effort and diligence are the right attitude.
The goal is to be open to whatever comes up, and to approach it all with mindfulness, friendliness
and curiosity.
When you see yourself doubting the quality of your session, just notice it as a thought
and label it as “doubt”.
To learn more about labelling your thoughts, which is a meditation technique, you can watch
my video which is linked in the description.
Don’t measure your meditation by the quality of your last sit.
Instead, measure it by the quality of your actual life.
How are your relationships?
Are you a better listener?
Are you losing your temper less frequently?
As Sharon Salzberg has said, “We don’t meditate to get better at meditating, we mediate
to get better at life”.
If you are new to meditation, this playlist has a bunch of quick and easy meditation techniques.
And this playlist has my best tips for beginners, that would help you get over the initial hurdles
and make the meditation habit stick.
See you next week, keep growing!