- When you meditate, do you want a still, peaceful, and non-chatty mind?
- After each meditation, do you analyze what you could have done better?
- Do you strive hard to be a “good” mediator?
If you answer yes to any of these three questions then this post is for you.
Until the past few years, I answered yes to all three questions, and I thought the “yes” indicated that I was a good meditation student. I have discovered, subsequently, that each “yes” only made meditation harder for me and pushed “success” further out of my reach.
I’m writing this post because I feel sad and frustrated that there are so many people who want to meditate, but want to give-up. When in reality, you are truly successful meditators … you just don’t recognize what a great job you’re doing.
So, let’s briefly look at each of the three questions from a realistic and kind-hearted way.
Wanting A Still, Peaceful And Non-Chatty Mind.
Asking the mind to stop bubbling up thoughts is like asking your kidneys to stop filtering or your heart to stop beating. A thought-producing mind is just the way we humans got designed. For years, I demanded, struggled with, and beat myself up because the mind wouldn’t stay quiet. And then one afternoon on a two-month meditation retreat, I realized that stopping the mind from bubbling up thoughts was like asking the earth to stop rotating. It can’t be done.
The mind thinks – and I have the choice of what I want to do with those constant thoughts. True, sometimes on retreats after long days of meditation, the mind quiets. On a day-to-day basis, however, that’s not the case. I meditate with a talkative mind. And that’s OK. It talks and I observe, and even sometimes, I get caught up in captivating thoughts for long periods of time. And that’s OK too.
What’s important is that I’ve found a certain amount of grace and peace with an ungraceful and unpeaceful mind. Talkative-mind and I no long fight with each other, so my meditations now offer gentleness – even as the mind keeps the thoughts coming.
Analyzing Each Meditation Looking For What You Can Do Better.
Educational psychology, learning theory, and change theory all tell us that success builds on success … not focusing on failures. In other words, achievement comes from finding what you’ve done right and then to keep doing more of it.
Yes, we live in societies that tell us to focus on the problems if we want to fix them. But that’s not how we learn. When children begin walking, they don’t concentrate on their falls, missteps, or clumsiness. Rather, they ignore these imperfections and just keep figuring out how to put one foot in front of another. They don’t beat themselves up for not getting it “right.”
When you finish your meditation, whether it’s for five or 45 minutes, look for the visible victories. Analyze what you did well, and then focus on how you can build on those successes. And you will!
During meditation, even the smallest victory is a great victory
Working Hard At Meditation
Believe it or not, it is possible to try too hard to meditate. We each have our own fine line between right effort and too much effort that turns into painfully tight muscles, anxiousness about failure, self-criticism, anger, self-defeatism … and the list goes on.
Usually, when we struggle for the perfect meditation, we’re holding ourselves to impossible standards, which only force us to try even harder. Now, our self-talk becomes a barrage of self-criticism and guilt – because we’ve failing to “succeed.” The result, not surprisingly, is that people give up. Nobody likes to feel bad about themselves.
Sometimes, it’s more effective to just meditate and not worry if you’re doing it right or wrong. Just do it. And if the mind thinks the entire time, that’s fine too. You’ve still had a great meditation because you didn’t run away … you courageously took your meditation seat and sat with all that chatter, planning, stress, agitation, pain, and unpleasantness.
And you’ve had greater success than meditating with the most perfectly quiet mind – because it’s easy to meditate when the mind remains calm. You’re truly victorious when you remain seated in the face of a Level 5 mental hurricane.
So, accept a chattering mind. Look for all of your wonderful small successes. And relax, letting the experience be what it is … there’s nothing to change.
And above all, feel good about yourself and your wonderful meditations.
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