MEDITATION TIP OF THE WEEK

…IS A  SERIES OF SHORT, EASY TO REMEMBER, AND BASIC TIPS ON HOW TO MEDITATE. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, IS IT HELPFUL?

If You’re Not Failing, You’re Not Trying

Have you ever tried to meditate and found that while you weren’t having much success in your meditation practice, you were getting plenty of practice in failing?  Great, keep on failing!

You may have heard this idea before but please bear with me here for a moment. Have you ever watched a baby learn to walk? A baby learns to walk by standing up, and then falling down, and then standing up again, taking a step, and then walking and falling, and then…standing up again. After falling, the baby doesn’t sit on the floor and deliberate about whether it will ever walk again, it just gets up and tries again!

So, why is it that so many people tell me that they “can’t meditate” because they tried to meditate once…or even a number of times, and failed. Why is it that we’re so willing to give up on training and taming our mind when the benefits are so incredible?

I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work – Thomas Edison

The Definition of Meditation

When you try to meditate and it “doesn’t work” do you get frustrated or wonder whether you’re wasting your time? Or do you give yourself a special label as someone who is “not able to meditate?” Maybe your difficulty isn’t your meditation practice, maybe it’s how you define meditation.

One of the problems that I encountered when I was learning to meditate was getting stuck in what I thought “meditation should be.” I would sit for an hour, realize half-way through that I’d been distracted, thinking about my finances, and then I’d distract myself even more thinking that I’d failed miserably. Or, I’d have 3 minutes of “bliss” and spend the rest of the time thinking that I’d achieved some great state of meditation. In both cases, I was wrong!

I’ve shared this definition of meditation before, that meditation is a state of non-distraction. It’s about not altering your mind with thoughts about your thoughts. So, when you’re meditating and you become distracted, do you give yourself a hard time for your failure? Isn’t that just another distraction?

Judgement of Your Meditation Practice is Your Only Failure

We think that a session of meditation where we don’t experience any challenges is a “good” session and that a session where we’re distracted is “bad.”And we’re so quick to judge ourselves when we “fail” in our efforts or are distracted.

What we don’t realize is that just taking the time to sit and practice meditation is a success! Deciding to work with your mind, realizing that it will bring you and others the benefit of your presence, is an amazing success! Even failure is a success because it means that you’ve taken the time to try!

Because we’re so used to labeling things as “good” and “bad,” it’s easy to get caught up in labeling our meditation. If there is any “failure” in your meditation practice, it’s probably your judgement about your efforts and the labeling them as a failure.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm – Winston Churchill

Regardless of Your Successes (or Failures), Learning to Meditate May Not Be Easy

In a previous post I wrote that learning to meditate may not be easy, at least not at first. One of the the main things that makes learning difficult is our belief that somehow we’re doing it wrong. Now that you know that even your failures can be part of your successful path to practice, what will you do differently? I would suggest trying many small sessions throughout the day and not worrying about whether you “succeed” or “fail” during those times, just take the time to do it!

Think about this, how would it change your experience of meditation if, no matter what, you accepted your meditation practice as successful? How would you feel if even your failure to meditate when you’re trying to meditate was a success? Would that help you to practice? Maybe you’d even find that you gain as much in your failures as you do when you succeed.

This site has tons of tools for learning how to meditate and be compassionate.

I encourage you to look through the HUNDREDS of articles that I’ve written and other useful meditation materials provided for your health and well being. Please let me know if you’d like to discuss anything with me, have any questions or need clarification regarding anything that I’ve written about.

Other Great Meditation Resources and Information:

For More Information on How to Meditate

Please view the Related Stuff below for help getting started in your meditation practice! Also don’t forget to download my free e-book, Can Meditation Change the Way that You View Your World? and download the free e-book, How to Work with the Four Distractions to Meditation and get started learning how to deal with some of the major obstacles in meditation.

As always, please feel free to share your comments on meditation and contact me if you’d like to see additional content or other discussions on this site.