Top Three Reasons it’s Hard to Meditate
I want to make meditation easier for people. We all know that it is good for our health to meditate yet how many of us actually do so on a regular basis? Here are the top three reasons clients give regarding why they don’t meditate:
- I am too busy to meditate. I can hardly do all of the things I need to do in a day as it is.
- I am no good at meditating. My mind wanders all over the place and I can’t sit still.
- I’ve tried meditating in the past and it gave me a lot more peace in my life. I don’t know why I don’t do it now.
Reasons You Need to Meditate
- You need to meditate precisely because you are too busy. One of the greatest benefits of regular meditation is that it can help us restructure our time so that we become more time efficient in the long run. For example, when I meditate, I sit and observe how I am attending to my ‘to do’ list and can then prioritize tasks and let go of the not-so-important ones which helps me save time and feel a sense of accomplishment by the end of the day.
- Nobody is good at meditating; even monks who have been practising it for years. The natural state of our mind is to wander and our body to be restless. That is precisely why we need to meditate on a regular basis. Luckily, we don’t have to be good at meditation in order to receive its incredible benefits.
- If you meditated before and received great benefits, you can do it again. Asking yourself why you don’t do it now is useless. It’s like exercise: you just have to do it. I find that even the worst meditation is better than no meditation.
Meditation Resources
As well as online courses, I also recommend meditation apps:
The Easiest Way to Start a Meditation Practise: The Insight Timer App
My Favourite Meditation Podcast- Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris
While I listen to a number of meditation podcasts regularly, the one I keep coming back to the most is Ten Percent Happier hosted by Dan Harris, former journalist for ABC News. I have a special fondness for him because he had a nationally televised panic attack and used that unbelievably painful experience to turn his life around. Instead of running from the pain or stuffing it down with substances, he began a long journey of deep self-exploration which ultimately led him to meditation and Buddhism.
Dan’s Story
Harris realized that the source of his problems was the very thing he always thought was his greatest asset: the incessant, insatiable voice in his head, which had propelled him through the ranks of a hypercompetitive business, but had also led him to make the profoundly stupid decisions that provoked his on-air freak-out.
Eventually Harris stumbled upon an effective way to rein in that voice, something he always assumed to be either impossible or useless: meditation, a tool that research suggests can do everything from lower your blood pressure to essentially rewire your brain.
Ten Percent Happier allows me to give you access to a free one-month trial of the Ten Percent Happier app with all of its amazing offerings. Try it out for yourself and feel the difference!
What is your experience with meditation?
I want to create a conversation about how to incorporate regular meditation into our daily round. I’d love to have you be part of that. Please leave yours thoughts in the comments box at the end of this article if you want to. Questions to explore:
How have you managed to set up a regular meditation practice? What made it doable for you?
What tricks and tips do you have for people who haven’t yet done so?
What are your ‘go to’ meditation practises and how do you do them?
What are the benefits you receive from regular meditation practise?
