Lack of Consistency – If you try it once and don’t feel what you think you are supposed to feel, some people stop trying. Meditation has short term benefits for some and long term benefits for all. If you don’t get to the long term (for example, 21 or 30 straight days of meditation), you may not feel the benefits and assume there are no benefits for you. This might lead you to discontinue practice.
Better to meditate 5-10 minutes a day EVERY day for 3 weeks, then sporadically for 20 minutes here and there.
The hardest part of meditation is making the commitment to fit it into your morning or evening schedule. If you don’t make the commitment to meditate, it won’t happen.
Set yourself up for success by starting with 5 or 10 minutes once or twice a day, 7 days in a row, it will be the best thing you can probably do for yourself without exception. The benefits are waiting there for you to take. All you need to do is to get into a daily routine, and do it.
Mis-directed Goal Oriented Expectations - Have no expectations of what you hope to get by meditating. If your expectations are too high, you get stressed when you ‘fail’. And if your expectations are too goal oriented or misdirected (eg when I meditate I will get rich), once again, you set yourself up for failure. That is not the purpose of meditation (although anything certainly is possible). Meditation is to provide you with internal benefits, and any external benefits that result are wonderful but not to be expected. The only goal I can give you is – ‘If you meditate you will feel better immediately sometimes, and you will feel better definitely over a period of time’.
Mis-directed Expectations of Oneself – “I can’t do this….I’m terrible at this…..I am thinking all the time….etc.”
Now sometimes you will complete your meditation and feel calm and other times you may not. That’s ok. The results of meditation are subtle and are below the surface of what you may feel sometimes. They also have a cumulative effect, so even if you don’t feel the subtle results every time you meditate – the mental bank account is filling up with a calm clear energy, and is allowing you to naturally and subtly reduce the chatter.
You don’t see your muscles grow larger after 1 trip to the gym, but with consistent effort your muscles will stronger, and with consistent meditation you become mentally healthier and happier.
Another wonderful aspect about meditation practice is that even if your mind is filled with thoughts the whole time you are meditating, you still reap the benefits.
It’s ok to have thoughts during meditation. Thoughts are part of our daily lives, and if you have them while meditating, observe them, and then go back to your breathing.
They are just thoughts….and those thoughts are not you. If you have a negative thought, the thought is negative. It doesn’t mean you are. We all have many different kinds of thoughts – and that is all they are – thoughts. You are not what you think.
If you meditate once a day you get an A. And if you meditate twice a day, you get an A+. It all starts with you. I know you can do this. Make the time, change your life, get the benefits.
Inaccurate teaching or methodology – Although it is simple to learn, if you are pointed in the wrong direction or make incorrect assumptions, it is not unlike using a compass and being1 or 2 degrees off….after 50 miles of being only 1 to 2 degrees off, you are far from where you intended to go.
When learning a new skill (and maybe even if you have experience), sometimes the simplest is the best. Use a technique that is straightforward and has been tested over a period of time. The techniques we use on our cd audio materials have been around for thousands of years. Many ‘new’ techniques or technology based meditations, may not have the test of time.
A teaching with a lineage (eg Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity based) is also like a seal of good housekeeping. If it’s been around a long time, it’s probably a good sign.
And finally, you are the best one to decide. After trying a methodology honestly for several weeks consistently, you will know if you are on the right track.