I’ve given meditation a fair crack, and it just hasn’t worked for me. I have, however, found a way to get most of the benefits in just a few seconds per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few years ago, my wife and I joined an online challenge to meditate every day for 30 days. The programme gave us a guided meditation to follow, which lasted anything from ten minutes to half an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We didn’t enjoy it much, but we hate breaking a streak. So in a move that tells you basically everything you need to know about us, when we finished the 30 days we decided to push on towards 100 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We went through guided meditations on Headspace, and from countless YouTube videos (Sam Harris was a favourite for both of us). I eventually took to doing it with no guidance at all, because it didn’t seem to make much difference. I remember being euphoric when a car would drive past blaring music, because it gave me something mildly interesting to focus on for a few seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were both relieved, and I think felt a bit silly, on the 100th day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just to be clear: I’m not saying that meditation doesn’t work. I’m just saying it didn’t do anything for me<\/em> (at least, not anything that a nap of equivalent length wouldn’t have done better), despite giving it a fair crack and trying many different approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However…it’s not actually true to say I got no benefit from it at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To give an off-the-cuff definition that will outrage experts in the practice, meditation is basically just paying attention. It’s not about achieving a zen-like blank mind or even trying<\/em> not to get distracted by thoughts: it’s about noticing<\/em> when you’re distracted by thoughts and coming back to the here and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doing this for 10+ minutes in a row didn’t do much for me. But I’ve since started finding moments<\/em> of meditation every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This can take various forms \u2013 all helpful:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The common factor is stepping out of my non-stop mental monologue, and taking a moment to actually notice<\/em> the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each moment might last for a second, perhaps up to 20 seconds. Some days I do it regularly, other days it might only happen once. It’s virtually blink-and-miss-it, yet I feel like I’m getting the majority of the benefit of a whole meditation session in that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t know if this is something you can get in the habit of doing without<\/em> attempting a meditation practice first. I doubt it: you probably have to learn the techniques, and get them “ingrained” to some extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So even though attempting to establish a meditation practice was a failure, I’ve been able to take the basic skills and apply them in a way that works for me. For that reason I’d recommend giving it a try \u2013 but logging 100 days out of sheer bloody-mindedness probably isn’t necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve given meditation a fair crack \u2013 and it just hasn’t worked for me. I have, however, found a way to get most of the benefits in just a few seconds per day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nFinding moments of meditation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n