5 Reasons That Keep You from Meditating and How to Avoid Them

Do you often relate the act of meditating to a hippie looking man/woman sitting in a wild setting (preferably a mountaintop or a forest clearing), with closed eyes, a blissful look on their faces, and a soul that’s floating in the cosmos of peaceful contentment?

The problem with this description of meditation is that it creates a wall of hurdles in your way. Clearing your head of all thoughts, reaching a state of mindfulness, and going to an exotic space so that you could begin meditating are all issues that keep you from diving into meditation.

They are also very non-realistic issues.

Let’s understand why your excuses for not meditating are entirely unnecessary.

Your mind is restless. So is everyone else’s on this planet. Moreover, this point is moot because you don’t need to turn off your thoughts for meditation.

If you begin a meditation course and aim at clearing your head of all thoughts right away, it’d be like asking a fifth grader to solve trigonometry.

Meditation, at first, is about dragging your focus from wherever it has wandered off to where you want it to be.

For instance, you can focus on your breathing. You will fidget, get distracted, and your brain will want to lure you into thinking about your cluttered desk, cat food, electricity bill, or the weather.

You have to will it to concentrate on your inhaling and exhaling only.

This, dear friend, is called procrastinating. Meditation, or shall I say ‘focussing on your breath for a while’ requires anywhere between five to fifteen minutes of your day.

If you can go socialising on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, loitering away an hour or two at them, I am sure you have more than enough time to meditate.

Meditation isn’t bound by strict rules regarding what you wear, where you sit, what you eat, what position you acquire, and what weird cult-like group you join.

You don’t have to join a spiritual or religious group to meditate. You may be an atheist, agnostic, or a devoted Pastafarian, the art of meditation gives no care.

Meditation helps in reducing stress & anxiety, boosting immunity, lowering blood pressure, and keeps away age specific problems like cognitive decline, depression, and ADHD. It also tends to make people less obnoxious.

A research observed the effect of meditating in small dosage for eight consecutive weeks as increased compassion and self-awareness.

Meditation positively impacts your mental health.

You don’t need a teacher to begin. Sure, having one makes learning easier, and you can find a bunch of excellent tutorials on the internet. However, if you have just decided to begin meditating, you don’t have to wait for a teacher or a perfect tutorial to show up.

The process has three simple steps.

l  Sit straight in a chair or lie down straight on a floor mat.

l  Close your eyes if you want to. You may keep them open as well.

l  Gather your focus on your breathing. Feel the air entering and departing your lungs.

You will get distracted. Especially when you have successfully focussed for a second or two, every seemingly disastrous problem of your life and every cringeworthy mistake you’ve ever made will come clawing for your attention.

The idea is to refocus again and again. Every time you realise that your focus has been shattered, start again. With time, the concentration will come more naturally.

With Time, You Will Notice the Benefits

a few minutes worth of meditation each day will help you focus on every other task for the rest of the day.

After a few weeks, you will feel more conscious and aware of everything going around you, yet feel the control over yourself that won’t let you get carried away with every instance.

Sure, meditation is no cure-all remedy. You will still have real-life problems like screaming children, hair loss, workload, and parking fights. But you will also be better equipped to deal with them.