IS 2024 WHEN YOU START A MEDITATION PRACTICE? How can we HEL

Monday motivation - one minute read

A friend told me about an author called Seth Godin, who is a marketing guru and all round clever bloke who writes about brands and business and the like. His latest book of over 20 he has written so far is called "The Practice." The concept is simple, when you are doing anything whether that's writing, singing, making skateboards - just do it. In fact he changes this well-known phrase to "merely do it". "Just do it" implies there is a lack of care or sub standard expectation involved. Instead, "Merely do it" means we are more interested in the process than the outcome.

Although Seth is talking about business, and "shipping creative work" here, his words resonated with me as someone who practices meditation daily, and has done for over twenty years. And now as a meditation teacher I am helping hundreds of people every week to develop their own meditation practice. But without fail, the major obstacle, excuse, comment I hear is, I don't have time, or it's just not clicking for me away from your guided sessions. And I get that, I have said those words myself in the past. But we do have time, we can make time, and it won't always click and gel every time you sit down to meditate, but we do it anyway. We practice.

A meditation practice isn't like learning many other skills. I learnt to paddle board a few years ago, and now every time I go out on the water there is an (albeit slight) improvement. I  could plot this on a graph and there would be a linear increase in skill each time I wobble on the water. I practice and I get better. A meditation practice is different, yes - the more we do it, the more we get from it. But even monks have bad days, and one morning you might sit in your chair and feel like you have never meditated before in your life. But we merely do it. We just do it. Because one thing is for sure, we will never feel worse after sitting down to meditate, even if you have one moment of deep breaths and finding a little bit of peace and calm in your day, that's a win.

Some people I teach and work with through Meditation Rocks say "I am sorry I haven't meditated in between your sessions", and I ask them why are they apologising? It is sometimes hard to reconcile that we are doing something good just for us, when of course there are a million other things we could be doing. Why would we sit there and do "nothing".

One of my meditation teachers once said to me "Meditation is not about having a particular experience, it is about noticing what that experience is." In a world full of grading, feedback, reviews and opinion, meditation is about the process not the outcome. It is without expectation or judgement and that's the whole blimin' beautiful point.

A meditation practice isn't about doing something for anyone else, we merely do it for ourself. Although the ripple effects of our own mindset, health and happiness can definitely be felt by others, you are sitting there for you. We breathe in, we breathe out, we get distracted, we refocus. And repeat. Meditation is one of the simplest acts, but also one of the most difficult. And that is why we practice.

If you would like to join one of my five live meditation sessions each week; Mon, Weds, Fri morning meditation at 7:30am for 15 mins. Monday and Wednesday evenings at 10pm for Beditation, sleep-focussed meditation for 20 minutes head here.