There are many ways to learn meditation in the digital age and lots of great apps available if you want to dip your toe in the mediation waters. 1GiantMind, Headspace, Insight Timer and others have all helped many people. But while some are able to keep going with apps for a long time, there comes a point for many others where they’re not sure they’re meditating correctly. Not being confident you’re doing it right is the number one reason people stop meditating and it’s easy to see why.
Your biggest investment in meditation is time
When you clock up all the 20 minute meditation sessions, and I recommend two a day to get the full benefit, it quickly adds up. Whatever you value yours time at (think about your hourly rate for example), that’s what you’re investing in meditation. So with such a significant investment, you want to make sure you’re approaching the technique correctly. The best way to do that is to get in-person feedback as you learn.
Experiential rather than conceptual
The optimal way to learn most things is by experiencing them for yourself. You can read all you like about something, but until until you experience it, it will remain a collection of words and concepts in your head. Because meditation deals with very subjective states and everyone will go through different experiences, the best approach is to have a trained teacher guide you through the uncharted terrain.
Meditate to fight procrastination
Procrastination stands in the way between us fulfilling many of our goals as we endlessly put things off in favour of often pointless tasks. Luckily, meditation can help us overcome many of these. The mental exercise of meditation has been shown to strengthen the brain’s pre-frontal cortex which helps regulate our impulses and the emotions that distract us from being productive. However you first need to make the leap to becoming a meditator…