Why Would Anyone Say That?
A lot of people say that meditation is the perfect way to practice mindfulness. It is the perfect practice to give yourself a bit of love and care in your day. For me, it just makes me feel inadequate. It strips away my confidence because it is something I am not good at for the past three years. If you were learning how to ride a bike for the 1st time you might fall…what if you have been doing it for several years and you keep falling every 3 minutes? You would think maybe there’s something wrong with the bike. It’s much harder to blame meditation because there’s no physical object that can be broken during this activity. I have the entire giant package of a meditation app. My friend gave me a lifetime pass and it is still the hardest thing in the world to do.
Why is It Hard You Ask?
· The actual practice is hard
· Finding 20 minutes out of my day to do something I’m not very good at is hard.
· Trying to convince myself for 3 years that it is OK to keep failing is also HARD.
I even started doing a combination of self care techniques along with meditation. For example, I would turn on my happy light and put on a hydrating facial mud mask and set up my essential oils diffuser and put on this relaxing oil blend on my neck and my temple. That way, even if I failed in meditation, I would have got all of these other self care tricks to start off my day.
For a while during the pandemic, my meditation actually got worse before it got better. When I closed my eyes I felt a sudden wave of darkness. I don’t know if any of you have been facing that during the pandemic when you had quiet time. Sometimes I could feel tears streaking down my face. It is a good thing that at this time I was doing meditation in a bubble bath (so there was no clean up there). That was probably the one silver lining was that when water hits water, it’s just all the same. So I stopped that as well and started watching comedies in the bath to get out of my head instead of staying in my head and body.
5 Tips for Meditation Beginners
Eventually I found a solution! DING! DING! DING! I have found out that doing meditation with a friend is super helpful.
Step 1: Make a friend or find a friend who enjoys meditation
Step 2: Set a time to do meditation together
Step 3: Try a guided of unguided meditation (you can even use Youtube if you cannot find any)
Step 4: Keep your eyes closed at all times
Step 5: After your session, ask how the session was for your friend
You just sit next to someone else doing it too. Even if you are trying to wander off unconsciously, you have the guilt of the other person in front of you with their eyes closed so you better keep your eyes close to. Otherwise it will be extremely awkward and you might not want to see that friend the next day.
I would say for someone who is as external and extroverted as I am, having an accountability partner or meditation is something that helps me a lot and getting slightly better. It makes me look forward to this activity instead of dreading it….like how kids need to eat vegetables because it is good for you and not because you are looking forward to it. It is definitely trickier when I live by myself. There isn’t always somebody around. So, I better get going and make some new friends to meditate with ;)
