A Complete Guide to Meditation — Things You Thought You Don’t Know but Actually Do

Breathe in, breathe out. Inhale, exhale. Repeat for 10 sets…okay, I’m done I don’t think I can do it.

Does this sound familiar to you? When you finally decided to pick up meditation, and you keep struggling to stay still, everyone is telling you different things. You seek help or listen to guided meditation on podcasts or some spiritual gurus, thinking you can depend on some outer guidance to make your life easier to start this mindful practice.

Many people told me it’s difficult to not think when they meditate. I don’t know who have started to market this idea that when you meditate, you have to make your mind goes blank and not to have any thoughts. Some even told me meditation must have link to some religious beliefs and it is not healthy if you meditate too much because you will go way too deep and can’t come back.

For all we know, it is quite impossible as our human brains have an average of 70,000 thoughts everyday, not to count if we are triggered by daily incidents, or you encounter a heated conversation with someone, I bet your thoughts go sky rocket.

That being said, meditation is actually practising and mastering the art of training your mind muscle – to be aware of how frequent you have your thoughts going through your mind, and focus yourself back to your breath, observing your inhalation, and let the thoughts pass by, as if you are watching a movie or drama that happened to someone else. From wandering off for 15 minutes, to slowly shorten the time to 5.

This mind muscle training exercise, which we called meditation, is indeed an objective mindfulness practice. Be mindful as it literally says, what you trying to do is to bring your mind to the awareness of your crazy thoughts, and realising you have spent the last 10 minutes procrastinating in your brain thinking you don’t know how to meditate.

Once you have that realisation, you are actually meditating! Your awareness of your mind racing through is actually part of the meditation process. Don’t listen to those gurus saying you need to let go immediately. We all heard of the theory, but to be truly mindful, it’s the daily practise of realisation that counts. Letting go comes next when you finish fighting the battle in your head and make a decision to let the thoughts go.

So next time when you say you don’t know and you can’t meditate, think again! Your one thought that makes you pay attention to your mind muscle that you are not trained enough, is already the beginning of this mindful journey.

Relax, start with a morning ritual of 1–2 minutes a day. With daily practices, your meditation duration will increase. No one is asking you to be a spiritual expert. We have our good days, or the bad ones. Just continue this practice whenever you need a deep inhale and close your eyes for 5 minutes at work. All we doing is to practise talking to ourselves by dedicate some time daily.

And suddenly, your mindfulness journey begins.