Why Meditation Doesn’t Work For You

You’re Doing It Wrong

Meditation: The 2 Biggest Mistakes

“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.” — Eckhart Tolle

Meditation, done correctly, can relieve stress and anxiety, improve your personal and professional success, and increase your overall peace of mind.

But most people don’t achieve permanent — or any — results from meditation because the primary purpose of meditation is limited, and they use it with the wrong intention.

Awareness Isn’t Enough

“An addicting to distraction is the end of your creative production.” — Robin Sharma

The primary purpose of meditation is awareness or mindfulness. Typically, the breath is the focal point of awareness.

If you get lost in thought, you’re told to bring your awareness back to your breath.

And this works; you’ll feel better during and moments after, but sooner or later, the misery returns.

Sure, if you’re hanging out with friends or at work and start to feel anxious, you could focus on your breath. Or if you’re feeling stressed, you can meditate.

But this will only distract you from your pain — like a drug; it won’t alleviate it permanently.

Meditation Didn’t Work For My Ex-Girlfriends Or Me

“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” ― Rudyard Kipling

I’ve dated two yoga and meditation teachers. They’d claim how beneficial their practices were and yet struggled with anxiety and depression. One of them had a panic attack in front of me.

We were talking about a difficult situation she was going through with a couple of her friends. One of her friends was being mean to her because she was jealous, and the other friend condoned this behavior because he was mad at her.

My ex believed she was the reason her friends were mean to her. This guilt triggered an intense surge of anxiety.

She started to hyperventilate. Then she began to cry. While crying and dry-heaving, she frantically exclaimed, “I’m going to die! I feel like I’m going to pass out and die!”

Fortunately, she was OK. I held her in my arms for a while, and she eventually calmed down. But the experience was eye-opening.

Two years ago, I used to do yoga and meditate every day because I thought it would help me become more present, and presence would make me happier.

Honestly, I just wanted to accredit my practices for my appearance of happiness so I could be considered a hippie. Because of marketing, yoga and meditation have this serene mysticism about them. And I wanted to be perceived as a mystical guru.

Anyway, my happiness was a facade, and my practices didn’t yield the results I wanted. I quit for a while until I learned how to meditate correctly.

Meditation’s primary purpose — awareness — doesn’t teach people how to deal with their suffering when they’re not meditating.

Meditation Won’t Make You Happy

“Enlightenment is not something that occurs occurs in the future, after 50 years of sitting cross-legged and saying ‘OM’. It is right here, in this instant.” — David R. Hawkins

Most people believe, over time, meditation will help them achieve happiness.

But happiness isn’t a destination; it is our natural state of being.

Positive emotions — joy, peace, security, and contentment — are our default states of being. Negative emotions imprison the positive.

With this understanding, you don’t have to meditate. You can be happy right now. Because, essentially, happiness is a choice. It sounds easy, but it’s not.

It’s difficult because emotions get trapped in your body, and they manifest themselves in the form of thoughts and reactions.

Emotions Are King

“One thing you can’t hide — is when you’re crippled inside.” — John Lennon

It’s more beneficial and useful to focus on emotions, instead of thoughts, because one emotion contains many thoughts. Or, many thoughts can cause one emotion.

And we’re primarily seeking relief from the emotion because that’s what we experience.

Here’s an example: Say you’re texting someone you recently met, and all of a sudden, they stop responding. Thoughts like, “Why are they not responding? Did I say something wrong? What did I do? Maybe they’re hanging with someone else. Maybe they don’t like me. Maybe their ex came back into the picture. Maybe I’m not good enough.”, cause anxiety.

It’s much easier to focus on the anxiety instead of trying to address each of the thoughts with positive reframes — or lies — because this creates more thoughts.

You’re Stuck — Emotionally

“We are set in our ways, bound by our perspectives and stuck in our thinking.” ― Joel Osteen

Besides everyday life stressors — work, school, kids, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, misplacing your phone — most negative emotions are caused by traumatic experiences and outside influences.

Traumatic experiences aren’t limited to extreme events like war, rape, or physical and emotional abuse. Teasing from a sibling or friend could be traumatic. Rejection and heartbreak can be traumatic.

Some examples of outside influences are societal standards, marketing, friends, family, social media, music, and movies.

For example, our society idolizes physical appearance. Being physically unattractive could cause you to think your worthless, creating feelings of shame and anger.

Negative emotions get stuck in our bodies, and their manifestation — in the form of thoughts and actions — become habitual because we consciously and unconsciously suppress them. We suppress them because we fear the experience of them.

We become aware of our emotions when they’re intense. Otherwise, our anxiety is a noise we’ve become accustomed to, like the fan in our room.

We watch TV, reach for our phones during commercials, take a hit, drag or sip, and eat chips when we’re not hungry to relive unconscious anxiety.

It’s difficult to self-actualize happiness because our emotions are stuck within our bodies, unconsciously controlling our awareness. It’s like that birthday candle that comes back to life after you blow it out. Awareness of the candle is useless. To eat the cake, you have to throw the candle away.

Self-compassion helps you process and release negative emotions, reconnecting you to positive ones.

Self-Compassion: The Missing Link

“Having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness.” — Kristen Neff

Self-compassion is the act of being kind to yourself. It’s treating yourself the same way you’d treat a crying baby or a heartbroken friend. If a baby were crying or your friend heartbroken, you’d use kind words and actions to alleviate their suffering.

You’d probably hold the toddler, and pat them on the back while using baby talk.

To comfort your friend, you’d reaffirm them of their positive qualities and remind them that they’ll find someone else.

Learning to comfort yourself while experiencing negative emotions helps process and release them because you’re no longer suppressing them. You’re aware of them and now handling them appropriately.

You have to become mindful of your body and use your breath to release negative emotions altogether.

How To Meditate

“We exhale and we let go of the old moment. In doing so, we let go of the person we used to be.” — Lama Surat Das

Meditation and self-compassion have one thing in common: mindfulness.

Mindfulness is one of three components of self-compassion — self-kindness and common humanity — being the other two.

You want to become mindful of where in your body you feel your emotions because emotions get stuck in the body.

For example, when you’re scared, your shoulders raise, your jaw clenches, your heart races, and your palms sweat.

Thoughts alone will not release the tension from your body. And sole focus on the body won’t do the job either.

You release the emotion from the body relieving the tension from the feeling. The combination of self-compassion self-talk and your breath will rid your body of tension.

Self-compassion self-talk is the honest thoughts and words you use when you’re kind to yourself. This practice is more beneficial than positive thinking or cognitive behavioral therapy because it changes your relationship to your thoughts and feelings.

Instead of trying to control them out of fear (positive thinking/CBT), you comfort yourself through them, allowing them to be processed and released.

Step-by-Step Guide:

• Find a quiet place.
• Sit anywhere. Don’t lie down. As long as your comfortable, how you sit doesn’t matter.
• Ask yourself: “How am I feeling? What am I feeling?”, most importantly, “Where am I feeling this?”
• Focus on any tension in your body.
• Breath into the tension and relax it while using self-compassion self-talk: “It’s OK. How you’re feeling is OK. Relax. Everything is going to be OK. Relax.”
• Don’t beat yourself up if you get distracted. That’s not very compassionate. Repeat the previous bullet.
• Do for 5–10 minutes. Or longer if you want.

Some other tips and tricks:

• On your inhale, breathe from your feet to your head.
• Feel and break any tension in your body as the breath moves upward.
• Hold the breath at the top.
• On the exhale, push out the tension.
• On the inhale, use your hands — palms facing you — while you bring the breath up towards your head.
• On the exhale, use your hands to push the tension away and out of your body.
• Repeat for repetitions (ex: ten inhales and exhales) or time (5–10 minutes).

With practice, you’ll get quicker at recognizing and releasing the emotions, and they’ll appear less frequently and with less magnitude.

Life is Meditation

“Meditation will not carry you to another world, but it will reveal the most profound and awesome dimensions of the world in which you already live.” — Zen Master Hsing Yun

Meditation can help you rediscover your joy, your laughter, and peace of mind.

Sitting cross-legged with the back of your hands on your knees is one practice of meditation.

Yoga, walking, running, lifting weights, reading, writing, listening to music, watching tv, socializing, sex — are all forms of meditation; done correctly, of course.

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