My, how the world has changed! My career the past 25-plus years has been stress management training for corporations and government agencies (you can see my work here). A part of what my wife and I teach is meditation. When we started, I had to put out a fair bit of energy just convincing people that though I was from California and was teaching meditation, I was not a flake nor a reconstituted flower-child.
Now, however, when people hear I teach meditation they usually explain how they used to meditate but no longer do—and feel guilty about it! As I said, the world has changed.
One of the reasons for falling away from meditation (or any other good habit, for that matter) is because people focus on a goal or point they want to get to, rather than a process or direction. The goal for all such human endeavors ought to be directional improvement, not achieving a certain imagined arbitrary state. If you pick an arbitrary point in your mind and are not there by an also arbitrarily selected date, you feel you have “failed” and get discouraged. But the failure is in the conception of what you are doing, not in the effort itself.
Secondarily, start small. Willpower is built by a series of small successes. Setting a lofty goal and then “failing” at it can actually be worse than not even starting. Because you will feel that you “can't” when not even trying leaves open the possibility that you could if you tried. How about a meditation practice of ten minutes each morning?
I can hear you restless-minded folks thinking, “But I can't meditate. My mind is too active. It’s not for me.” But that attitude is caused by a false expectation. Maybe you can't calm your mind perfectly, and you have thoughts. Well, I can tell you that after forty years of meditating I still have thoughts every time I meditate! So? If you could perfectly calm your mind at will, you wouldn't need to meditate!
Eating well is no guarantee of perfect health. But it does mean you’ll be healthier than you would have been were you to live on junk food. And there’s always someone else living on beer and potato chips who’s healthier than you. But honestly that’s not even relevant.
Whatever your personal development goal might be, remember that the point is almost always directional improvement, and almost never some certain level of attainment. Planting a seed and then digging it up every few hours to see how it’s doing is simply not helpful. :-)
Blessings,
David G., manager
for the Gang at East West