#MindfulMonday: Your Excuses are Okay

I came across a great article in the Boston Globe, today, that compares beginning meditation to starting a new diet or fitting into a cute bikini. You want the benefits, you know they are generally good for you, but you don’t want to commit the time or effort it takes to become a spiritual guru. That is okay. That is normal.

Check out the article before you read on: The Stress of Not Meditating

Meditation advocates, like myself, can sit here and site all the positive benefits of meditation. We can give you juried studies to back up those benefits. We can break down meditation into steps for you. We can debunk all of your excuses. None of that, however, will be effective unless you chose to acknowledge your excuses. Why?

When we start to feel like we should do something, what happens to that something? It becomes a burden. What do burdens cause? Stress. Meditation is an antidote to stress, not a cause of it. We want to keep it that way.

In order to prevent meditation from becoming another stressor in your life, try the following:

1. What excuses have you had for not meditating? Just say them out loud. Acknowledge them as excuses. Nothing more. Don’t blame yourself.
2. Let your excuses go. Again, don’t blame yourself. It is normal to have excuses before taking on a new adventure. Just close your eyes and picture those excuses as passing clouds. Let them come into your consciousness, and let them drift out.
3. Release yourself from the burden. Do you have to meditate today? Nope. Do you have to feel the weight of your excuses? Nope. You don’t have to do anything. Take a moment, and realize in that moment you don’t have to do one. single. thing. Smile.
4. Stretch your limbs as wide as they will go and take on your day, as usual.

Guess what?! You just meditated! Easy, right? So now that you have started, forget about the burden, the stress and the shoulds. If you feel like you have an opportunity and desire to meditate tomorrow, great. If you don’t, move past it and see if it comes the next day. Start slow and don’t worry about setting a specific time aside to meditate or becoming the next Dalai Lama. If you have excuses some days, thats okay. Embrace them and let them pass. And on the days you get a little inkling to meditate, use that energy for five minutes. Eventually, you will be a meditation advocate, too. Just let it happen as it will.