Challenges of meditation – 7 tips to diffuse life’s weapons of mass distraction

A Lust for Life, with the help of 1 Giant Mind founder Jonni Pollard, are on a mission to support you getting your meditation groove on and over the coming weeks we will be sharing out some helpful tips, tools are resources. To help keep the process flowing, here are seven tips and tricks to help diffuse life’s weapons of mass distraction and stay on the meditation horse.

When you make the decision to give meditation a go, the biggest challenge that you are going to face are your old habits. What makes meditation difficult are the belief’s that it is difficult, that there isn’t enough time in the day or there is something much more important to be doing. The practice of meditation is actually very easy and effortless. There is always fifteen or twenty minutes in a day to take time out to do it. It’s only your habits and life’s constant distractions that make taking time out to meditate a little challenging at first.

At times you’re going to experience resistance to the idea of stopping, sitting and meditating. Sometimes you just won’t feel like doing it, particularly when you are in a hurry, under the pump with deadlines or just plain old having a good time doing something else. All experienced meditators share a common sentiment about this phenomenon – regardless of whether you feel like it or not, meditate anyway and you ALWAYS feel so much better afterwards.

We know this is easier said than done… so how do we overcome these challenges? Let us give you our top seven tips.

1. Set yourself a challenge to complete the 1 Giant Mind six-week ‘Learn to Meditate’ program and find a buddy or two to do this challenge with you. Try and choose someone who doesn’t need too much convincing and who is just as enthusiastic as you are. Make sure they will have your back when you try and convince him or her that something else is more important – after all it’s only 15 minutes.
2. When you feel really agitated and restless and the last thing you want to do is sit still and meditate…do it! You’ll find that confronting the noise and agitation is a lot easier than you thought… especially if you approach it like an exercise. Simply let yourself have the experience of being agitated and restless and let go of expectations of outcome. Give yourself the opportunity to see what happens. With the 1 Giant Mind technique, you will be pleasantly surprised how little it takes to cause the body to settle down into restful relaxation and for your agitation to effortlessly dissolve.
3. Download our desktop and mobile ‘meditate’ screen saver. This will be a friendly (and constant) reminder that at some stage in the day it is meditation o’clock. It will also remind you to think about the changes you are seeing in your life from practicing meditation every day… the benefits can be so subtle and gradual that we forget what a huge positive impact meditation is making on our lives (see tip number 5).
4. Set a reminder in your phone and calendar and plan in your meditations for the six weeks. After about 30 days (or maybe less!) you will notice your practice will have become a habit and you will no longer need a reminder to meditate.
5. Journal the benefits you experience as a result of the practice (you can do this with the journal tool in the 1 Giant Mind App). Reflecting on the benefits you are receiving through your daily meditation practice will inspire you to keep going and remind you of the progress you are making.
6. When you do skip a meditation, allow yourself to stop and reflect why? Ask yourself if it was a genuine reason or if it was just an excuse due to a distraction addiction. Without beating yourself up, be honest and take note of the tendency. Observe if this pattern repeats itself. If it does and you are not satisfied, get a blue piece of string and tie around your wrist as a talisman. It will remind you to meditate and help you work through the tendency of being distracted and avoiding what you really want in life. This process is a part of establishing a lasting practice of meditation and learning to commit to yourself.
7. When you have a groove going, stick with it. Often people abandon meditation after about 30 days because they feel the best they have ever felt and think that there is no need to continue. However, shortly after they realise that to sustain the benefits they are experiencing, they actually have to sustain the practice. The best way to take full responsibility for your life is to be prospective rather than reactive to change. Don’t wait for the storm to realise it’s time to fix the leaking roof. Do it while the sun shines.

There are lots of other tips and tricks to keep you on your meditation journey. Keep checking out the other meditation posts on A Lust for Life to get the latest. If there’s a challenge you are facing and we haven’t covered it here, please let us know! We will offer a solution and post it here on A Lust for Life for everyone to benefit.

The 1 Giant Mind ‘Learn to Meditate’ App is free, easy to use and facilitates expansion of the mind and deep bodily rest. If you haven’t already and want to get started right away you can download our app now for free. This program has been created by experienced meditation teachers who know exactly how to get you on the meditation horse and riding like a pro in no time.