Welcome to today's meditation.
This is Kate Swoboda,
Also known as Kate Courageous,
From Your Courageous Life.
And today's meditation is for people who think that they're bad at meditation.
We'll start off with some thoughts to disentangle from this idea of being good or bad or somewhere in between around your meditation practice.
And then we'll end with taking some time to breathe with new awareness.
First,
Let's start with the typical response.
If a part of you thinks that you're bad at meditation,
A pretty typical response to feeling bad about something is to try to avoid it.
Maybe avoid the voice that says you're bad at this.
To placate it,
Perhaps by layering over that voice with no no no I'm good I'm good I'm doing affirmations or trying to do meditation perfectly so that the voice will stop.
And then a third common response is to attack it to tell that voice to shut up and go away.
None of those approaches really work.
You might have noticed this.
Maybe they work for a little while.
And then that idea that you're bad at meditation or you're not doing it right in some way just comes right back.
So what if instead of avoiding that voice or placating that voice or attacking that voice,
You accept that it exists?
That could look like just saying to that voice,
I hear your opinion and I'm returning to the breath.
Try it now.
Notice how that voice shows up for you to criticize how you do meditation.
And take a deep breath with it.
And just tell it.
I hear your opinion.
I'm returning to the breath.
Accepting that this voice exists,
And that it says what it says is not the same as saying that the voice is true.
People have all kinds of opinions.
Just because they express them doesn't make them true.
And if you accept that people express opinions,
The fact of people doing that,
Because that's what people do,
Accepting the existence of those opinions does not mean that you take their opinions on as your identity.
The same is true of this internal voice that has this opinion that you're bad at meditation in some way.
It's just an opinion floating by like a cloud.
You can accept the existence of a part of you that just carries this judgment.
It's just there.
Maybe not always comfortable,
But it's just there.
Something gets freed up when we are not fighting with ourselves and fighting with these voices.
When we stop avoiding,
Placating,
Attacking.
All that energy avoiding,
Placating,
And attacking then gets to go somewhere else,
Like to your meditation practice.
Also consider there is no objective definition of good at meditation.
Ask people who have been meditating for years.
They still get fidgety.
They still get resistant.
Their minds wander.
So if no one can truly always be good at this,
Consider that maybe if there's no good at this,
There's no bad at this either.
Breathe with that for a moment.
Consider why it would even be helpful to spend your time on whether you are good or bad at this.
What's the payoff of that?
There's really only one reason we spend time telling ourselves that we are bad at things like meditation,
And it is we prefer the more familiar distraction of going through the good versus bad than we do the uncomfortable wide open space of just being and breathing.
Here's the thing.
You don't need to figure this out today.
If hearing these words felt new and you've had some ahas,
Great.
And if not,
If it feels vaguely hopeful yet strangely confusing all at the same time,
Great.
These words are just more opinions,
More passing clouds.
You listened and were present to them,
And that's a form of meditation.
Let's take a moment to breathe.
And as you notice thoughts coming up,
All you need to do is just touch back to,
I hear your opinion,
And I'm returning to the breath.
I hear your opinion,
And I'm returning to the breath.
And again,
I hear your opinion,
And I'm returning to the breath.
You did great.
Just how today's session happened is just how you needed it to happen.
Come back to this and repeat this meditation anytime you notice that you feel resistant to meditating or worried that you aren't doing it right or that there's some way that you're supposed to be doing it better.
There's no good with this.
There's no bad with this.
There is just the daily consistent practice of showing up for ourselves,
And it is happening exactly how it needs to happen.
And each piece that you need from this practice will unfold in exactly the way that it needs to unfold.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for showing up for yourself and being willing to explore how you want your meditation practice to look.
