I got this question in response to my email yesterday about the meditation timer:
“This might be a dumb question so feel free to roast me. Do you recommend any particular schedule for starting out? Every day? Once a week? Whatever you want? As often as possible?”
To which I replied: “Once a day, idiot.”
Meditation isn't going to help you if you don't do it.
By “do it”, I don't mean once a week. Lots of people do that, and although it might make them feel like they are meditators, they're not spending much time meditating, and thus aren't getting the benefits of meditation.
You have to do it A LOT.
I have done 10-day silent meditation retreats where you meditate for 10 hours a day. And that's just the sitting practice. You're also meditating the rest of the day while walking around.
Every single moment you spend meditating is contributing to your overall meditation skill level.
So, it's a good idea to maximize that time.
But, there's a problem…if you can't stand meditation, you aren't going to do it.
The solution is radical acceptance of whatever comes up during meditation.
It's a skill that must be practiced. There's no other way to learn it. Moment-by-moment, you must practice.
Fortunately, meditation itself is the way to practice radical acceptance.
But, there's another problem…it can't just be any old kind of meditation. If you're spending your time trying to zone out, or trying to imagine yourself on the beach, or trying to work out why you can't get along with your neighbor, you're not practicing acceptance.
Your meditation practice must be based on acceptance.
This is the thinking behind the millennia-old techniques from Buddhism, such as vipassana meditation. There's nothing woo-woo or religious about it. It's just the practice of sitting down and paying attention to what's happening, without trying to change it.
Long retreats (at least a week) are great for learning this. It's an intense environment and it's hard not to benefit from it.
But, that's a commitment (and especially in these times, most retreat centers are closed or operating at limited capacity).
I made No Problem for people who have time constraints and/or short attention spans (like me) but who still want a taste of what acceptance-based meditation can offer them. It's short and gets right to the point. And, it has cool piano music I recorded myself. And, you will get a hand-lettered certificate upon completion.
Why Meditation Isn’t Helping You With Performance Anxiety
If you’re using meditation to help performance anxiety (or any other kind of social anxiety, for that matter ), you need to read this.
You’re almost certainly doing it wrong.
Consider the following assertions:
- Eliminating your anxiety is not necessary to solve your real problem.
- Eliminating your anxiety is not possible.
- Your real problem is not anxiety.
- Meditation was never invented for the purpose of eliminating anxiety.
- Most people who meditate are doing it in order to eliminate anxiety.
- Most people are misunderstanding what meditation can do.
- Meditation can do something much more interesting and useful than eliminating your anxiety.
I just threw a lot of stuff at you. You might want to argue with it.
You can argue. It’s fine.
But, I will not argue back, because this isn’t a matter of argument.
Arguing is good when you’re trying to arrive at the correct solution, or when you’re trying to tease out logical fallacies.
This, however, is not about logic. It’s about helping you with the issue you have. Even if you’re logically correct, if you still have the issue…you’ve got nothing.
On the other hand, if you get rid of the issue, but you’re logically incorrect…at least you don’t have the issue anymore.
So, what’s more important to you: being logically correct, or getting help for your issue?
But, I want to be logically correct!
This is a serious concern, and I relate to it. I hate being logically incorrect. I’ve also spent too much time suffering because I was unwilling to let go of my need for logical correctness.
I’m not asking you to abandon logical correctness altogether and sign on to whatever bullshit I might throw in your direction.
I’m only asking you to exercise the skill of suspending judgment while you wait to experience the effects of whatever the thing is.
You can bound it by time, if you wish. For example, try reading what I’m writing without arguing with it. Just make one pass through without arguing. You’re free to argue after that. But at least know what it feels like to read without arguing.
Once you’ve practiced both (reading with arguing, and reading without arguing), you will then have more freedom in the future to use whichever seems most appropriate in any given context.
Does that sound logical to you?
If not, take some time right now to argue with it.
Your real problem is NOT anxiety
I’m going to speak in a confrontational manner.
It’s a technique. You don’t have to take it seriously. Just let the words wash over you.
Ready?
OK, here it is:
The reason you think you have an anxiety problem is only because other people told you that you do. It’s not because you actually perceive an anxiety problem.
Are you willing to question the existence of an anxiety problem? To go back to first principles and follow the truth wherever it leads?
Please don’t agree with me “just because”. Your personal experience should always be the ultimate metric of what’s right for you (and if your personal experience tells you to go with science, you should go with science).
Everything I say is only intended to provoke experiences that will teach you new things. You should always be the one to decide what to do with that information.
(This is another great opportunity to read without arguing. Just let the words wash over you. Like when you walk to the store, you don’t stop and pay attention to every little thing you pass. You fix your attention on the path from here to the store, and go along for the ride.)
Again, you don’t have an anxiety problem
The fact that you think you have an anxiety problem is making things worse for you.
Instead of focusing on your anxiety, focus on what the anxiety is stopping you from doing.
When I’m performing on the piano, my “anxiety problem” causes all kinds of issues. But the feeling of anxiety itself? Not a big deal.
Is it a big deal? You tell me.
Look at your own experience. Can you deal with the feeling of anxiety?
The common narrative about how “anxiety is a problem” would have you believe that you couldn’t. If you listen to what society tells you about anxiety, you will walk away thinking that the feeling itself is this awful thing that is simply unbearable in all circumstances.
I hope I’m causing you to question what you’ve been taught. If you stick around, I will destroy all of it.
Notice what you do in response to the anxiety
That’s where you want to pay attention.
How do you respond to the anxiety?
How do you try to eliminate it?
When I’m performing on the piano, anxiety stops me from taking risks. This makes my playing worse.
That’s the real problem.
It’s all the other stuff. My playing gets worse, I don’t take risks, I tense up trying to prevent mistakes, I avoid letting myself get absorbed in the music, and so on. Ultimately, I avoid performing.
These are all side effects of my attempts to control the anxiety.
Got it?
It’s counter-intuitive. Honestly, it’s probably too complicated for average people to understand. It’s much simpler to just say “I have an anxiety disorder so I should take anti-anxiety pills or do an anti-anxiety meditation,” as if that’s going to fix something.
Anti-anxiety treatments will not eliminate your distaste for taking risks at the piano. They just won’t. We’re talking about long-standing habits and worldviews that are about so much more than a momentary feeling.
Does meditation help with anxiety?
Yes, meditation will help you with this.
But, not because it will help you calm down. You don’t need to calm down. What you need is a way to mitigate the side effects.
This is why meditation is useful. It will help you become aware of all the cause and effect relationships between your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and your environment.
Once you understand how all that stuff is connected, your very intelligent mind will piece things together.
It will automatically deduce facts such as “when I’m worried what people will think of me, I avoid performing, and as a result I miss out on whatever fun I might get from performing, so maybe I should perform even though I will experience anxiety.”
It will do that kind of cost-benefit analysis for you.
But, you have to feed it a lot of data. Meditation is the process of sitting down and letting your mind take in data.
It knows what to do with it. It will monitor what is causing pleasure and what is causing pain.
At the end of the day, those relationships between actions and pleasure/pain are what you need to be learning. That is what wisdom is.
What you should do right now
You should start practicing meditation. Every little bit counts, so do it.
There are many techniques you can try, but they all lead to the same place: getting you to sit still enough so that you start paying attention and letting your mind absorb data.
Everything you notice about your environment is another point you’ve scored in the meditation game. Each point leads to more wisdom.
Your task:
- Set a timer for 30 minutes.
- Focus on the sensations of breathing.
- Each time your mind wanders, bring it back to the sensations of breathing.
That is the meditation game. It works because every time you notice you’re mind wandering, you are immediately contacting your present environment. So, you’re guaranteed to take in more and more data.
It will do much more for you than any attempts to control or eliminate mere feelings.
The Truth About Meditation Teachers
Meditation teachers aren’t as bad as piano teachers, but they can still be bad.
Especially when they’re all about getting you to eliminate emotions, control emotions, eliminate thoughts, control thoughts.
This is the opposite of what meditation should be. But, it’s what they do. Go figure.
Control.
The point of meditation is to teach you how to let go. Not control. That would be the opposite of the point of meditation.
Get it?
When people start meditating, they want control. It’s why they start. Makes perfect sense.
They want to feel better, relax, de-stress, calm down. They want a clear head, increased productivity, better focus.
This is all fine, and yeah, meditation will help you with it.
But, it’s the outcome of meditation, not the process. The destination, not the journey.
You can’t get there from here.
You have to go backwards before you can go forwards.
Meditation teachers don’t always encourage this.
Of course, they want to sell the product. They will give the people what they want. Who can blame them?
I can, that’s who.
If you’re interested in meditation, you should know what’s up. I’m not going to censor myself to protect some people’s egos. That would be stupid.
Meditation is not about relaxing or calming down. Especially if you’re not able to find relaxation or calm right away.
Before trying to relax, you should try to just be with whatever’s here. Even if what’s here is stress and insanity.
If your meditation teacher encourages that, great. You can stop reading.
If, on the other hand, your teacher is telling you to do something you can’t find a way to do, you can stop blaming yourself and instead question whether it’s even possible.
When I meditate, I don’t try to calm down. I try to sit with whatever’s here.
This is radical acceptance.
It means I accept everything, even the stuff I don’t like.
My least favorite conversation about meditation
I'm into meditation.
“Oh, I've heard of meditation. You mean like with crystals and shit?”
No, no. Not that kind. But I see the confusion.
I do the kind of meditation that's about radical acceptance of whatever's happening.
“Oh, I see. So, you just sit back and relax?”
No, but that's a common misunderstanding. Whatever's happening is not always relaxing, so if you sit and watch whatever's happening, you won't always be relaxed. Sometimes, it's no fun at all.
The type of meditation I'm into is called “vipassana”, and it comes from Buddhism.
“So it's a religion?”
Nope. It's just a technique for training your mind. You don't have to believe anything.
“It doesn't sound very scientific.”
It's not. It's an art.
“But I thought meditation was backed up by science.”
Yeah, probably. I don't really care, though. I do it as an art.
“Do you think I should meditate?”
Yes.
“What gives you the right to tell me what to do?”
You asked.
“You don't seem very qualified.”
I'm not.
“In fact, you seem a little bit arrogant and full of yourself.”
I am.
“Those don't sound like traits a meditation teacher should have.”
Oh! I see the misunderstanding: I'm not a regular meditation teacher.
I'm an evil meditation teacher. I have the bad traits, not the good ones. Make sense?
“No. You sound manipulative and psychopathic.”
I am.
“I hope no one ever takes your advice, ever.”
OK.
Btw, this is why you should meditate: it makes it easier to deal with people like you without getting depressed and suicidal.
“People like me??? How dare you generalize like that!?”
Can I help you with something?
If You Expect Meditation to Calm You Down, It’s No Wonder You’re Stressed Out
If Meditation is Boring, You’re Doing it Wrong
Meditation is not difficult.
Why do you even want to meditate? That’s what you should be asking yourself.
If you don’t enjoy meditation, then yeah, it’s going to seem difficult. Anything that is sufficiently painful is going to feel difficult if you force yourself to do it for long enough, including meditation.
What are you hoping to get out of meditation? If you’re hoping to get peace, relaxation, tranquility, and calm, then you’re probably going to be frustrated.
Even if you get those things occasionally, they’re not going to be there all the time. When they are, meditation will feel easy. When they’re not, it will feel difficult. And you’ll stop doing it.
Are you trying to meditate because you have some big problem in your life you need to fix? Anxiety, depression, relationship problems, weight problems, addictions? Meditation might help with those, and it might not. It might even make them worse at times.
Am I trying to talk you out of meditating? Nope. I think you should meditate. But I also think you should have reasonable expectations for what’s involved.
Are you a high-achiever? If so, you’ll probably get frustrated with meditation.
Meditation isn’t one of those things you can master in a few weeks, take pictures of your progress, and post on Instagram. Sure, you could take pictures, but who’s going to see the progress? It’s all inside you.
All inside you. Nowhere else.
Where else would it be? Come on, think about it. Use your brain.
Meditation is the key to your happiness. You know this. That’s why you want to be able to do it.
Why You Can’t Meditate
Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to your happiness is YOU.
YOU are screwing it all up. Sorry not sorry if that offends you.
YOU are demanding, high-maintenance, and perfectionistic. You have impossibly high standards for yourself (and for others).
So, if you want to meditate, you’re going to need to find some way of working around YOU. Because YOU certainly aren’t going to step aside and make this easy for yourself.
You can’t just tell yourself to get lost. It doesn’t work that way. You know better. You’re just going to argue and justify and rationalize.
You have to launch a sneak attack of some kind.
Here’s what I suggest: accept yourself. Radically.
Stop fighting with yourself. Just allow yourself to do whatever it is that you are doing. Trust that whatever you’re doing is something you’re doing for a good reason. Yeah, maybe it’s not going to work, but at least you’re doing it for a reason.
You can meditate no matter what. Even if you’re not making progress, even if you have nothing to show for it. You can still do it. You can still waste that time.
Either meditation is good or it isn’t. Which is it? If you’re trying to meditate, I assume there’s at least a part of you that believes it would be good for you.
So, commit to it. Not forever. Just for a little bit. 20 minutes. Whatever.
Just do it.
See what happens.
Meditation is Boring, and That’s Why You Should Do It
When you “waste” your time meditating, it feels bad, right? It feels boring, pointless, stupid, and you get impatient, right?
Good, that’s how it should be. Try to enjoy those feelings. They’re there for a reason.
I have no idea why you feel those things. I could guess, but it’s none of my business. It’s your business. Literally, this is your business, that you have been engaged in for years. Get out of your way. Let yourself get on with your business.
How to Meditate Without Hating Yourself
Radical acceptance.
This is what makes meditation work. It’s what makes meditation doable.
If you don’t have radical acceptance, you will be struggling to meditate. It won’t be fun, you won’t look forward to doing it, and you won’t do it.
Radical acceptance of whatever comes up.
Thoughts, feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, judgments, evaluations, memories, fears, plans, hopes, regrets, pain, pleasure, urges…
All of it. No matter what.
This is what you’re practicing. How to let things come and let them go. Like clouds in the sky.
You can’t decide that some of them are good and some are bad. That’s not radical acceptance. That’s picking and choosing.
You need to be OK with all of them.
It doesn’t mean you have to like them. Only that you have to stop fighting them. You can still dislike them as much as you please.
You can still whine and complain about them. Just don’t fight them. Don’t try to get rid of them. Allow them to exist, to do their thing.
This is your business.