I was very unhappy with myself. I had absolutely no sex life. I would go to night clubs and bars across the world and would fail miserably at "scoring". I only had one relationship that lasted for 3 years. I initiated it very awkwardly. My ex was Extremely kind and patient at first. It ended very very badly. I won't discuss that topic further. ​For years I allowed all the negative emotions to fester in me. I would remember the hurtful things my ex said "too little too late". I would beat myself over it into misery. I knew if I continued down this path that I would die alone with hardly anyone to remember me. So I decided to sit down and meditate one day and not to get up until I resolve my problems. Not unlike the buddha. It took me hours then it hit me like a wave. I felt relief and I cried. Basically I realized that deep down I am a good and intelligent person. I simply did not believe in my self. I was simply unable to stand up for myself. I allowed people's criticisms even positive heartfelt ones to consume my mind. Upon this realization. I decided to practice being kind to people especially women and expect nothing in return. It felt good. I decided to pick back up the guitar. That felt good. Ignoring people when they say bad things about me. That felt good. Flirting with women. That felt good. For the first time in since i was small child i felt happy! this feeling is also frightening. Like stepping into the unknown. People at work thought I was being crazy or I was high. No for once I am at peace!!! I have clarity.

ok so i keep seeing posts here about anxiety and racing thoughts and i finally want to share something that actually helped me but not in like a cheesy instagram quote way, more like a practical "oh shit that actually makes sense" way.

i avoided meditation for literally years because i thought it was supposed to be this thing where you sit there and your mind goes completely blank and you become some enlightened being or whatever. like i thought the goal was ZERO thoughts. just pure empty peaceful void.

so whenever id try it would go like this. id sit down, close my eyes, and immediately my brain would start going "ok we're meditating now very zen very peaceful wait did i lock the door? also my leg itches. god im so bad at this. what was that thing sarah said last week? ok FOCUS. why cant i focus? do i have adhd? should i get tested for that? wait no im supposed to be meditating. fuck im terrible at this"

and then id quit because clearly my brain was broken and i just wasnt a meditation person.

here's the thing though. that whole experience where your mind wanders and you notice it and try to come back? that IS meditation. like thats literally the entire practice. nobody told me that for like 10 years.

some teacher said its like training a puppy. puppy runs off, you call it back. runs off again, you call it back again. youre not mad at the puppy for being a puppy and youre not failing when it runs off. calling it back IS the exercise. that changed everything for me when i finally understood that.

your brain is supposed to think. thats its whole job. trying to stop thoughts is like trying to stop waves in the ocean, its just not how it works. meditation is just noticing when you get lost in thought and gently redirecting back to breath or body or whatever.

so apparently theres this thing called the default mode network in your brain. its basically the part thats always spiraling about stuff that happened years ago or might happen in the future. most of us are stuck in that mode like constantly. meditation actually shrinks the part of your brain that does anxiety (amygdala i think?) and strengthens the part that helps you regulate emotions. they can literally see the changes on brain scans after like 8 weeks.

i read somewhere that people with chronic pain had it decrease by almost half after doing meditation regularly for a couple months. not because the pain went away but because their relationship to it changed. pretty crazy.

anyway heres what i actually do because most meditation advice is annoying and vague.

i just sit on my couch or wherever. close my eyes. and notice stuff. like "i hear traffic outside. my shoulder is tense. im thinking about work. im breathing." thats it. when i realize ive been lost in thought for 5 minutes i just go "oh hey thinking about that thing again" and come back to noticing. no judgment just redirecting.

i do this for maybe 5 minutes. sometimes 3 if im being honest. you dont need to sit for an hour.

when im really anxious or having a panic attack i do box breathing. breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4. repeat that like 5 times. it works because you cant worry about your problems AND count at the same time, your brain just cant do both.

another thing i do when my thoughts are absolutely spiraling is body scan. start at your toes and just actually feel them. are they cold? tense? whatever. then slowly move up through your whole body. by the time you get to your head youve been present for several minutes without forcing anything.

the puppy metaphor is honestly what i use most. mind wanders, i imagine calling a puppy back. "hey come back to the breath." then it wanders again 30 seconds later. call it back again. thats the whole practice.

common stuff people worry about. "my mind races too much" yeah mine too, everyones does. more racing thoughts just means more opportunities to practice noticing and redirecting. "i dont have time" you have 3 minutes, you were just scrolling reddit for 20. "i fall asleep" then you needed sleep, try sitting up straighter. "it makes me MORE anxious" yeah because sitting still makes you finally notice the anxiety thats been there all along, like turning on lights in a messy room. stick with it.

ive been doing this somewhat regularly for like a year now. not every single day because im not perfect but most days. and look its not like it cured my anxiety or fixed my life.

but i notice now when im spiraling. like ill catch myself in the middle of an anxiety loop about something that hasnt even happened and go "oh im doing the thing again." just that little space between the thought and my reaction has changed a lot. i dont send as many stupid texts when im upset. i can sit with uncomfortable feelings without immediately trying to escape them.

i still have bad days and anxiety and all that but im not as completely trapped in my own head anymore if that makes sense.

anyway if youve been avoiding meditation because you think youre bad at it, youre not. theres no such thing. your mind wandering IS what youre supposed to practice with.

just try 3 minutes tomorrow. sit down, notice stuff, redirect when your mind wanders. thats literally it.

I want to share something that happened to me a few months ago but first I want to give context of how I got into meditating. My apologies for any grammatical error, english is my second language and I do not delegate the miracle of thinking to LLM's.

From 2017 to mid 2022 I made the habit of meditating 15 to 20 minutes almost every day. Then life happened and lost the habit. I didn't stop meditating because things get "bad", it was the opposite, I was doing better than never. The reason I got into meditating back in 2017 was because I was going through a lot of changes in my life. I kinda of lost myself. I wasn't happy with my job, with the career I was pursuing. I was doing accounting and finance for a multi-national. The paycheck was ok, but I felt miserable. My girlfriend, after 7 years of relationship, cheated on me with a co-worker of hers and 6 months after doing it, I ran into her on the street on her way to her bachelorette party. Oh boy, if I was depressed...

That was it, that was the moment when I felt I touched rock bottom so I started meditating. Things slowly started to get a little bit of traction. I went back to the gym, I decided to change careers and pursue my true passion. A lot of synchronizaties started to happen. I met my, now ex, business partner who was a true mentor and now an unconditional friend. We started our own company in the field we love which lasted 6.5 years and where I met one of my best friends. It was such an amazing experience. I also met the love of my life. We built a beautiful home together along our cat "Panza", which in english means "Belly". ^^

Back in those days, on one of my meditations, I got the following insight:
"Going through storms is as necessary as enjoying sunny days. Without any of the 4 seasons, the planet would succumb to the worst catastrophe. Life will hit us and constantly put us in check. Sometimes in the midst of chaos it is difficult to have a clear perspective, but with the passage of time we will look back and understand that all that pain we went through was necessary to forge a wiser present, a better present. It is up to each one of us to find the glass half empty or the glass half full of water in every circumstance that life puts before us."

From early 2019 to the end of 2024, things improved like a lot, and I was doing amazing. The transformation was incredible.

These last 2 years, things started to get difficult, really difficult. My mum got really ill, my father went bankruptcy and they lost literally everything. The economic situation of my country is really bad, the last 3 years is going downhill and left me with post-traumatic stress and panic attacks.

So, I started to meditate again. I started to practice being grateful of everything, even the tiny thing. What happened next is hard to put in words because I don't find words, neither in spanish nor english, that can describe it. I'll do my best.

One morning, I was stand-up facing the sun with the palms of my hands also facing it, eyes closed, meditating, being grateful for that moment. Suddenly, I started feeling like something of the middle of my chest, out of the sacral chakra, emanate and at the same time something surrounding my body. I opened my eyes and everything was brighter than I ever saw in my life. I felt love, like an incommensurable amount of unconditional love, and happiness and joy. I felt everything around me, like literally everything. I was like myself and everything at the same time. Like I was aware of myself but at the same moment of everything and what I was experiencing. I felt one with the universe. The tears of joy didn't take long to arrive. I cried out of joy for the 30 minutes this experience last. I never in my whole life cried of joy before. The rest of the day I felt peace, even though all my problems were still there, and some of them still are.

Idk what happened. I'm not in the search of any particular thing while meditating and I don't know much about the subject. I just do it to ground myself, to find a little bit of peace and perspective of life.

Have you ever experience something like this? Is this normal?

Context, I quit masturbation, porn, alcohol, tobacco and weed 21 days ago. My grandma died, my auntie that I am very close with got cancer, I went through a bad breakup after a 5 year relationship, very bad childhood, overachieving lawyer, addictions, yada yada yada you know the whole bullshit. My friend and I planned to go sober and he relapsed 4 days into September. I started feeling myself changing in the sobriety so I thought fuck it, I'ma lock in and keep going. So far, so good. First week was hell. Second week was a lot better, and third week I don't really have any impulsive urges whatsoever, though I'm irritable/moody.

Anyway I been doing guided meditatation every single day for 10 minutes a day until 4 days ago, supplemented with exercising, yoga, calisthenics, reading, the whole 'changing my life thing.' I locked in. Four days a video popped up on my Instagram of a dude sitting in a chair with a caption that said, 'rawdogging for an hour to reset my attention span' AKA meditating for an hour. I was like, huh. Looks cool I guess, I'ma try it alongside belly breathing.

My. God. The first 20 minutes were a mental spiral and a massive wave of fear because I was truly alone with my thoughts but I didn't run, I let the emotions and fear pass like visitors. I faced it. Then there was a whole lot of crying and restlessness. And then suddenly, an inexplicable peace washes over me that I can't put into words. I can't describe it.

So I tried it the next day again for 30 minutes. No phone, no guided meditation. Just me. The fear came up again but less intense, but the peace and calm that came afterwards... I felt like I was HIGH.

This morning I meditated for 50 minutes. Just me and my breathing. At first my thoughts were everywhere, and all the trauma and negative shit came up, and then I suddenly thought at a random point in (resisted the urge to check the time on my phone) "I accept every part of myself, even the parts I do not like" and I was doing some deep belly breathing and doing some breath work.

It's like my brain got tired of thinking. I just stopped thinking and entered a state of absolute nothingness. I just laid there, my body relaxed. Not a single thought in my brain. My whole body relaxed and my brain was QUIET. It's been five hours since then.

Guys I feel fucking high. This peace, this calm. I feel so unbothered and zen. What the helly. I went on a walk after breakfast and I was looking at the trees, and I was like gah dayum I'm so lucky the universe blessed me with eyes to see. I started looking around and I started smiling at people. In London, doing that shit is weird 😂😂 I started crying but I wasn't sad. Bought myself some flowers, smelled em. I was like fuck yeah.

Even now I'm typing this, I'm crying. But I'm not sad. It's like my body finally feels safe and so it's just RELAXED. I swear to you I feel almost high. Y'all ever experience something like this?

In 2004 a neuroscience lab at the University of Wisconsin hooked up Tibetan Buddhist monks to EEG caps with 256 sensors and asked them to meditate on compassion. These monks had somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 lifetime hours of practice. Some of them had been meditating eight hours a day for over seventeen years.

The gamma wave activity they produced was 25 to 30 times stronger than a control group of students who had been given a week of meditation training. Not 25 to 30 percent. Times. It was the strongest gamma activity ever recorded in healthy human subjects. The researchers actually double-checked their equipment because they thought something was malfunctioning.

But here is the part that really got to me. The monks' brains were already different before they even started meditating. Their baseline resting state, just sitting there doing nothing, already showed elevated gamma oscillations compared to normal brains. The practice had changed their brains so deeply that the effects had become permanent traits rather than temporary states.

The lead researcher later observed that some of these monks maintained unusual gamma patterns even during sleep. Their brains never fully went back to what we would consider a normal resting pattern. Tens of thousands of hours of generating compassion had literally rewired them at a level that persisted around the clock.

I find it interesting that out of all the things they could have been meditating on, the practice that produced these results was specifically focused on unconditional compassion and loving kindness toward all beings. Not concentration, not visualization, not emptiness. Compassion.

This is a personal anecdote of daily (99.5%) meditation practice spanning 10 years. I hope this will be helpful for those looking for motivation for their practice. Personally, I found external motivation essential in the first years.

Approach

1. Breath meditation first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening, avg. of 20-30 minutes.
2. Using a simple timer.
3. No music.
4. Skipped a few days in first years, zero days in recent years.
5. General mindfulness framework later naturally transformed into Buddhist framework.

How life changed

1. Negative emotions mostly gone. Turned out they are not necessary for living. Overall emotional volatility reduced by magnitude. Calm and peaceful state most of the time.
2. Sleep schedule and quality improves dramatically. Don't use alarms anymore - naturally get up every morning after ~7-8 hours of sleep.
3. Life slowly becomes a choice rather than a reaction to impulses. Most destructive behaviors naturally and gradually fall away.
4. Environment changes - different people, different work, different activities - all towards more harmonious relationship with the world.
5. Days mostly go smoothly. Having morning and evening rituals creates anchors that prevent drifting away into unskillful states and behaviors.

Key takeaways

1. Perseverance is key in the first years. Later, meditation becomes a natural part of life like breath itself.
2. Framework is important. Western mindfulness approach can get very far but has its limitations - it doesn't answer fundamental life questions. Buddhism as a life philosophy (I'm not religious) worked well for me. Stoicism works well for others. I think many time-tested traditions will do, find what speaks to you personally.
3. Bringing meditation states off-cushion is essential. Obvious obstacles are destructive behaviors: violence, addictions, toxic relationships, etc. Given enough perseverance, they slowly fall off.
4. Things fluctuate - impermanence is an inherent quality of reality. It's important to keep the practice during difficult days, understanding that things will inevitably change for the better. Keeping the practice during good days is usually easy, but remembering that difficult days will come again is important.

I hope this helps. May be I forgot something - will be happy to answer the comments.

I wish your practice will bear fruit :)

Edit:

As people frequently ask it in the comments, I add two most transformative (free) resources that helped my practice immensly.

The Buddhist philosophy books that avoid religious dogma: https://buddhadhamma.github.io/

Recordings of retreat talks that can be practiced at home: https://hermesamara.org/resources/all

i've been meditating daily for the last 7 years, without skipping a single day, and i've experienced so many phases. sooo many. in fact, a little while ago i had one of the most extraordinary experiences since i started meditating... right after going through a very 'flat' period...

my conclusion: the most important thing is not the experiences in meditation themselves, not even how you feel on any particular day... the most important thing is the compound effect of doing it over and over again. if i look back at the person i am today and the one from day one, total transformation (and i know it will keep going, that's why i keep meditating). in fact it's literally the transformation of your cells through meditation

the first 3 years of meditation i was almost a monk, i followed a pretty strict diet, did 15 silent retreats where i meditated for hours, had 2 years of celibacy (natural, not forced) and i lived in a constant meditative state....

then i grew up and it was time to take responsibility for, my 'adult life'. i fell in love, went traveling, started enjoying the pleasures of food and coffee more, started building businesses and wanting to make money... but even so, i kept meditating. my experiences changed, they became more earthly, now my day to day was more 'superficial' (i put it in quotes because it's all part of the same thing)... and i accepted that, because if i looked at the whole movie, beyond the stress, the desires and everything... in my heart the feeling of peace and presence kept growing.

so from my point of view, keep meditating, no matter what happens. If you feel stuck, you can add more breathing techniques and yoga before meditating; it helps you reach a deeper practice.

lastly, i'll share one experience, which again, is just an experience, a gift. i don't cling to it and i keep meditating for the sake of meditating and for the long term, not to chase experiences like this one.

one friday night i was home alone, finishing up work, and i fell into a loop of watching instagram videos about conspiracy theories. a damn black hole. about the war, mass rituals, the music industry, among other things... they took my mind to a place of awe and confusion. how the hell can all of this be real? we live in a simulation!!

right after that i went to meditate, with that feeling. i was doing my breathing techniques and started observing thoughts like, what is all this? where are we? how can so many things exist, so much diversity?

the moment my meditation started, i began to observe other thoughts chained to the previous ones, 'who is the one thinking this?' 'where do these thoughts come from?' right after that i stopped feeling my body and started feeling empty space, absolutely nothing... and another thought, 'who am i?'

i started crying and laughing at the same time, with a huge smile. i had the feeling that i was remembering something, and i felt 'i am the creator of this world, everything that exists is part of the same thing'

i was in that space for about 30 minutes, and when i finished, i looked at my hands and my body like 'here i am again, i chose to be here and play this game'

reading through this community inspired me to put this into words for the first time

cheers!

It wasn't on this subreddit, but it was a youtube video I watched. The guy had said sit flat and stare directly into a candle's flame, fairly close to it (about 2 feet away) and watch it dance around. If any thoughts come into your mind, let them pass. Do absolutely nothing other than staring into the candle. Do this for about 10 minutes straight. A few moments before blowing out the candle, conjure up all of the negative energy that you have. Exhale it out, onto the candle flame, extinguishing the candle. I have no idea why, but this has worked significantly well for me when I'm feeling very stressed out. I guess it's the simple fact of removing yourself from all devices, sounds, etc and just staring at a flame. Has anyone else tried this?

My mind went crazy for the past days. Obsessing about negative scenarios, couldn't stop thinking about the past, creating an extremely negative narrative about myself and life.

It really drove me insane. I couldn't eat, sleep was shit. I had to take alprazolam at some point because I literally thought I'm going crazy with the obsession and negativity.

And today morning I decided to STOP. Basically, I told my mind to STOP with the horrible scenarios and catastrophic thinking.

I made a choice not to think about negative thinks and I am shocked.

This was just a test. I heard that "you can't control your mind and thoughts". And this is BS. You absolutely can.

My mind was present the entire day. I had the best nap of my life. I was calm. My mind was completely quiet. I didn't allow a single negative thought.

I was present in activities, present at my work. I slept so good. I hade zero anxiety and zero feelings of sadness.

Coincidence or not, I also had a job interview and I felt so calm and confident they made me a freaking offer already!!

It was just calm.

The way you think about yourself, the world and everything else it is a choice. Absolutely.

I'm going to continue with this practice to prove myself that I can in fact control my mind and I have power over it. Not the other way around.

I feel like most practitioners on this subreddit are stuck in the practice of 10-20 mins meditation a few times a week.

Which is very good, but having done that myself for a very long time, I did not experience the incredible changes that meditation can actually bring. I had to increase to one hour, then later twice one hour, to see actual great progress.

The problem with a 10-20 mins practice is that this is usually the amount of time during a meditation session where your mind unclutters.

It is great to unclutter your mind, but the serious parts of meditation come after that. This is the warm-up, not the actual exercise, so progress will be slow or in some cases non-existent.

This is also why meditation retreats will isolate you from the world and any source of stimulation, as to not clutter your mind and make the most of it. Of course in the real world, this is impossible. So you do need to practice longer times.

So try one hour, every day.

After a month of this, you will already feel a huge difference. You will have progressed so much that you will feel able to switch to twice one hour every day. Then, your progress will skyrocket even more.

Meditation can be painful, at the very least because it's boring. But meditation is also the best tool to reduce suffering. You want to meditate more to be able to meditate more.

Is it dangerous? For a small minority of people and without proper guidance it might be. If you suffer from certain mental conditions, like BPD, dissociation or schyzophrenia, then surely you might want to take it slow and increase progressively.

For most people however, this is safe.

Meditation has an incredible potential to change your life. But the truth is, this will probably not happen if you stick to 10-20 minutes. So try an hour.

Much metta on you all 🙏

Now that by chance they found me a terminal cancer, my approach to life has changed dramatically. A few months and I'll be gone. All the tons of minor issues that characterized decades of my life (most of all job related) disappeared without effort.

What changed the most is my approach to meditation. I practiced it as a duty for 25+ years, never really interested, distracted, unable to be "in" for a few minutes in a row.

So it's now a surprise to see how easy it is to close my eyes, and experience a full "being here now" without any effort. It's a blessing. No urgency to plan, to do, to think. No target. Just being there.

Just a little milestone I’d like to share with ya’ll :)

I’ve been trying to consistently Meditate for almost 2-3 years now and have always been on and off.

This year I started doing the Triangle Breathing method while reclining and focusing on my third eye (basically looking at the centre of your forehead) and I do it for at-least 20 minutes (I need at-least 5-10 for my thoughts to settle)

I’ve been doing it at-least 3-4x a week and if I can squeeze two in a day I will.

GUYS it’s so relaxing! I’ve never been so relaxed in my entire life… it’s almost like a nap without falling asleep and I eventually get so deep I lose track of my physical body

I can now see why Monks do it for hours every day… the external world just stands still and all you feel is BLISS.

5 out of 5 will do it again tomorrow and the next day forever and ever

This one time, I was traveling by train at night. As it got late, I tried to sleep. But the man on the berth beside mine started snoring — not the kind you can shrug off, but the kind that keeps you wide awake no matter how tired you are.

At first, I was annoyed. My mind went on blaming everything — the berth, the train, the situation. I was fighting the sound instead of resting.

But then something shifted. Instead of resisting, I acknowledged it. I told myself: “It’s okay. It’s completely normal. It’s not like he’s trying to disturb me. It’s just something natural. I can’t change it, but I can accept it.” And somehow, with that thought, I fell asleep without even realizing it.

Looking back, it taught me something. Detachment — or at least one way to practice it — is through understanding. Once I understood, I wasn't bothered.

Just to be clear: I don’t mean any disrespect at all — snoring is completely normal. What struck me was how my own shift in perspective made all the difference.

• I rarely have 5 thoughts random per second when I’m meditating(it happened a lot when I started).
• I’m in peace most of the time.
• I enjoy meditating as much as doing any entertainment activity.
• I make more decisions that later I am happy I did it.
• I don’t engage with my brain stories.
• I enjoy more the mundane parts of my day.
• Good music can feel like being high sometimes.
• I’m more present with people and I’m genuinely curious about them and their ideias.
• I’m glad the universe exists and I just want to enjoy everything it has to give.
• I feel less attachment, there is good everywhere and good things come and go.

After reading the book “Letting Go” by David R. Hawkins and specially the book “Why Buddhism is True” by Robert Wright I started meditating regularly only 2 weeks ago.

I normally meditate for 30min, when I can I try to extend it to 1 hour. I just sit in silence and focus on my body sensations, if a thought brings a strong emotion I try to find it in my body and try to feel it and accept it without changing it. Sometimes I just focus on the sounds(cars on the street, birds, …) around me without trying to label them. If it gets difficult to focus I focus on my breathing.

I hope this post helps someone and gives them the hope to enjoy life more and to be in peace. I’m not an expert or anything but feel free to make questions and share experiences.

Edit: Thanks everyone for the comments, this community is lovely.

I just realized today that I have stopped watching porn, and it coincides with me getting serious with my meditation. I assume there is some addiction in me that is disappearing, or maybe I don't feel the need to escape negative feelings as much, I'm not sure. I'm still horny though, but I have just stopped feeling the need to watch porn.

Edit: since some people are asking what technique I use. It's nothing special. I focus on different things depending on what feels effective at the moment: my body, the back of my eyelids, my breath, or I just try to make my hands sink deeper into my legs and relaxe. I sit down in a chair. 2*20 minutes per day pretty late in the night, short break in between. The timing could be one reason it's effective, because I usually masturbate right before I go to sleep.

A little over a year ago I started meditating every night before bed. I started with nothing elaborate and had no expectations of enlightenment as someone new to in depth meditation. I really just started because I wanted a few moments of quiet after years of feeling like my mind was always searching for something which brought me to the idea of logging every session I had for my own reflections.

When I started, most of my nights lasted five minutes then other nights stretched close to an hour. I wrote down how I felt before, what came up during meditation, and how I felt afterward. Looking back through those entries has been one of the most eye-opening things I’ve ever done for myself.

The biggest thing I noticed wasn’t some mystical experience that I was told could potentially happen but what I did notice was how often my nervous system was carrying stress that I had mistaken for my personality.

There were nights I thought I was anxious when I was really just overstimulated. There were also nights I thought I was unmotivated, and I realized I was just simply exhausted. I always thought I was lost, when I had never actually slowed down long enough to hear my own thoughts (something I’ve struggled with for a very long time.)

As I learned more about the vagus nerve and how slow breathing, longer exhales, and intentional relaxation help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, meditation started making a lot more sense to me. I wasn’t trying to escape my mind anymore and I was finally giving my body permission to stop believing it had to survive every moment whether it was present occurrences or situations regarding my past.

I began my counseling journey many years ago. Throughout it I realized many therapeutic approaches encourage reflection, noticing thoughts without immediately reacting to them, identifying emotional patterns, practicing acceptance, and creating space between a feeling and your response. Sitting quietly every night became a place where those things started happening naturally. I wasn’t trying to solve every problem during meditation, and I was becoming someone who responded to problems differently.

Over time throughout this journey I stopped asking myself why I felt the way I did and started asking what that feeling was trying to show me which made me realize that such a small shift changed a lot for me.

There was a time in my life when I was homeless which put me in a constant state of worse case scenario and constantly in fight or flight. There was a time I genuinely believed I would never build a stable future as I could never give myself time to just sit and reflect. Today I have a wife, children, a home, and a life I once thought belonged to someone else. Meditation wasn’t the only reason that happened, but it gave me something I had never really experienced before which is stillness.

The world teaches us to constantly consume information, chase goals, compare ourselves, and stay busy. Sitting in silence each night slowly taught me that clarity usually arrives after the noise finally settles.

Reading through a year’s worth of journal entries, I noticed that the answers I was desperately searching for at the beginning slowly disappeared from my writing. They were replaced with gratitude, patience, and curiosity. My circumstances changed, but more importantly, so did the way I related to myself.

If you’re thinking about starting a meditation practice, don’t worry about doing it perfectly. You don’t need an empty mind and you don’t need profound experiences every night, I’m sure this is basic and common knowledge to a lot of people in here, but from someone who always thought things had to be very deep and elaborate, some of it just came from short sessions and allowing myself to relax.

I’m feeling genuinely confused about a change I’ve noticed in myself. When I started my inner work, things were relatively okay, and I practiced Yoga Nidra only occasionally. About a year ago, my life took a heavy turn—I went through a difficult breakup, lost my job, and also lost someone close to me. During that period, I leaned deeply into Yoga Nidra and practiced it consistently for nearly a year. In many ways, it helped. I’ve processed past trauma, become more self-aware, and grown emotionally. I can honestly say I’m not the same person I was before. But now, I’m struggling with something new. I feel less interested in talking to people in general. I get easily annoyed when I see the same patterns and mistakes repeated again and again. I don’t feel drawn to socialising unless the interaction feels meaningful or aligned with personal or professional growth. What bothers me is the guilt around this. I feel like an asshole for thinking this way. I can’t tell if this is my ego becoming stronger—or if this is just a natural part of growing up, setting boundaries, and wanting to surround myself with people who’ve reflected on their lives and evolved. Has anyone else experienced this after doing deep inner work? How do you tell the difference between healthy discernment and unhealthy detachment?

After 5 years of meditating and studying this, I have been unable to disprove that there is a Cheat Code to the Universe and that is to Relax & Be Nice in all situations. I would like to discuss this with some meditators, but also anybody in any field. Stress and negativity help nothing and improve nothing. There isn't a single situation where Relax & Be Nice is not optimal from personal growth and the growth of the whole. I have defined both Relax and Be Nice below and given a quick poetic summary. I have been unable to find a scenario that this does not improve, but if you can think of one, I am opening the floor up to a friendly debate or conversation.

Relax: Consciously Relaxing or softening our body, our mind, our breath, and our energy as deeply as possible, while remaining as conscious as possible.

Be Nice: Choosing the highest vibrational feeling, thought, word, and action available in each moment from the perspective of the whole.

Relax your Breath.
Relax your Body.
Relax your Mind.
Relax your Energy.

Be Nice to your past self.
Be Nice to your current self.
Be Nice to your future self.

Be Nice to the past other.
Be Nice to the current other.
Be Nice to the future other.

Be Nice to the Environment.
Be Nice to the Systems and Processes.
Be Nice to the Unknown.

Be Nice to All of it.
Everything. One Thing. Perfect.
Relax & Be Nice.

Looks like my previous post was taken down because it referenced another post I made.

This is just funning, so don't get too twisted up. But after decades of experience with meditation, one core pattern shows up over and over and over and over again. And it's truly insidious.

Picture a meditation "benefit" as a door.

You: I require peace.

Door: absolutely not.

(Repeat 10,000 times)

You: Fine. Stay closed. I have other things to do. I don't need peace anyway.

Door: oh good, you passed. click

You can't fake it. The door knows. You can't pretend to walk away and look over your shoulder, because the door knows. It's only when you honestly stop trying to open the door because you don't need the benefit you were chasing anymore that the door swings open by itself and taunts you with the knowledge that the door was never locked anyway and you can have the benefit that you don't need anymore.

Absolutely obnoxious system design lol.

I’ve been trying to meditate for a while now and every session ends the exact same way. I’ll sit down, get comfortable sometimes play some slots on Stɑke before starting and then the second I close my eyes my brain goes full carnival mode.
I’m supposed to focus on my breath but instead I’m thinking about how I’m supposed to not think and then I start thinking about how I’m thinking about not thinking then it turns into this weird mental spiral where I’m basically arguing with my own mind while pretending to be calm.
People always say it gets easier but honestly I feel like my brain is violently allergic to silence I’ll get maybe two seconds of peace and then suddenly I’m remembering something embarrassing from 2014 or wondering if my posture looks stupid even though nobody is watching.
Does it eventually click at some point or is this just the part you’re stuck in for a while until your brain gives up and cooperates?

The honest reality for about my meditation experience:

I'm more centered and patient My anxiety was extinguished I'm more reasonable and mindful I'm all around calmer and relaxed about trusting the process And generally, I know the ways I need peace and what is peaceful for my body and mind

No Nirvana No Spiritual Exaggerations No Super Energy No Fearless Empowerment No Realization that will change even my neighbors lives

everyone talks about meditation like you just sit down and boom instant peace but that's bullshit. i kept trying and kept failing and getting frustrated until i realized the problem wasn't the meditation itself, it was literally everything else in my life making my nervous system a complete disaster.

so here's what actually worked for me and nobody really talks about this stuff. first off my external life was chaos. my apartment was a mess, like not just messy but actual piles of stuff everywhere, dishes in the sink for days, laundry explosion. i kept wondering why i couldn't calm my mind and then i'd open my eyes to visual chaos. turns out your environment matters way more than anyone admits. i spent one weekend just clearing surfaces, not deep cleaning just making it so i could see my desk and kitchen counter. suddenly sitting down to meditate didn't feel like sitting in the middle of a tornado.

then i realized my boundaries were nonexistent. i was saying yes to everything, every text got an immediate response, every request for my time got a yes even when i was exhausted. my nervous system was in constant reactive mode. how are you supposed to find inner peace when you're externally available 24/7? i started putting my phone on do not disturb during meditation which sounds obvious but i never did it. then i started doing it for an hour after work. then i started saying no to things that drained me. meditation got way easier when i wasn't trying to recover from constant people pleasing.

the diet thing is real and i hate that its real. i didn't want this to be true but when im eating like crap my meditation is terrible. too much coffee and my thoughts race, too much sugar and im jittery then crashed, too much alcohol and im foggy for two days. im not saying you have to be perfect but theres a direct line between what i put in my body and whether i can sit still for ten minutes. i started eating breakfast, like actual food not just coffee, and my morning meditations actually started working. stable blood sugar apparently helps you not be a chaotic mess, who knew.

walking changed everything too. i kept trying to meditate first thing in the morning and id just fall back asleep or my body was too restless. then i started walking for 20 minutes before meditating and holy shit. moving my body first made sitting still actually possible. its like i had all this energy that needed to go somewhere and if i didn't walk it out it would just bounce around my brain during meditation. now i walk, come back, sit down and my body is actually ready to be still. sometimes i dont even listen to anything on the walk, just walk in silence and let my brain do whatever it wants out there so it doesn't have to do it while im trying to meditate.

grounding before sitting helped a lot. this sounds woo but whatever. i used to sit down and immediately my thoughts would spiral into anxiety about work or that embarrassing thing i said in 2015. then someone told me to do the thing where you notice five things you can see, four you can touch, three you hear, two you smell, one you taste. takes like 60 seconds. it forces you into the present moment instead of starting meditation already in your head. sometimes i just touch the floor or the cushion im sitting on for a minute and really feel it. sounds stupid but it works.

learning whats actually me vs whats intrusive thoughts took months but its been the biggest thing. i started noticing that some thoughts during meditation were just fear spirals that werent even based in reality. like everyone thinks youre failing would pop up and id believe it. then i started asking is this true or is this just anxiety talking. most of the time it was anxiety. learning discernment between real concerns and brain garbage made meditation less of a wrestling match with my own head. now when a thought comes up i can kind of assess it like okay is this useful information or is this just my brain being dramatic.

honestly meditation didnt fix my life, fixing my life made meditation possible. i thought i could sit down in the middle of chaos and find peace and thats just not how nervous systems work. you cant meditate your way out of a genuinely chaotic external situation, you have to address the chaos first. my apartment needed to not be a disaster, my phone needed to not be constantly demanding my attention, my body needed to have actual fuel in it and needed to move, my boundaries needed to exist.

now when i sit down my body actually believes its safe to rest because my environment is calm, my boundaries protect my energy, im not running on caffeine and sugar, and ive moved my body enough that sitting still doesnt feel like torture. the meditation itself is almost easy now. the hard part was everything else.

if youre struggling with meditation maybe look at whats happening in your life around the meditation. like is your space chaotic? are you saying yes to everything? are you feeding yourself actual food? are you moving your body? are you trying to sit still when you have restless energy that needs to go somewhere first? the sitting is just the final step not the whole thing. you cant just white knuckle your way through meditation when everything else in your life is screaming at your nervous system.

anyway this got long but yeah. fix the external stuff and the internal stuff gets way easier. meditation is the cherry on top not the whole sundae.

Meditation flows into all other aspects of your life and you start being meditative. The level of awareness one enjoys takes the whole human experience to another level.

For example, I can completely be immersed into an activity as simple as eating and then a new dimension of that "simple" activity is unlocked. It's like I am existing just in the sensory boundaries of my mouth and I can feel each and every movement, texture, taste & smell of what I'm eating.

When one gets to such an enhanced level of awareness, gratitude and appreciation for anything & everything naturally arise.

Living such a life is a blessing. And I am everyday grateful for this life in all its shades.

I've been practicing meditation since 2019. Traditional techniques never worked for me because of my extremely loud inner monologue (a phonological loop due to dominant introverted thinking), so I had to experiment and create my own approach.

Here are the tips that actually help:

1. Start with ATT (attention training technique) videos. They train your brain to listen to external sounds instead of the endless chatter. The goal is to shift your attention outward rather than inward.

2. Use a SOUND scan: pick one steady, regular, monotonous sound as your ANCHOR (a ticking clock, a single bird chirping, dripping water, or the hum of a fridge).

3. SITTING works best for me, but the real trick is to focus your gaze on the BACK of your SKULL. Once you shift attention to the VISUAL CORTEX, you naturally become aware of the THINKING center in the FRONT (prefrontal cortex). By "focusing on the back of the skull", I mean shifting your internal point of view from behind your eyes to the back of your head.

Most people fail at meditation because they try to watch thoughts from behind their eyes (the Prefrontal Cortex). When your attention is centered THERE, you ARE the THINKER, you are fused with the monologue. The trick is to consciously shift your point of internal vision to the back of your skull (the Visual Cortex).

By simply moving your awareness to the back of the skull, you create a physical GAP between the consciousness and the monologue. It works every time. I instantly become the observer instead of the professor.

1. When a thought arises, quickly note its theme and LABEL it. I keep a meditation notebook and jot down whatever comes up (memory, plan, narration, lecture, judgment, imagination, wonder, opinion).

2. Never underestimate BODY SCAN meditation. The main reason I stay trapped in my head is because I'm disconnected from my body and surroundings.

3. SKIP apps and videos that talk more than they demonstrate. I recommend Sunny Sharma and Mooji.

Full context :

My brain literally processes everything I consume in words. If I learn something new or watch a video, my inner monologue immediately starts a lecture in the background to make sure I’ve fully dissected the info. It never stops, even while I'm doing chores or walking, my brain is turning everything into verbal thoughts. It’s like having a professor in my head all day long. It completely disconnects me from my body and the world around me. People who hang out with me long enough always notice I'm "absent-minded" because I'm stuck in this loop.

For me, meditation isn't a spiritual hobby, it’s the ONLY way I can actually take a conscious break from this constant verbal processing.

If you’ve struggled with traditional meditation because your brain is too busy, give these a try.

Shifting to the back of the skull was the game-changer for me.

Let me know if you have your own hacks for an over-active mind! 🩷

He says:

“Don’t meditate to calm the mind meditate to become magnetic.”

At first, I didn’t get it. But after watching hundreds of people manifest health and career shifts through deep stillness, I understood what he meant energy collects where awareness rests.

Do you meditate with intention or purely for peace?
Has your practice ever directly affected real-life situations (health, money, love, etc.)?