A fundamental mistake that I used to make while practicing meditation that caused a lot of pain

When I got started with meditation a couple of years ago, I used to really find it hard to sit and concentrate. Random thoughts used to come to my mind and some of them were extremely uncomfortable. So the first thing that came to mind was to try and stop thoughts willfully. Needless to say, that was a recipe for disaster. Fighting with thoughts led to me greater distress and irritation. Meditation was supposed to calm me, and exactly the opposite was happening. It was getting more and more restless, irritated, and angry ever day. We are so used to taking up things like a task “that needs to be done perfectly”. The worst part is that we also start judging ourselves for not being able to meditate properly. I was treating meditation as a hard task that needs to be done efficiently. Now when I look back, I realize that I was falling into the same old trap due to the past conditioning. It’s so fascinating what our minds are capable of. So I decided to create a video about this ( https://youtu.be/j5e6WwTpops ), where I talk about the common mistakes beginners make when starting meditation. I know a lot of you are much more experienced and knowledgable than me. Maybe, you guys can shed more light on this topic and help learn more. submitted by /u/MindfulnessQuest [link] [comments]