The honest case for meditation, from someone who has never enjoyed it.
I’ll start with a confession: I have never really enjoyed meditating, and I often ask myself, ‘Why meditate?’
I have never sat down on a cushion and thought, oh, this is wonderful. My mind has never enjoyed it. My ego has never enjoyed it. The human side of me would much rather scroll Facebook or think about my stomach or replay something I said three days ago. There is always something my mind would rather be doing than nothing.
And yet I do it. Almost every day. Because if I stop for four or five days, I notice. I snap at someone. I send the message I regret. I lose a little of my compassion and my patience and my wisdom, and I end up creating more pain for myself and for the people around me.
So this isn’t a love letter to meditation. It’s the honest case for it.
Understanding the question, Why meditate?, can be crucial for those considering this practice.
What meditation is not
There’s a version of meditation that I want to put aside straight away. The candles, the bath, the incense, the soft music. If you’re doing that for a moment of peace and quiet, brilliant. Run the bath. Read a book. Watch a romance. But don’t expect it to do much for you on Monday morning when the email lands or the colleague snaps at you.
That kind of meditation is like going to the gym, chatting to the person on the front desk for an hour, and then leaving. You had a nice time. Your muscles haven’t changed.
The meditation I’m talking about is more like weightlifting. Quiet, repetitive, slightly uncomfortable, and over time it changes the shape of your mind. Not so you become some serene guru. So you can sit at the family barbecue with the relative who winds you up, and not boil over. So you can be in the doctor’s waiting room without spinning a story that puts you in a wheelchair by Christmas. So when an email arrives that lights you up, you notice the fire before you fire back.
That gap, between the thought and the reaction, is the whole game.
The myth that stops most people meditating
There’s one myth that quietly defeats more people than any other. The idea that meditation is about clearing your mind.
It isn’t. It can’t be. Your mind is built to think the same way your heart is built to beat. You cannot ask a heart to stop beating, and you cannot ask a mind to stop thinking. The thoughts are not the problem. They were never the problem.
What you’re learning is something else entirely. You’re learning to notice the thought, and then to choose. You see the thought arrive, like a train pulling into a station, and you don’t have to get on every train. Some trains you let pass. Some trains you choose to ride deliberately. And the wisest version of you eventually learns to drive the train where it needs to go.
You have thoughts. You are not those thoughts. That one sentence, if you really get it, changes everything.
Five minutes is enough
People often ask me how long they have to sit for it to work. Five minutes. Honestly, even two.
The doctor’s waiting room counts. The two minutes before you walk into a meeting. The pause before you reply to a message that wound you up. Standing at the kettle while it boils. Driving up to a red traffic light and noticing your shoulders have crept up to your ears.
Little and often beats long and rare. If you sit for forty minutes on a Saturday and do nothing else all week, that’s a beautiful Saturday and a normal Monday. If you sit for five minutes every morning and steal another two minutes here and there throughout the day, the practice quietly seeps into your life. You stop noticing it as meditation. You just notice you’re a little less reactive than you used to be.
How you’ll know it’s working
Here is the strange part. When meditation is working, you probably won’t notice. The proof is in the things that didn’t happen. The argument you didn’t have. The email you didn’t send. The thought you didn’t follow into a story.
You’ll notice it most when you stop. Try it. Meditate twice a day for three weeks, and then give it up for a week. By the end of that week, the difference will be loud.
The peace was already here
Here’s the truth at the centre of all of it. Peace isn’t something you create. It’s underneath all the noise, where it has always been. Meditation just helps you notice it. You don’t have to do it perfectly. You don’t have to do it for long. You don’t even have to enjoy it.
You just have to sit down, breathe, and see what’s already there.
If you’d like a simple way in, I’ve recorded a five minute meditation to go with this. It’s called Peace Right Where You Are. No cushion required. No special room. Just you, a chair, and the breath that’s been with you the whole time.
The full episode is on the Stillness in the Storms podcast.
There is also a meditation to go with this blog here Peace Right Where You Are
Quick answers to the questions I get asked most
If you’ve been wondering why meditate at all, or whether you’re doing it wrong, these are the quick honest answers I come back to.
1. Why meditate in the first place?
Not to become serene. Not to escape your life. You meditate so you can stay in the room when things get hard. So you can pause between a thought and the reaction to it. Meditation trains the small space where choice happens.
2. What is meditation actually for?
The ordinary moments. The traffic light. The email you’re about to fire back. The family barbecue with the relative who winds you up. When meditation is working, you notice you did not lose your temper in a moment you normally would.
3. Is five minutes really enough?
Yes. Two minutes counts too. Little and often beats long and rare. If you sit for five minutes most mornings and steal another two here and there through the day, the practice quietly seeps into your life. You stop noticing it as meditation. You just notice you’re a bit less reactive than you used to be.
4. Do I need to clear my mind?
No, and you can’t anyway. Your mind is built to think, the way your heart is built to beat. Meditation is not about silencing thoughts. It’s about noticing them, so you can choose which ones to follow.
5. What if my mind keeps wandering?
It will. That’s not a failure. That’s the practice. The moment you realise your mind has drifted and you come back to the breath, that is the rep. The wandering is the thing that makes meditation possible in the first place.
6. I tried meditation and it didn’t work. Why?
Probably nothing wrong with you. Most people are told meditation is about clearing the mind or feeling blissful. Neither is true. If it didn’t work, you may have been practising a version of it that was never going to. Start simpler. Five minutes. Notice the breath. Notice a thought. Come back. That’s the whole thing.
7. Do I need a cushion or a quiet room?
No. A chair works. A bus works. Your bed works. A waiting room works. The only thing you really need is a breath and the willingness to notice it.
8. Can I meditate if I have ADHD?
Yes, and you may need a different version than the one you’ve seen. Short, simple, no long visualisations, no pressure to be still. That’s how I meditate. My mind is loud. I still meditate. So can you.
Two more unusual questions
9. Does it count if I fall asleep?
Sometimes. If you fell asleep because your body needed it, that was the right thing to happen. If it keeps happening, try sitting up rather than lying down, or move your practice earlier in the day. Either way, do not call it a failure. Your body is just telling you something.
10. What if I feel worse after meditating?
It can happen. When you stop rushing, things you have been outrunning sometimes catch up. That is not the meditation causing pain. It is the meditation giving space for something that was already there to surface. If it keeps happening, shorten the practice, be gentler, and if it gets heavy, talk to someone you trust. Noticing is not the same as fixing, and you are allowed to ask for help.
If you’d like a simple way to begin
I’ve recorded a five minute guided meditation to go with this, called Peace Right Where You Are. No cushion, no special place, no need to clear your thoughts. Just breath, thoughts, and the awareness behind both.
The full episode on the basics of meditation is on the Stillness in the Storms podcast.
