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Meditation

How to Defeat Distraction During Meditation

Some practical tips for dealing with distraction during meditation.

TRANSCRIPT:

In my insight for today that I wanted to share with you- talking about meditation. So, meditation can be difficult for all of us. Some days you’ll do great with meditation, other days, it just seems impossible with constant distractions coming in your mind. Some of those distractions may be worthwhile thoughts, but some of them are just mindless distractions.

So, here’s what I do. Here’s what I recommend: Have a piece of paper next to you when you’re doing meditation, maybe even a Google document, maybe your phone. And when those distractions come into your mind, immediately write them down or put them in that Google document. They might be worth coming back to later; maybe it’s a good idea for work, maybe it’s an inspiration- something you need to work on- maybe it’s a suggestion for your relationship with your spouse or children.

So, write it down, and then give your mind the permission to forget it and then return to the point of your meditation. And after the course of thirty minutes or an hour of meditation, you might have a dozen different things you’ve written down. But by putting those ideas on paper, you’re no longer trying to force a negative. You’re no longer trying to say to your mind: “Don’t think about this idea.” That’s impossible. You’ve made a note of it, and you’ve freed yourself to go back to meditation.

Now the other thing from this week’s call that we were talking about and I was thinking about was the difficulty of meditation for the beginner or the difficulty of extending your meditation. That first five minutes can be very difficult. How do you ever get to twenty minutes or an hour? 

Well, the way I would recommend doing it is just focus on five or ten minutes. And if you get to that point and you’re just done, you can’t force your mind to meditate anymore- nothing’s coming to mind, it’s just all distraction- stop and go back to the material for your meditation. Maybe it’s a mystery of the Rosary, maybe it’s something from Scripture, maybe it’s the readings of that day- whatever the case may be. Go back to that source, read the next sentence, read the next paragraph, re-read what you’ve already read, and then start over again for another five minutes.

So, if your goal is meditation for twenty minutes, then maybe it’s four different five-minute meditations. That’s perfectly fine. So, that’s what I would recommend, and I hope that that’s been helpful for you. This is what I do in my own life. Have a great day.

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