Don't Want To Meditate? Try This.

I Don’t Want To Meditate – What To Do When Meditation Feels LIke A Chore.

Today I want to answer a question I got last week from a student who has been struggling to build that habits that will help her create lasting positive change.

She wrote: “Hi Kyle, I joined a few weeks ago and am loving everything so far. You have a really clear way of helping me see I can control my thoughts. My problem is that even though I want to change, I’m having trouble feeling motivated enough to do the work I know I need to do. I struggle with self-confidence and have had some depression in the past, and I don’t want to go back there. I know I need to meditate and step back but somehow it just feels like a chore. I get overwhelmed and don’t do anything. What should I do?”

Ok, so firstly I think it’s important to understand that ou’re not alone in this feeling. I know it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed or to beat yourself up for feeling like you’re not moving fast enough, or that you’re falling behind if you skip a day or two. But, you have to recognize that you are in charge of your own journey. Only you can decide how much , or how often, you’re going to tune-in and work on yourself, and there is no right or wrong amount of time.

When you join The Joy Within, you immediately unlock a ton of courses, so it is easy to feel overwhelmed. That’s why I recommend, for most new students, that you follow the Foundations Roadmap, which breaks everything down into small daily steps. I recommend you commit about 20 minutes a day to start, but if that’s too much, you can break it down even further. You might decide just to do the meditations, or just to follow along with the videos, and that would make it a little easier to manage. But, the other thing is, don’t feel like you have to keep a strict schedule. While I think it’s best to move forward with small, consistent daily steps, because that’s how you’ll really build the best habits, don’t feel like you have to start there.

If you miss a day, that’s ok. Just log-in and pick back up where you left off. You might even decide to intentionally take a few days off. Give yourself time to let the ideas sink in. It takes time to internalize some of these concepts. You don’t even have to actively think about them all of the time. If you follow the steps, at your own pace, the main principles will start to seep in and work on a subconscious level. That might mean randomly waking up feeling you’ve had an insight, or it might feel like a gradual yearning, the feeling of really wanting to change, like you described. That wanting is always the first step. Don’t discount the important of that, because even though it doesn’t feel like you’ve “done anything” yet, just wanting to change, just starting to take baby steps towards a more positive outlook, puts you light years ahead of most people.

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That means that just by being here, just by listening to this, you’re already in a really great position. You’re doing really well. Accept and acknowledge the progress you have already made, simply by being here.

The habit of tuning-in, of taking time for your inner growth, that will come. At the beginning it might feel like a chore – like yet another task you have to do – because you have not yet developed the habit, and you’ve not yet seen the results that will motivate you to make that habit a reality. This is – I think – one of the hardest stages to be in, because i’s a bit of a Catch-22.

Why Is It So Hard To Meditate Sometimes?

You need to build the habit to see change, but it’s hard to feel motivated until you start making real progress.

This is why that desire, the feeling of really wanting to change, is so important early on, because you have to persist long enough to build the habit. As you do, everything gets easier. You start seeing results, so you’ve more motivated, and you get more and more accustomed to making these simple, little shifts that will really transform your thinking. It becomes a virtuous cycle. But first it takes a little willpower to kickstart that positive spiral, and it’s ok if that feels like a chore.

To get over that hurdle, I suggest breaking it down to the smallest possible action. I would decide, for example, that your only goal is to sit down every day for 30 days and press play on a meditation. Don’t even worry about trying to meditate. Don’t worry how long you sit there, or what your mind thinks. Your goal is just to press play, and yes, of course you can sit and listen for a few minutes, but you’re not trying to do anything. Actually meditating is a bonus. The goal is just to start, just to press play.

When you break it down to that smallest possible first step, at first it doesn’t seem like much, but what you’re really doing is flipping your perspective. You’re making the game more winnable. These early wins will make you feel more eager and excited to continue. They will help you kickstart that positive, virtuous cycle. They’ll help you build the habit, and that’s what will lead to the bigger breakthroughs later on. So, break it down to whatever that easiest, tiniest first step is for you, even if it seems like a drop in the bucket. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll start building momentum and creating real, lasting change.

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