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The Most Common Mistake of Meditators
Especially for beginners.
I became interested in meditation because my mind was a three-ringed circus. Someone was sticking his head in a lion’s mouth over there. Sixteen people were juggling 87 balls over there. And a family was crossing a hire wire suspended above a pool of writhing crocodiles over there.
I never knew which way to look, and thoughts ran amok in my mind. They must have drugged the lion! It would be so embarrassing if someone dropped a ball! What did they do to those poor crocodiles to make them so riled up? What if one of those people fell from the wire? Maybe I should stop thinking and just enjoy the show.
I wanted peace.
I was introduced to meditation in 2010 while reading Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage. This was the first book I’d read about positive psychology and it carried an uplifting message: we can change who we are for the better.
While this idea may seem obvious to you, it wasn’t to a 20-something-year-old me. I felt trapped inside the person I thought I was — scared, alone, and hopeless.
Meditation, the book claimed, could help.
How does it help? Well, meditation quiets the mind, right? And doesn’t it do so by calming the tumultuous ocean of thoughts? Doesn’t it bring peace…
