Caffeine, anxiety's no.1 evil potion.

[DustingMyselfOff]

I agree with the madness of spending more money than we need to. The first thing I did when I stopped working was get rid of my $60,000 vehicle and instead am driving a $26,000 vehicle. That was my first of many more cutbacks and I hope to make "being frugal" one of my new hobbies and challenges.

Regarding meditation, I do believe you when you say it's the magic bullet, and I've heard and read that SO many times that it must be true, but I just can't seem to find a practice that works for me that isn't a guided meditation. Those are great when you can have access to the audio assistance, but there are times throughout the day and night that I want to meditate, even for 5 minutes, but have no idea how to do it. I put myself in a quiet place with no distractions but then have no idea what to do with my brain. I try chanting a mantra, I try counting backwards from a very high number, I try picturing peaceful scenes, etc. Any suggestions on how to meditate without guided assistance?
Sue

[ankietyjoe]

Meditation is like juggling. No....hear me out.

If you explain juggling to somebody you'll tell them to throw a few things in the air and then catch them alternately with each hand....right? It's gonna be easy isn't it?

But no. Practice. If you (or anybody) applied the same logic to juggling as most people do with meditation they would proclaim after a few days or even a few weeks that TRUE juggling is impossible. But it's not, it's just practice.

First thing to do is set yourself a schedule. 5 minutes in the morning, and 5 minutes in the evening. 5 minutes is more than enough to begin with. Do it at the same time every day.

Secondly, all you do with your brain is slowly re-focus your attention when it wanders. And it will wander. Repeatedly. If you focus on your breathing (which I still recommend) then choose exactly what about your breathing you want to focus on. It could be the movement, the sound, the sensation of the air in your nose etc. Anything. Then just focus on that. And when your mind goes elsewhere every 5 seconds just re-focus on the breathing. There is no way you'll stop the random thoughts/wandering, but that doesn't matter at all. The point here is the gentle re-focusing. You keep doing that for weeks/months and it works. One day you might find a great sense of relief out of it, the next day it might be frustration, but it's that practice of not judging your thoughts, emotions and even bodily sensations that creates the long term effects of meditation.

When you say you haven't found the practice that works for you, it's possible that your expectations are out of sync with what meditation does. A guided meditation can be more of a relaxation tool, and there's nothing wrong with that. It can help take you to a place that you can't get to yourself yet. Perhaps you're expecting the same results from 'real' meditation which will never be realised.

The expectation should not be calm or enlightenment with meditation. All meditation is is re-focusing practice. I would start with that.