What meditation really is…

It’s not clearing your mind. It’s not being calm. You don’t even necessarily have to be still. Meditation is about presence. Simple, undistracted presence.

That means if your mind is full of thoughts, then in meditation you are present with those thoughts. You don’t need to will them away or beat yourself up for having a busy mind and declare yourself a terrible meditator. You just need to notice that you are having thoughts.

For me, it can be helpful to label each thought.

“Planning.”

“Worrying.”

“Dreaming.”

Labeling can help to detach from the thought, allowing me to shift from absorption in thinking to being the observer of the thought.

There are many, many ways to meditate, and this is just one approach that works for me personally. Other approaches involve concentrating on the breath, visualization, moving awareness systematically through the body, or using a mantra.