Meditation can be a life-changing practice if you find yourself in it, establish a long-term relationship with it, and enjoy doing it.

And there is no greater joy than understanding its benefits and getting started with it.

However, as you progress with your practice, things start changing and what you thought would be an enjoyable experience, becomes a bit difficult and disappointing, making you think twice about dropping it and get back to your regular way of living.

But wait!

That’s not what meditation is all about and you can actually make the practice better and more interactive regardless of the meditation style you are doing.

Based on my extensive experience with meditation, I will be sharing the lessons I have personally come to learn through the years about it and also give you a brief story about my meditation journey for you to better understand the lessons.

The Main Lessons I’ve Learned From My Meditation Journey

Lesson #1. Find a meditation style you relate with better than any other style

As we all know there are countless types of meditation that are aimed at improving various areas of our lives.

There is mindfulness meditation for becoming more mindful, loving-kindness meditation for cultivating the virtues of love and kindness, vipassana meditation for increasing wisdom, insight, health, and inner harmony, religious meditation for deepening your religious beliefs and practice, and many more.

And while these meditation styles seem good for everyone to work with, they are not the best for every individual.

We are all different and we should also approach meditation differently.

Some people may find that loving-kindness meditation really improves their lives more than mindfulness meditation and the other way around.

Others feel more at home with Buddhist meditation while others prefer Christian meditation.

There is nothing wrong with loving a certain meditation style more than the other.

So feel free to go deep into yourself and figure out what meditation style resonates with you and is in line with your beliefs and perspective about life.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different styles until you find the right one.

Lesson #2. Take time before switching to another meditation style

There are times when you will do meditation practice and feel like it is not helping you at all. Or other times, you will learn about a particular exercise and the thought of its whole purpose will excite you.

However, when you get to doing it, you realize later on that there were a few things you had not learned about it which are crucial and which change everything you had in mind about it.

These are some of the things that will make you want to switch to another meditation style.

But before you decide to make the switch, especially if it is because you feel like it’s not working for you, make sure you have done it for at least 3 to 6 months.

Some people do it for a couple of weeks and jump to another style. Then they work with the new style for another few weeks and get to another style.

This is not a good approach.

Before you decide to drop any style, ensure that you have fully explored it and given it time in your life.

As mentioned in the first lesson, your reason could be one of the challenges of meditation, which are short-lived, and if you gave up on it because of that temporary issue, you will have lost the opportunity to really benefit from it.

Lesson #3. Be patient. Sometimes, the benefits take a long time to manifest in your life.

Meditation can be very inspiring as you do it in the first week, but as you keep going, you get to a point where it starts becoming hard to do.

You find your mind is wandering every other second, you feel sleepy, you get out of your meditation session feeling low or sometimes feeling overstimulated and many other issues that vary with every person.

What you need to understand is that this is part of the self-transformation process that comes with meditation.

So don’t give up or feel like meditation was not meant for you.

Be patient, go through the motions strong and firm, and even if you have a session that was not all that fulfilling, just remember tomorrow is another and things might be better.

And if tomorrow you still have a not-so-uplifting experience, know that in a few weeks or months, you will be loving the new person you will have become and you will enjoy it more than you are at that time.

Ideally, be patient while having the bigger picture in your mind always.

Lesson #4. Learn the practice then do it on your own

As you start your meditation journey, aim to have someone walk you through the practice.

Be willing to be taught how to do the practice the right way so that you go through each step properly which will help you enjoy the full benefits of the exercise.

Take your time to read meditation books on your preferred meditation style and understand all you can about it.

When you are well-packed with information and have mastered how the practice is done, now begin doing it alone without guidance.

If you were using guided meditation resources or had a physical meditation teacher with you in your early days, now try to do it alone.

This really helps you build a personal relationship with the practice and helps you explore even more, which goes a long way for you.

Lesson #5. Have a modest approach with meditation 

This is mainly for those who like getting into things with all their heart as well as those who are involved in more than one meditation style.

If you like being obsessed with something that’s useful and put all your effort into it, you may want to be a bit modest with meditation.

Don’t meditate the whole day especially if you are a beginner.

Don’t commit a whole hour into the practice when you have not done the practice for a good while and you are comfortable with this lengthy period.

You might get disappointed after some time.

Also, if you are doing two meditation styles at once, space them up in your day. Do one in the morning and then the other one in the afternoon or evening.

If you do them consecutively, you won’t benefit much from them.

See, meditation is like learning.

You can’t read a whole coursebook in a day. You read one chapter, give yourself time to digest what you have in order to understand what you have read.

After you have gotten the first concept right you get to the other chapter. And when you are done reading all the chapters, you now do a lot of practice to make the concepts stick in your mind and make things work for you at work.

In meditation, you first meditate for a few minutes and let the experience of the short session sink in.

You do a few more minutes as you go and keep increasing the length of your sessions as you feel ‘at home’ with the length you have been working with for several weeks or months.

When you are now comfortable with the practice, you can be dedicating even more than an hour to it.

In the case where you have two styles, doing one in the morning and then giving yourself some time off before doing the other allows you to fully soak yourself into the first so that when you get to the second one, you are topping up the benefits of meditation as a practice.

If you do them in a rush, you will never get to enjoy them and you will always see them as a burden.

A Quick Overview of My Journey on Meditation

Now you might wonder, how did you learn those lessons?

Well, my meditation journey has been quite a rocky one.

I have done a lot of meditation practices and mental health exercises that have given me insight into the whole exercise.

I have switched to other styles a couple of times and have done two meditation styles every day for a good deal of time.

The lessons above are what I learned to do and not do through this journey of mine.

Looking back, it all started when I was seventeen years old.

I had a deep love for meditation.

I grew up admiring the strong but calm composure that I saw in people who meditated.

Watching TV and action movies from Asia that always had that one Kung Fu master who rarely spoke but was fierce and spent most of his time meditating was also something that inspired me.

After clearing high school, I decided to explore meditation at length and see what it could do for me.

The first meditation style I got into was Isha Kriya meditation by Sadhguru.

I was inspired by his young look despite his old age, and by the way I thought he was calm, knowledgeable, and well-spoken.

After doing the meditation he taught for a couple of months, I learned that there were limitations to the practice, and I was also feeling conflicted about the practice and what I believed in as a person.

After deep analysis having done the practice for a couple of months, I decided to drop the practice completely.

My First Transition to Another Meditation Style

At the time, I was struggling with anger and anxiety issues and I thought Isha Kriya was the answer.

And since I was using guided meditation video on the practice that Sadhguru himself made, I thought the practice would help me change.

That was not the case.

After dropping the practice, I decided that I would try to be more aware of myself when I’m angry and whenever I would feel out of control, I would just remain silent.

I developed this habit slowly by slowly and it really changed my life.

Any time I got into an argument, I would be aware of what I’m doing, realize that it is never useful to argue, and would go silent immediately or let the other person win.

These days, I don’t even get to the point of arguing.

If I feel a discussion is about to get messy, I withdraw from it.

After overcoming anger issues, I decided that since being aware added immense value to my life, and I had heard about awareness meditation, I would learn more about the practice and see how I would integrate it with what I was doing then.

That’s how I got into awareness meditation.

Finding My Sweet Spot

After a while, I would come to learn that focusing my attention can also help with building stronger relationships, learning, and generally feeling fulfilled since there was little to no mind wandering.

I researched more about focused attention meditation and got to know its benefits better, and I made a decision to also incorporate it in my life.

I wasn’t ready to drop awareness meditation since I was still feeling it’s a big part of my life, so I agreed with my inner self to juggle the two.

I made many mistakes while trying to balance them. I felt obliged to do them every day and would do them in a hurry so that I could feel better about doing them.

Soon I realized it’s not how fast and often you do them, but how much value you gain from every session.

So I chose to be doing one in the morning when my mind is still fresh and the other one in the evening as a way to refresh my mind.

Now everything is going well for me.

What All This Means to You (Recap of The Lessons)

Since my meditation journey is a really long one, and I have also done reflection, walking meditation, standing meditation, and other mindful activities, I have only given you the gist of my journey that has helped put the lessons into perspective.

Meditation, essentially, sounds fun when you are learning about all that it can do in your life and as you make your entry into it.

However, as you progress, it changes and becomes a difficult task.

That’s how the beginning phase is like, but as you keep doing it, you overcome the difficult phase and get back to the fun, joyful, and rewarding part.

It’s like starting a company.

You feel motivated and over the moon about the idea of owning your company and even taking the first steps to building sounds inspiring, but as you keep going, challenges come from every direction.

If you overcome them, the joy comes back again. If you give up, you miss out on the chance to make your dream come true due to challenges that every business owner faces.

In summary, meditation is not entirely as it sounds before you do it, but it is also not as bad as it looks when you have commenced your journey.

There will be a lot of things you will have to change, experiments to do to see what works for you, and a lot of patience and persistence, and perseverance that you will need to have.

In the end, it will all work out for you.