I remember, a long time ago, trying to get into the daily practice of meditation.  Some days, I found meditation  to be easy.  But on the days it was difficult, I felt bad and it really disturbed me.  This was causing me to feel inadequate until I read an article about it.  It said, in so many words, that meditation works, even if you feel you are doing it wrong, or don’t even have your heart in it.  The writer compared the daily meditation process like this. Meditation works just like exercising your body.  If you physically exercise daily, it doesn’t matter if you aren’t into it that day.  Your muscles will get stronger even if you don’t feel like doing it. The same goes for meditation and prayer as well.

Daily prayer was easy for me because I was talking to God and didn’t need to clear my mind.  But to think that meditation could have a positive effect even on those days when I just couldn’t clear my mind of intruding thoughts, was mind-boggling to me.  Once I thought of it that way, it changed the way I approached it, and I got better at it.  The pressure was off and I could be free of my self-deprecation.  It took away the doubt that I would never be good at it.

Changing one’s mind can be a force for good in our individual lives.  We can be so stuck in a way of perceiving oneself, and our imperfections, that it can get in the way of improvement in one’s behavior.  I found that revelation to be life-changing.  It was another proof to what I believed to be true.  That positive thinking about anything has power in our lives.  

Once a person can see that a new perspective can have the power to move us forward with confidence, great things can happen.  In meditation, exercise, and other things as well, the doing of something builds confidence and lessens doubt.  This is a lesson I must remind myself of, whenever I focus on the possibility of failure.  Fear of failure is a negative outlook that can never produce the outcome one desires.  Maybe that is something I should meditate on.