Mindfulness For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10

Dealing with Setbacks and Transcending Distractions

In This Chapter

Dealing with setbacks in mindfulness practice

Overcoming common problems

Transcending distractions

When you first learnt to walk you must have fallen over hundreds, if not thousands, of times before you could balance on two legs. But you didn’t give up. You probably giggled, got up, and tried again. Learning meditation, a powerful way of deepening mindfulness, is a similar process. When you first try to meditate, you’re going to fall over (well, not literally I hope, unless you’re trying the lesser-known hopping-on-one-leg meditation). But setbacks are part of the process of meditation. The question is how you deal with them. If you see setbacks as learning opportunities rather than failures, you’re bound to succeed. Each time a problem occurs, you simply need to get up and try again, with a smile if possible. In the end you may realise that meditation isn’t about achieving a certain state of mind, but about meeting each experience in a warm, accepting way. This chapter shows you how.

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