The Headspace Guide to: Mindfulness & Meditation

by Andy Puddicombe

Trusting your own experience The thing with meditation is that it’s difficult to quantify or judge. As I mentioned earlier, there really is no such thing as good or bad meditation, just aware or unaware, distracted or undistracted. So if you were to judge it would have to be on that basis. But don’t feel you have to rate it compared to another session or, even worse, against someone else’s experience – meditation is just what it is. Trust your own experience and don’t just rely on other people’s opinions. This is part of making meditation a practical reality in your life. To paraphrase one very famous meditation teacher, don’t just do it because I say it works. Try it for yourself and see if it makes a difference for you. Do it consistently and honestly and be the judge of whether it made any difference. If it did, you’ll have a little more confidence in continuing to do it and perhaps even doing it for a little longer each day. If it doesn’t seem to make a difference, give it some more time. Doing it just once or twice is like switching on the kettle when you are trying out some new coffee. You need to at least wait for the kettle to boil, to pour out the water and taste the coffee, before you can really say whether it works for you or not. This is why I usually recommend doing it for a very minimum of ten days before you completely rule it out.