Meditating is a great way to practice mindfulness and manage stress in your daily life, but if you’ve never done it before, getting started can definitely be intimidating. I’m relatively new to meditating myself, and I often find myself getting distracted by my thoughts.
According to meditation teacher and actor Logan Browning, this is a totally normal experience, even for seasoned meditation practitioners. “All of those thoughts and things that happen — like distraction, if you get bored, whatever it is — that’s not something that’s unique to one person,” she told me in a phone interview before her Chase Sapphire meditation event.
“I think there’s maybe a mysticism around [meditation],” she said. “Sometimes people, when it’s their first time, they’re sitting down thinking, ‘Oh man, all these other people are able to quiet their mind, but my mind is so busy because I’ve got a lot going on.'”
In those moments, Browning encourages perspective — everybody has a lot going on, and you can actually make the distracting thoughts part of your meditation.
For Browning, it’s the worrying about getting distracted that often becomes the distraction. Instead, if you find your mind wandering, let yourself notice the thought and then try to bring yourself back to an anchor, be that your breath, a phrase, or your physical body.
