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Hey this is Leo for actualized.org and in this episode I'm going to explain meditation for beginners Meditation is the single most important self-improvement habit you can have. Let me repeat that again, because i need to stress the significance of this. Meditation is the single most important habit for self-improvement that you can have. So the question is why aren't you meditating yet. Why aren't you meditating consistently. Now you might say Leo why are you beating on this point? Because I'm already here i'm willing to learn, here i am, so tell me how to do it and i will in a second.... but there's a larger issue here and the larger issues is that you still don't grasp and fathom the full significance of what you stumbled upon here you're kind of like a man was walking down the street, or a woman walking down the street, who stumbles upon a little golden nugget lying on the road and you think to yourself, "oh a golden nugget that's great!" and you try to pick it up and then you run off with it never having realized that what you really discovered but failed to realize is a gold mine! not one little nugget. This thing here... i'm going to share a nugget with you today but it's really just a little tip of the iceberg you've discovered a gold mine. So take what i say here very seriously and i'll come back to this point after I show you the technique. So let's talk about how to meditate. So there's a lot of different techniques out there and i actually have episodes that cover various techniques in a lot of depth. I want to give something simple for beginners who haven't done this before or who have tried and failed and now are really serious about making this habit stick. So I'm going to boil all the meditation down for you to just like one little simple nugget, and what that is is the following and I want you to now do what I say with me and don't just follow along intellectually. There's a key distinction we have to make to meditate effectively, and that is the distinction between thinking and awareness. So we have thinking on the one hand which is what you normally do which is what you're very familiar with, and then we have awareness which is kind of puzzling and mysterious and you know ..."Leo what is awareness?" Well we're gonna make this distinction and this distinction is something that you actually make by meditating. You don't make distinction this distinction by thinking. See there's two ways to try to make this distinction. One is to say" oh okay let me think about this, oh yeah I've thought about it, oh yeah there's a distinction between thinking and awareness" So that's one way and that's fine you start there but I want you to go deeper right now with me I want you to become aware that there is a distinction between thinking and awareness, not just to think about it but to actually become aware of it. See there is this kind of weird self-referential thing going on here so let's try it right now as you're sitting there don't change anything. you don't change your posture, don't do anything, just sit there and listen to me right this very second and become aware of whatever is happening for you, become aware of your direct experience. Don't think about it become aware of it, and feel the difference between those two things. it's one thing for example to be aware that there is a a pressure sensation under your ass because you're sitting on a chair and another thing to think about it. ok those are two different things and I don't want you to think about the difference. I want you to experience and become aware of the difference. are you following along with me right? now it's hard at first to see the importance of this distinction. it might seem like that distinction is not even there for you right now. but what's going to happen after practicing a lot of meditation and after practicing a lot of watching and being aware of the difference between thinking and awareness, then the distinction in your mind gets drawn sharper and sharper and sharper and sharper, then over the years it becomes so sharp that then you have profound epiphanies and realizations and emotional releases and all sorts of amazing stuff starts to happen from this little simple meditation habit so what meditation is, one way to look at it, is it is simply the using of awareness to draw a distinction in your mind between thinking and awareness that's one way to frame it. So the actual technique let's practice it right now.,i'll show you the most simple, i think, technique that exists for meditating and what this is this is like.. this is called the no manipulation technique. so try right now sit there. as you're sitting don't try to put yourself into some sort of meditative position or posture any posture position you take is fine and just sit and notice and be aware, just observe and watch, all these words like aware, be observant ,watch, notice these are all synonymous so just sit there and notice what's happening right this very second in direct experience. right this moment, not a minute before, not ten minutes later, not what I'm going to say next right now. so you're hearing the sound of my voice maybe you're, you're looking at me if you're watching this on video and you're feeling some emotions in your body... thoughts might be coming up for you so do this right now and just train your mind on that and try to stick with it no manipulation means that you don't manipulate your body or your posture, you just let it go natural and whatever it wants to do let it do it this includes your mind. so let your mind go natural - so if your mind wants to think perverted thoughts, let it think pretty thoughts and if it wants to judge let it judge and if it wants to go crazy and get angry and upset and all this let it do that and if it wants to experience some emotion like sadness or happiness or excitement or frustration let it experience that emotion Whatever is occurring for you. Don't try to experience anything because you already are experiencing. there's never a moment when you're not experiencing unless maybe when you're deep asleep, but if you're awake then there's never a moment you don't have an experience, so that's it your meditation is focused on that this right now this right now experience right here okay. so do it do it right now while I'm talking you don't need to be in a quiet environment to meditate you don't need to sit alone by yourself, I mean it helps, that's a good place to start. especially if you're a beginner but you can do it right now is I'm talking. notice that you don't need a fancy position you don't need to manipulate your breathing. that's it. that's the whole method sounds very simple and it is very simple and the problem with it sounding so simple is that you overlooked the significance of it and also you underestimate the challenges of it this whole non manipulation thing is very challenging it's actually very very challenging to stop manipulating yourself because that's what you've been doing for decades now as you've been manipulating yourself and you haven't been allowing whatever is actually occurring to actually occur you've been fighting it and when you start to practice this one thing you're going to notice is that man i am manipulating myself not to manipulate myself and that too is a manipulation so that's just something yo're gonna work through. you can experience all that that's the process of learning how to meditate. so that's the just of the technique, now let's talk about how to set the habit because the habit is the most important part here the habit is going to evolve the following for you, so you going to start with 20 minutes of this per day. you're going to sit there with a timer get yourself a timer, set for 20 minutes and then you're just going to sit in one sitting don't break it, up don't interrupt yourself. preferably find a quiet place to start because you're just beginning. and that's your habit and you can use every day. Every single day this is so critical, if you get this wrong oh man... you've... you've really got wrong. every single day no excuses. So you have got tp make this commitment what I'm telling you is not just every single day for the next month, I'm telling you every single day for the rest of your life. every single day and I mean it really, I mean it it's like: no vacations no holidays no sick days no excuses, no emergencies, nothing every single day you commit to finding 20 minutes to meditate, and is it possible? yeah it's possible. it's definitely possible. in fact it's, it's so easy it's so easy to find 20 minutes in your day to meditate that it's actually quite ridiculous all the excuses people come up with why they don't have 20 minutes I'm pretty busy guy, I run a business and I've been meditating consistently every single day for the last three years, haven't missed a single day why is that? it's not because I'm some extraordinary individual, I just set it as a priority I just said this is important and so here it is and it's happened, haven't missed a single day, so you can do that too. that's the habit, now let me hum let me give you some words of warning and some guidelines, for this habit that you will be developing over the months and years to come because if you don't follow what I'm going to say next you're gonna fail, like guaranteed fail, so listen to these guidelines that i'm gonna tell you. so first of all have the expectation that your first year you will suck at meditating you will. No one is born a good meditator you suck at it when you first start and you suck for quite a while notice the whole year that's quite a long time to suck, so you gonna suck during all that time so be prepared for that. you come into thinking like oh yeah not manipulation that's easy i cannot manipulate myself i can just sit there for 20 minutes and not manipulate myself and the reality is that no you can't and it will take you a year or more to get decent at that and it's not within your control you can't control yourself you can't manipulate yourself into not manipulating yourself see so that's not going to work here your standard operating procedure is not going to work here it's not gonna help you in fact it's only going to slow you down and if the more you try that then maybe we'll be two years instead of one year that you're gonna suck but that's just something again you can't control it's out of your hands the only thing you can control is the setting of the habit which is why it's so freaking critical that you do this every single day because that's really the only thing you can control here it's just that that's it. what else will happen to you is that it will be very very frustrating so here's your second guideline: is going to be very frustrating for the first year if you don't expect that you're going to fail the number one reason people failed meditation is they come into a thing like all meditation that's going to release some stress i'm gonna feel nice and feel happy so let me do it and then of course what happens the first year you hardly get any of that and so you look at it and say well clearly it's not working clearly i suck clearly i'm a failure I'm not cut out for this and so you quit you quit in the middle of the learning curve you see a meditation is a pretty steep learning curve the benefit of that is that once you get past the learning curve it becomes amazing it becomes so amazing it's hard to even describe with words one thing you have to learn by hitting your head against the wall repeatedly through meditation every single day is that you cannot control your thoughts and I don't just mean that in the sense that you suck at controlling your flaws and that one day you will get good at it I mean no, you can't control your thoughts that's not an ability you possess nor will it ever come into your possession now to fully grasp the significance of that you will have to meditate for a while so i'll let you meditate and discover that on your own I don't want to spoil the surprise for you. Also another guideline i want to give you here is that you will have bad days like really bad days while you meditate some days will be great some days will be average some days will suck and some days will be really really bad so I'm talking about those really really bad days when you have those really really bad days on occasion you might have a couple of them per month remind yourself that it's actually during this very day that you're growing the most with your meditation you don't grow the most when you're just sitting there and blissing out and being peaceful and calm I mean those are nice, take when you can get them but you're not going to have very many of those days when you start and what you got to realize is that it's kind of like going to the gym when you're at the gym and you're pushing some really heavy weight you can barely push and maybe you even fail to lift it that's some of the best workout days that's what you're shooting for as a weight lifter is like taking your muscles to the breaking point so that's what meditation is like and meditation is going to be up and down and up and down don't expect it to be just a a smooth upward progression like this every day you're getting better and better and better, no it's going to be up and down up and down sometimes you are going to feel great and then the next day you're going to crash you're going to be caught in your mind thinking and being frustrated and pissed off at the world and depressed and suicidal and during that time I want you to remind yourself what I told you here, that your best days are your worst days ok and hm for the last guideline is that as long as you do it it counts. what this means is that some people they sit down they meditate and they say after 20 minutes they say"well I meditated for 20 minutes but this session was a bad session i was i was thinking about sex or something so this session I didn't meditate it doesn't count you know if I'm sitting there thinking about sex for 20 minutes is that meditation?" and the answer is yes it is because what counts in meditation is the fact that you sat down and you have the intention to sit there and to be aware now it's not in your control whether you will be aware or not and some days like I said will be very bad days but still count that as proper meditation so the stipulation here is that you should have this kind of rule in your mind that you can use again to reassure yourself when you're failing or you think you're failing that the only way to fail here is to not do the habit. if you sit through 20 minutes you succeeded it's that simple don't make it any more complicated. Speaking of complicated it's very easy to make meditation very complicated: I have hour-long episodes where I going to in-depth techniques and nuances of meditation and you can do that later but remember that what you're doing with meditation is your your sort of learning to deal with your monkey mind and you're learning to deal with all the distractions and self-doubt and sabotage that your mind creates for you and one of the ways in which it does it in the context of meditation is that it creates all sorts of questions and it wants to complicate everything, it's like "well Leo what's the best time to meditate? Should i meditate in the morning or in the evening or at lunch time? or Leo should i meditate like by myself? or in a group? or should I take a class? or should I sit on a pillow? or should I sit in the lotus position? or should I listen to music? or not listen to music? or should i use technique Y or technique Z.. so what this does is this distracts you see this is your mind distracting you, this is how the mind sabotages you and that's why you have a lot of emotional issues in your life is because you're not aware of the mind doing this so um here just want to keep it very very simple I'm deliberately not answering all your possible questions and covering all the possible angles if you want that you can find that in other episodes that i have, keep it very simple right your focus here has to be... like almost a hundred percent on just sitting down and doing your 20 minutes every day that's your whole focus and what I want to set for you as a goal with this habit is that your first few months it's going to be 20 minutes a day then once you get a little bit comfortable with that raise it to 30 minutes then a few months later raise it to 40 minutes 50 minutes and then what I want you to do is by the end of the year in 12 months to be a 60 minutes and then you can stay at that level for a while that's a pretty good number ok so that's your your habit goal, make the commitment make the commitment because like i said this is the single most important self-improvement habit that you can have I talk about a lot of advance and complicated and nuanced topics and I give a lot of weird techniques for meditation for other types of inner development but really this here is all you really need and if you've listened to me talking about it, my question for you is why aren't you doing it? I can almost guarantee that you're not doing it, why aren't you doing it? this is the single most important self-improvement habit that you can have in your life, because the results of it exponentially grow on you about three years ago when I started meditating I could barely sit still for 10 minutes it felt like torture it felt like I was in hell for 10 minutes and now the other day I i meditated for six hours not all in one sitting I broke it up into blocks but they're pretty long blogs and it was six hours and it was amazing i mean six hours is pretty difficult for me it doesn't come easily but uh overall the effect is amazing the effects meditation had in my life has been beyond description of words and it's only been three years so far that I've been doing it last year I bought myself a big flat screen TV and a playstation 4 wanted to play some video games and you know how that goes and i just sold my ps4 and i'm selling my TV this week because I don't need these things anymore because when i sit and do nothing I get more satisfaction and meaning than I do from watching TV or playing video games it's ridiculous it's ridiculous it is just like it's it's extraordinary the changes this will have on your mind there are a lot of specific benefits about meditation I could cite health benefits psychological benefits emotional well-being benefits and all this kind of stuff but i don't really want to go into that I want to let you kind of discover that on your own the important here is that you just grasp the significant potential here for you right can you see that potential if you're a forward-thinking person and you can see the value of investing into yourself right investing into a habit this habit is going to be difficult to build initially I mean but not that difficult it's only 20 freaking minutes a day but what that will yield for you a year or two or three or ten down the road is going to be incredible it's going to be incredible one of things you are going to discover is that the level of happiness you have now when you're doing your favorite most flashy activity like going to a fancy restaurant or snorting some drugs or playing the newest hottest video game hm whatever right whatever floats your boat whatever really excites you... that you'll be able to get that level of excitement and more by doing absolutely nothing now that's powerful that is powerful because you've now stop being a slave to all that shit and then you've opened the doors now you've opened the doors it doesn't just end there it's not just a blissing out you've opened the doors to real self improvement at that point and any problems you have in your life emotional problems relationship problems business problems these problems just melt away almost by magic they melt away because this is the power of the distinction between thinking and awareness and it's very hard to believe that the this little distinction can have such a huge practical impact on your life but it certainly can so I hope I've inspired a little bit to really commit to making this a lifelong habit all right that's it i'm signing off please uh click the like button for me post your comments down below I do read them share this episode with friend because we want more people on board with meditation and lastly come check out actualized.org right here this is my website and newsletter sign up to the newsletter you're going to get all my free new content that I release every single week so you're on track with self actualization. self-actualization is the process of learning how your mind functions and developing awareness around it and developing mastery over it so that you can achieve extraordinary things in your life because everything you want to achieve in your life is going to be limited by your awareness of your own mind and there's a lot of nuanced topics that I need to share with you going forward including how to meditate deeper how to take what you've established as the foundation here with this habit and take it even deeper and supplement it with more and more insights and more and more understanding so I'm excited to deliver more of that to you and also check out some of my hm deeper longer meditation episodes which are available on my website and on my youtube channel so sign up for the newsletter and i'll see you soon with more