When Meditation Feels Like a Failure
Six perspectives on how to work with boredom, restlessness, and distraction.
You sit down to meditate.
Five seconds in, and that’s it. You’re already bored and restless.
You start missing your phone, your TV… and any kind of distraction, really.
Then, after settling in and taking a few breaths, you’re already replaying a conversation in your head or planning dinner, before a familiar thought pops up:
I’m really bad at this.
If that sounds like you, hi friend! 👋
That’s me too.
In this third chapter of the “Trying to Meditate” mini-series, I asked six wonderful creators this question:
“How do you deal with boredom, distraction, or restlessness when you meditate?”
Let’s see how they approach this.
Nick Hashemi from The Mindfulness Mentor: Peace Notes from a Former Monk
Nick’s work is truly special. A former Buddhist monk turned mindfulness mentor, Nick writes about Vipassana Meditation in a way that feels simple and doable.
“This is the heart of the practice.
When you sit still, the mind feels cornered.
And when the mind feels cornered, it resists.
Distractions, discomfort, urges to quit, doubt, planning, sleepiness, all of it appears. Most people think this means they are doing something wrong.
In reality, this is the moment the practice finally becomes real.
Instead of escaping or fighting, I learned to stay.
To observe the restlessness itself.
To notice the stories the mind tells,
“This is too hard,”
“I’m wasting time,”
“I can’t do this.”
And then to watch those thoughts, those urges, those moods rise and fall on their own.
Like any storm, they don’t last forever.
When you stop trying to fix the experience and simply understand it, something very quiet and steady appears beneath the resistance.
That quiet is not something you create.
It’s what’s revealed when the struggle ends.
In classical meditation training, these states are known as the mind’s main obstacles. Learning to meet them with understanding rather than resistance is what transforms practice.”
Sonia from Tranquil Nurturing Space
Sonia’s Substack is a place of poetry, reflection, and mindfulness. Her writing invites us to slow down and nurture body, mind, heart, and soul.
“I find it helpful to practice a focal-point meditation — gently bringing awareness to one thing, such as the breath or a mantra. This helps train the mind to return to stillness. Each time we notice our mind wandering and come back to the breath, we’re strengthening our practice.”
Alexis Vale from Hidden Frameworks
Alexis explores the architecture of transformation with a fresh perspective. His unique work guides readers towards deeper alignment and meaning through spiritual curiosity and lived experience.
“By not trying to deal with them at all.
The whole practice is simply observing whatever arises — boredom, distraction, restlessness — without judgment… and then gently returning to your anchor (breath, mantra, sensation, etc.).
The moment you stop fighting the mind, the meditation begins.”
VedicSoul - By~ A Bhardwaj from VedicSoul
A Bhardwaj writes beautifully about central themes of the human experience such as vulnerability and desire. He inspires us through ancient wisdom and his own profoundly human lens.
“I had to gradually learn to welcome them. Boredom, distraction, and restlessness are not signs of a failed meditation; they are an integral part of an honest practice. Like all, I too live in the modern world, that is constantly stimulated; screens, noise, information, movement. When I first started to practice silence, that momentum didn’t stop suddenly; it resisted, and demanded escape.
Over a period of consistent practice, instead of resisting their presence, and the key is not to fight this restlessness but to include it in the meditation. When boredom arises, notice it: “This is boredom.” When the urge to check the time appears, simply breathe and witness the impulse without following it. This approach reframes the entire experience.
The goal is not to have a perfectly focused session, but to cultivate a gentle, unshakable patience with the fluctuations of your own mind. Each time you notice you have wandered and choose to return without self-judgment, you are strengthening the muscle of your attention and deepening your capacity for compassion. One of the easiest ways is to follow our breath, every time there is distraction, one should return to focus on the inhale and exhale. In my personal experience this is the best and the easiest way. Even on days when restlessness wins, know that the sitting itself plants the seed.
If you stay long enough, something miraculous happens. Emptiness begins to fade. The breath feels alive. The body feels vibrant. The silence is no longer hollow; it becomes full, radiant, with a strong undercurrent of energy. Restlessness slowly transforms into peace, and peace into joy.”
Sue Reid from Confidence Matters by Sue Reid
Sue is a confidence coach with such an inspiring life story. She meditates every morning and says the practice has helped her a lot in her journey towards self-belief.
“I am not a person who gets bored, probably because I spent so much time alone when I was young. When I started meditation, I did become very restless. It was as if my ego was saying, ‘Why do we have to sit here? It's stupid.’ Sometimes I was so restless I simply had to move. My mindfulness trainer recommended quietly getting up when my body reacted like that, moving around, and then sitting back down and starting again. After a short while, it settled down. It’s about letting your body and mind know that this is what we're going to do now, so there's no point in fighting it.”
Paul Dalton (dharma⌁licious) from dharma⌁licious
Paul is a mindfulness meditation teacher who blends Buddhist teachings with modern life in a powerful way. His reflections make ancient teachings both digestible and practical.
“The beautiful thing about this practice is there is nothing that cannot become the ‘object’ of meditation, including boredom, distractions, and restlessness. I have found that when these experiences arise, the best move is to investigate them with interest. When we understand that the purpose of meditation is not to feel perpetually peaceful, but rather to meet our humanity with clarity, wisdom, and compassion, then boredom, distractions, or restlessness become just another phenomenon to learn from.
Dorothy Parker said, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
Whenever I start to feel bored or restless in meditation, I bring a lot of curiosity to what that experience is actually like. How does it manifest in the body? What are the specific sensations associated with it? How does it move and change? What thoughts does it trigger? Then I’ll often say to myself, “This is restlessness. It is a part of life, and it feels like this.”
Regarding distractions, I find it useful to remember that that they are vital in helping us strengthen our mindfulness. A meditation without distraction is like a gym without any equipment in it. It is only through getting distracted that we have the opportunity to develop our focus and awareness. I have learned to see them as welcomed prompts to celebrate the moments of ‘waking up’ and returning to awareness.”
If there’s one thing that stood out across all these answers, it’s this:
Boredom, distraction, and restlessness aren’t obstacles to meditation.
They are the practice.
So maybe the next time boredom creeps in or our mind wanders, that’s the exact moment where meditation is doing its work ✨
If you’re sitting, noticing, and gently coming back, congratulations! You’re meditating.
What’s your go-to distraction when you sit down to meditate?
Mine is imagining scenarios that will probably never happen 🤭
If you liked this chapter, you might enjoy the question we’ll explore next month:
“What role does the body play in your meditation practice?”
And if you missed them, here are Chapters 1 and 2:
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
Deep gratitude to you, Ilham, for curating such a necessary offering with clarity and care. You’ve created a spacious and compassionate container where practiced wisdom can speak without strain.
I would like to thank each contributor for the honesty and humility in their reflections. Together, this reads not as instruction, but as a shared reassurance that nothing arising in meditation is ever outside the path.
In the shared silence between these words, one feels the gentle truth: that even restlessness, when met with awareness, becomes a door to the Self.
Honoured to be part of this.
🙏🙏
Thank you once again, Ilham. It really is an honour to be among such inspiring teachers and writers. As we know, meditation isn't merely a well-being hack. It's a wise response to the stressful nature of the human condition. As teachers, the best thing we can do is help would-be meditators see beyond the myths and misconceptions that stop them benefiting from this wonderful practise. In that respect, your efforts to coordinate and curate this series is very important work indeed. Thank you, thank you 🙏