Resistance And Lack Of Focus In Meditation

[Barack Obama]

Hello everyone,

The person who can force himself to do whatever there needs to be done. Can rule this world.

There is a strong resistance to anyone who wants to do anything new. I'm talking about the resistance you feel from the inside. For example if you ever wanted to start going to the gym or learn how to code, or if you wanted to read a book this week.

Let's figure out how to bypass this resistance!

any suggestions?

[Guest]

Who or what is the "doer"?  From where is the resistance coming?  What is resistance as it applies to thought? Is the resistance actual/physical or is it merely thoughts that negate or impede (mess around with) other thoughts?

There are many aspects to consider and to genuinely contemplate.  Might it be that the resistance is self-induced by conditioning/habits?

And so on ...

joy

[Guest]

I had been smoking for 6 years and I quit one day and never smoked again. 

I was 89 Kilos and became 65 kilos in 2 months.

These were my life goals for a short period of time and accomplished them because I loved my body and my life.

Maybe loving your life can make you bypass the resistance but It's not always a good thing. When you force something too hard it'll break. You should do it part by part. Take the first step and you'll find yourself at where you wanted be before.

[lilacwest]

This is a very good question! I struggle with this as well. I think Leo has a video that touches on this topic but I forget what it is called. I also do want to say I'm very thankful to Leo and his videos, I was not a motivated person before, and now I want to be.

For now, I am going to try develop some good habits and drop some bad ones. Like give myself time constraints and daily goals. I am hoping as I develop good habits, the resistance and desire to be lazy will be lesser.

[TheFrown]

Resistance is one of my favorite topics.

I am a creative type so I have a daily battle everyday with Resistance in a very overt obvious way. However, even if your not a creative type you still have to deal with it as I am sure you know.

The best success i have had is to try to narrow my focus.

So if you find yourself being lazy doing nothing just take one step forward. Doesn't matter if its ideal or optimal, what matters is that your doing something. Than take another, and another.Once you do this for a short time you will find yourself with some momentum and a plethora of ideas to contend with. When your in this state you can begin to widen your focus and start to march for your current or long term goal with a renewed vigor.

[Mooders]

18 minutes ago, lilacwest said:

This is a very good question! I struggle with this as well. I think Leo has a video that touches on this topic but I forget what it is called. I also do want to say I'm very thankful to Leo and his videos, I was not a motivated person before, and now I want to be.

For now, I am going to try develop some good habits and drop some bad ones. Like give myself time constraints and daily goals. I am hoping as I develop good habits, the resistance and desire to be lazy will be lesser.

I believe the video is 'How to stop backsliding - How to stop procrastinating' it talks about homeostatis being the resistance to change. It is definately one of my favorite videos as simply knowing about the phenomenon of homeostasis allows me to better understand why I am not as productive as I want to be and being able to say okay its just homeostasis i just need to accept that it exists and move on allows me to get more and more done. 

For me a good way to start doing the things you want to do is to set up a timer (maybe for like 30 minutes) and then force yourself to do the productive thing that entire time. I've only really tried this with studying and it only really helps if you respect the timer but I feel the hardest part is just starting, even if it is not your first time attempting something it is always starting that is the problem so with that, the homeostasis and the fact that everytime you try and make a positive change in your life it gets slightly easier I have gotten to the point I am able to study on a daily basis with few exceptions.

Also remember if its hard and uncomfortable its probably something worth doing so get satisfaction out of those shitty feelings. 

[lilacwest]

 

19 minutes ago, TheFrown said:

Resistance is one of my favorite topics.

I am a creative type so I have a daily battle everyday with Resistance in a very overt obvious way. However, even if your not a creative type you still have to deal with it as I am sure you know.

The best success i have had is to try to narrow my focus.

So if you find yourself being lazy doing nothing just take one step forward. Doesn't matter if its ideal or optimal, what matters is that your doing something. Than take another, and another.Once you do this for a short time you will find yourself with some momentum and a plethora of ideas to contend with. When your in this state you can begin to widen your focus and start to march for your current or long term goal with a renewed vigor.

This! Yes I was just thinking today I need to narrow my focus as well. I believe I will achieve more completed projects that way and also help me learn to prioritize. Yes, thinking of one step at a time will also help me in particular, from getting too overwhelmed at first.

[Pamela Zamora]

Even though I struggle with this (a lot), I believe that you need to get momentum, and it is not about motivation, or the right pill, or thought.

It's about doing it, it's about building the right systems, being committed, building a habit out from it, and stop thinking about it.

[TurkishGuy]

3 hours ago, Barack Obama said:

Hello everyone,

The person who can force himself to do whatever there needs to be done. Can rule this world.

There is a strong resistance to anyone who wants to do anything new. I'm talking about the resistance you feel from the inside. For example if you ever wanted to start going to the gym or learn how to code, or if you wanted to read a book this week.

Let's figure out how to bypass this resistance!

any suggestions?

Man, I have to be honest. I am a computer engineer and my whole life is behind this screen. AND I have to get connect with internet and I love it, no bitchin... You see the danger in here ? I want to learn code in youtube... One minute and Bam. I found myself listenin "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up"... I just wrote these to help you to see we are familiar with same issues.
 

Now the solution: Find the habit and replace it. For example; "everytime when you come home from work, first thing you do is open the computer and play the games". First you want to try deleting the game. And really commit that. Print a calendar for every day you can place a "tick". For 4 weeks. Remember; your mind, your will, even body will resist it. You will say "oh man its been a tough week and I will play JUUSt a little bit". You lost my man. IF deleting the game doesn't do the work. Now we are gonna replace the environment. You will go to coffee shop, starbucks whatever.. You will take your coffee, sit down relax and read your book. 

Remember. If you skip ONE DAY. You will start from beginning. So:

1)Find the Habit

2)Find The Chain Action

3)Replace it.

4)Don't listen your mind. Don't try to convince yourself. Don't measure if you don't do it now, you will do twice tomorrow.. Non of this shit. Just do it.

Calender Works.

Here is Leo's video:

 

 

 

[Soren Solevad]

Hey everyone. Very happy that this forum has entered Actualized.org.

Now, I've been keeping my meditation habit of 20 minutes daily for 6-7 months (before that it wasn't very consistent, but in all I've been meditating for about a year total). Problem is, that sometimes I experience enormous ammounts of resistance when I'm sitting down to meditate. It shows up in different forms:

First, when I set my timer, sometimes I find reasons to adjust different things (which are of course not important) before I actually sit down to meditate - I suspect, to spend time and procrastinate beginning the session.

Second, I find myself being more prone to moving/stretching during the session. This is especially to relieve pain as my shoulders tend to get enormously sore and acking when I sit still for ... not very long time. I've been wondering a lot about this shoulder-issue. I'm in quite a good shape physically, and average flexible I'd say, so it wouldn't really make sense that my shoulders wouldn't be able to endure 20 minutes of stillness without acking so much. Also, the position in which I'm sitting - crosslegged, bag straight and arms relaxed, wrists laying on my knees with my palms downward - shouldn't be stressing the shoulders? What I suppose is that there has been made a subconscious connection between the resistance to meditate and my shoulders starting to acke? Does this make sense? And should I ignore it by brute force?

Second, I feel that my focus on the practice itself is sometimes by an entire week completely lacking. I know that of course you cannot expect your meditation to be graceful blizz and easy and perfect, but I find the focus to be ... strange. It wasn't a problem earlier in my meditation phases.

Does anyone else have these experiences or maybe overcame them? Any advice would be much appreciated as I really want to focus more on meditating and hopefully increase the ammount of time very soon.

Thanks a lot, Søren

[WhyteSeal]

Analize your problem and come up with 3 solutions to the problem. Some recommendations would be:

* Buy a book on resistance.

* Apply all the knowledge and practical exercises after you understand resistance from another perspective.

* One tip is being mindfull of the resistance itself, that might help you!

*Bonus! Seek support! This forum is a great place to do just that. 

[WhyteSeal]

Internet is not entirely bad. Once you're on it you can have all the resources of the modern world.

And those resources surely include the things you are interested in!

Actualized.org is from the internet! You are not doing personal development without it!
A lot of things on the internet will bring you benefits when controlling what you"re getting through.

[Aldo Marchand]

I concluded that overthinking and don't stopping the mental mind money chatter are the principal cause to an inefficient session of meditation.

I sugere just sitting down with a timer and focusing on some high level entity/mind like Jesus or Buddha for example

to be guided and absorb some of the qualities of these spiritual references.

(This is one technique that I use to avoid overthinking or even meditating in negative thoughts)

[dude]

I have been meditating too for the last year quite consistently. When I first started I was all fired up and could really concentrate for 20 minutes but as it became a habit I did not pay that much attention anymore after a while I realised this and I couldn't figure out how to get my concentration back.

So I tried the Do Nothing method but it didn't help very much because I could not get ahold of my thoughtstream. But last night I did a 30 minute meditation sesh and I really focused on what I was thinking and it worked I got into a meditative state. Then I used the tenique that Leo used in this video:

 

 

Then I got some revalations it was really amazing.

So that is how I resolved the third type of resistance.

Y