Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics

Every time you catch yourself wandering and escort your attention back to the breath, it is like a biceps curl for the brain. It is also a radical act: you’re breaking a lifetime’s habit of walking around in a fog of rumination and projection, and you are actually focusing on what’s happening right now.
I cannot say this frequently enough: the goal is not to clear your mind but to focus your mind—for a few nanoseconds at a time—and whenever you become distracted, just start again. Getting lost and starting over is not failing at meditation, it is succeeding.
And here’s the better news: if five minutes seem like too much for you, one minute also counts. In fact, not only does one minute count, it can be extremely powerful. Getting “on the cushion,” to use a meditative term of art, is the hardest part of the habit formation process, and the proposition of a single minute is uniquely unintimidating and scalable. So if the easiest way for you to establish a daily habit is to start with one minute, then go for it. My view—and that of my team—is that, especially at the beginning, consistency is more important than duration.