Six times I had to back up my guided meditation today. I was instructed to breath naturally and count my breaths for one minute. A seemingly simple task, but not for my monkey brain.

In… out, one, in… out, two, in… and drift into thinking about something else and don’t notice. My 6th time I got to fourteen, but might have missed one around 12. Before that try, I didn’t make it past five breaths before my meandering mind wandered off thinking of something irrelevant and unimportant.

You would think my 3rd, 4th, and 5th attempts would have been more successful, after all, I only had one task to do, and only for a minute. But like the dog in the movie ‘Up’, my mind was pulled away, attracted by squirrels, no mater what I was trying to focus on. I can’t even remember what pulled my thoughts away, none of it important, just monkey-mind distractions, or squirrels, or whatever metaphor you prefer to describe an unfocused mind.

I just tried again and counted to 9. I’m sure that was wrong, because I don’t take 6+ second breaths. I’ve been meditating for 2 and a half years and I can’t relax my thoughts enough to count my breath for 1 minute. Perhaps 10 minutes guided meditation is not enough of a daily practice to truly quiet my mind. I’m not quitting, I’m sure there are other benefits to starting my day with this activity. But perhaps it’s time to add some silent meditation to my day as well.

I’ll start with 3 minutes, and I’ll try this now.

And for pure comedy, my cat came meowing up to me 30 seconds in, wanting me to let him out, and clawing the couch to ensure he had my attention.

Let’s go again!

Well, that wasn’t so bad. I will need to add silent meditation to my daily practice. I’ll keep it short enough at the start to ensure that I actually commit to the habit. My goal: simply to be able to sit and count my breaths for a minute, without my brain doing mental gymnastics. My date I hope to achieve this? I don’t know, I think I will just look for gradual improvements and progress, that’s probably better than an arbitrary date and the pressure that distraction would be. One less monkey thought, one less squirrel to pull my attention away… and maybe put the cat out first.