Great! You’ve finally decided to start looking after your mental health through meditation. Maybe you want to start meditating because you want to be less reactive, feel less stressed, or be more focused. Maybe meditating is part of a wider personal development plan of some kind. Or maybe you’re looking to improve your relationships with those around you. Whatever the reason, training the mind through meditation is training in awareness, and training in awareness offers the potential to fundamentally transform your perspective on life. According to Leena, our entire existence is experienced through our minds, and our perspective on life can dramatically alter once we begin meditating. Being inspired to start meditating is very different from actually doing it, however, and you’ll only feel the benefits of meditation by beginning and maintaining a regular practice. In order to calm your mind, you need to begin by sitting with its untamed nature. Meditation is simple to learn and involves some fairly straightforward techniques. Meditation is a journey of a lifetime, not a sprint to instant progress. Take it session by session, day by day, appreciating that this is a skill that requires commitment, patience, and practice, where the benefits are felt gradually over time. There is no “good” or “bad” meditation, and there is no “succeeding” or “failing”; there is only awareness and non-awareness or distraction and non-distraction. Over time, the more the mind learns to become less distracted, the more our awareness stabilizes.