Meditation for Overactive Minds: 10 Best Tips

What if I told you about a magical tool that could improve your focus, manage your anxiety, help you sleep better, and promote healthy emotional regulation? Well, it exists.. and it’s meditation.

Meditation for overactive minds is absolutely possible. I promise it’s not just a fantasy to dream about. And coming from someone with a highly overactive mind, that’s a pretty huge deal. For the last five months, I’ve had a consistent meditation practice.. and wow. It’s already made such a difference in my life. Now, I have no clue how I lived my first 24 years without it.

Before I learned how to meditate, I was really struggling to manage my energy levels and mental health. Sure, I’d tried meditation before, but it never really stuck. I wasn’t used to letting myself sit still at all. That was so hard at first. Also, my idea that meditation was always supposed to result in some kind of spiritual bliss really pressured me to enjoy it. So much so that I hated my first meditation attempts!

You don’t have to enjoy meditation to experience it’s benefits.

I still have a lot that I’d like to learn about meditation. And, I’m far from what you’d consider a meditation expert. I only started doing it consistently a few months ago! But, I am pretty happy with all the positive changes I’ve experienced in just a short time. For the first time ever, I feel totally in control of my thoughts and emotions. I’ve developed much stronger impulse control. I can judge people and situations much more accurately. I’ve released so much shame about myself that I’d been holding onto for years. I have less social anxiety, and I am better at mindfully navigating through the anxiety I still experience. I’ve also gotten significantly better at not taking my anxiety out on other people. It has improved sense of self-worth, taught me how to be led by my intuition, and changed the limiting beliefs about myself that I always had. Meditation has truly changed my life, and I continue to learn and grow so much from it.

I believe that meditation can do the same and even more for you, too. That’s why I’m writing this blog post – to show you that it’s possible to teach your overactive mind to meditate. I used to see my overactive mind as a reason for why I couldn’t meditate. Now, I see it as even more of a reason for why I have to meditate. I believe that meditation is truly for everyone. Not just for neurotypical minds!

In this blog post, you will:

• Learn why meditation is so helpful for neurodivergent minds.
• Hear about the book that taught me how to meditate and quiet my overactive mind throughout my day.
• Get practical beginners tips that helped me jump start my meditation practice.
  

So, why meditate?

If you need any further persuasion to start a regular meditation practice, I can help with that. In years past, meditation was seen as a ‘woo woo’ practice that wasn’t always accepted or understood by most people. Thankfully times have changed – science has shown that there are so many amazing benefits to starting a regular meditation practice.

In this 8 week long study, it was found that people who meditated for 30 minutes every day were able to increase the volume of gray matter in their hippocampus. Since people with recurring depression generally have a much smaller hippocampus, this is a pretty huge deal. It’s also very cool to know that meditation can even help us ignore feelings of depression and anxiety when they come up. This is because a regular meditation practice helps us break up the connections between the medial prefrontal cortex or mPFC and amygdala, both of which work together to create depression. The mPFC causes negative reactions to stress, which then sends our amygdalas into overdrive and causes depression.

In addition to fighting depression, meditation has also been proven to increase your attention span, improve the quality of your sleep, promote healthy emotional regulation, fight addiction, control anxiety, and so much more.

Meditation has solutions for so many different problems, it’s crazy. Being neurodivergent myself, I am so passionate about helping others like me see how transformative a regular meditation practice can be.

Here are all of the benefits I have personally experienced from meditation:

• It’s gotten much easier for me to manage anxiety and depression.. sometimes I’m able to completely talk myself out of them.
• I generally take less time to fall asleep at night.
• When I crash in the afternoon and want to sleep, meditation gives me the energy that I need to tackle the rest of my day.
• I can navigate social situations more smoothly, and with significantly less anxiety.
• I believe in myself so much more than I ever have before.
• I’ve battled low self-esteem for my entire life. But, meditation has dramatically increased my self-worth and my sense of what I believe I deserve.
• I am able to focus more and sustain attention longer than I ever have before.
• When I’m feeling out of touch with my emotions, I use meditation to ground me and find my way back to them.
• I feel deeply connected to myself and what I want most – this has helped me overcome a lot of impulsive and unhealthy behaviors.
• When I meditate, I see practical answers and solutions to big and small problems. Like, which tasks to do in what order, and specific reasons why irrational thoughts and fears I’ve been having don’t make any sense.
  

The book that changed the way I Saw meditation

There are so many different kinds of meditation. As I eventually expand my meditation practice, I’d love to try them all.. but for the last few months, I’ve been doing Ziva meditation.

Created by Emily Fletcher, Ziva is a powerful technique combining mindfulness, meditation, and manifestation into a simple daily practice that ordinary people can use to transform their lives and help their dreams become a reality.. um, yes, I will take all of that please!

Emily discovered meditation as a stressed out and exhausted Broadway performer desperate for anything that might help her sleep at night. After experiencing the profound physical and emotional benefits of meditation as well as finally sleeping through the night, Emily founded Ziva in 2011 and has been helping others do the same and more.

Since then, she has taught over 20,000 people how to meditate using the Ziva technique through her online courses, Ziva Live and Ziva Online, as well as her in person meditation center in New York. On February 19, 2019, her book, Stress Less, Accomplish More came out, and has truly made Ziva meditation accessible to the the entire world.

“We meditate to get good at life, not to get good at meditation.”

Reading that quote in the book blew my mind.

Meditation doesn’t have to be super fancy and involve a designated meditation spot, or cymbals. It definitely doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time, either. Ziva meditation only requires two 15 minute meditation sessions twice a day – once early in the morning, and another time in the late afternoon to early evening. It focuses on what Emily refers to in her book, ‘the 3 M’s’ – mindfulness, meditation, and manifestation.

I am truly grateful for Ziva meditation and for all of the work that Emily Fletcher has done. I am still not ‘the perfect meditator’, and my mind still wanders a lot. Now I know that that is okay, because I know that the benefits of my actions will follow – even if I’m not experiencing them at that moment. If you’re anything like me, I highly recommend this book. If you’ve also told yourself that calming your overactive mind is impossible, I challenge you to read it. Before I read it, I found myself going about my day constantly feeling like my restless mind just needed to find some way to calm down, but I never knew how to find that calm. Ziva Meditation has taught me that that the calm is always accessible within me. It’s been life changing to be able to fall asleep more easily and have more energy in my waking hours than ever before.

Here are my top tips for starting a daily meditation practice:

Approach the thoughts that you experience while meditating as objectively as you can.

Once you realize it’s okay to have thoughts while you meditate, you then have to learn how to be objective towards those thoughts. Not getting caught up in the emotion of them, and not projecting all of your fears and worries on them. Just accepting them as they are, and seeing them as teachers with lessons to teach you. Give yourself permission to freely experience all of your thoughts, and try to view them in the same way.

Instead of judging yourself when your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the present moment.

This is the beauty of meditation. When I first tried meditating, I felt bad about how many wandering thoughts I had. After I learned more about meditation, I realized that even the most experienced meditators still have wandering thoughts. The difference is that every time they notice their minds wandering, they simply bring their attention back to the present moment. Not judging, not regretting, and not feeling guilty. Just observing.

Having ADHD, I’ve just accepted that I’ll generally have more wandering thoughts than the average person does while meditating – and that’s okay.

In fact, I just had a very long wandering thought that took me an extra 10 minutes to finish that last sentence (I’m also currently high though, too).

Sometimes stopping the beginning of a meditation and then starting it over again is a great way to focus.

With my ADHD brain that’s often prone to run wild, giving myself a second chance to do something helps me a lot. It’s like, I decide that I’m going to meditate.. and then I begin my meditation. But then my mind is running wild, and I try.. but I just can’t get it to settle down.

Sometimes focusing feels easy.. and sometimes it’s the last thing I feel like doing. If I’m seriously struggling to focus on my meditation, I’ll just stop it and start over again. I don’t give myself any guilt for having to start over again, I just do it. When I start over again, I’m usually amazed at how much more focused I am.

Guided meditations are so useful, especially when you’re just learning to meditate.

If you’re a total meditation newbie, guided meditations are such an awesome way to break into meditation. While I primarily do Ziva meditation, I also supplement with some awesome guided ones.

Guided meditations really helped my mind get used to meditation. They taught me how to focus on my breath, relax my body, and let go of thoughts. Today, I’ll use them if I’m having trouble falling asleep. I also use them more extra encouragement on days when I’m feeling especially anxious and or depressed.

There are so many amazing free and paid guided meditations available. If you’re okay with spending a little money, I highly recommend Calm. Calm is a wonderful app with every kind of meditation for sleep, anxiety, focus, self-care, and more. It even has sleep stories that I enjoy once in a while! My favorite Calm sleep story is The Little Mermaid (surprise, surprise).

If you’re looking for some great, free guided meditations, my favorite is the Live Awake Podcast by Sarah Blondin. It’s beautifully done, and features a wonderful collection of short, guided meditations by Sarah. They are all such beautiful, encouraging meditations. I highly recommend them all, especially to first time meditators.

Exercising before meditating can help release physical tension and improve focus.

I often do yoga or workout before I meditate. Releasing so much physical tension that would have otherwise made me jumpy and fidgety helps me focus much, much better. Plus, I feel amazing after giving both my mind and body a work out!

If you’ve never tried exercising before meditating, I highly recommend it. Especially if you’re prone to struggling with attention and impulsivity like me! I’m amazed at how much a little movement can dramatically improve my focus during my meditations.

Know that you’re still getting the benefits of meditation, even when meditation feels like a struggle.

Take comfort in the fact you’re growing and becoming better even though it might not feel like it. You don’t have to enjoy meditation and never struggle with it to actually get it’s benefits. I reminded myself of that a lot when I first started meditating, and it’s been a huge help.. and still is. I felt more peaceful about where I was, more confident about where I was going, and eventually, more confident in my ability to meditate.

It’s also helped me a lot to remember that meditation is a practice. A practice isn’t something you automatically master overnight. It takes time, and lots of trial and error. There will be times when you’ll think you’re getting nothing out of your meditation. When you have those thoughts, take them as a sign that you’re progressing in your practice, just as you should.

When you can rest quietly in that thought, it takes more pressure off of you to always enjoy your meditation.. which oddly makes it much easier for you to enjoy it more often!

Get comfortable and eliminate distractions.

Before beginning your meditation, try anticipating any potential distractions that might come up. Then, think about how you might be able to stop them in advance. Let anyone who will be near you while you’re meditating know what you’re doing. Tell them you don’t want to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency. More comfortable in yoga pants or no pants at all? Both are perfectly acceptable choices (I will always choose no pants whenever appropriate).

Rid yourself of distractions, get comfortable, and get somewhere quiet if possible. When I meditate in public, I put in my headphones and listen to soft music to to filter out a lot of the noise. This helps me a lot, especially in anxiety provoking situations around a lot of people… like airplanes.

Learn to get comfortable with any uncomfortable thoughts that come up while you’re meditating.

A consistent meditation practice is about getting quiet and focusing on everything going on in the mind. As we know, the mind isn’t always a happy place. Sometimes, the mind is full of some pretty dark shit. If you find yourself thinking about something uncomfortable during your meditation, you don’t have to get reactive or start panicking. All you need to do is bring your attention back to your breath and finish meditating.

So often, we fear uncomfortable thoughts, and we run from them. Because on some subconscious level, we fear that they are true. Or, we’d just rather not face them for whatever reason. Because facing them would mean accepting more responsibility, doing the hard stuff, and not making any more excuses.

Instead of fearing your uncomfortable thoughts, see them as teachers.

The more that I meditate, the more I’m learning to view my uncomfortable thoughts and emotions as teachers. When I’m meditating, I’m focused on meditating. But, I also take note of any thoughts that triggered a negative reaction in me. When I’m done, I take at least a few minutes to reflect on these thoughts.

Instead of reacting emotionally to them, I get curious. Why am I having them? What are they trying to tell me? Are these thoughts a sign that I need to start living my life differently in some way? And an even more honest question.. are they getting in the way of an uncomfortable truth I’m hiding from?

At this point in my life, I’m so done with hiding from uncomfortable things. These things are never pleasant. But facing them is so much better than living a comfortable, but stagnant miserable life where nothing ever changes. Facing the reality of my mental health wasn’t comfortable. Neither was facing all of my guilt surrounding money. But I’m now a much happier, more self-aware, and more responsible person. Facing those temporary discomforts has absolutely been worth it all.

The next time an uncomfortable thought pops up during your meditation, don’t fear it. See it as objectively as you can, and look for what you can learn from it. These thoughts aren’t as scary as we think they are. When we learn to face them head on, they’ll reveal important things we can learn about ourselves.

Experiment with meditating in different settings

I’ve meditated in my room, other people’s houses, beaches, gardens, forests, airports, and planes. Once, I even meditated in a bathroom stall when I was desperate to avoid a meltdown in public. Definitely not the most ideal setting, but it worked!

If you become bored or frustrated with your current meditation setup, you may want to try a few new settings. Do you prefer being indoors or outdoors? Do you need complete silence to focus, or does a little soft background noise help? What about lights or candles?

You don’t need any of those things to meditate – they are just personal preferences. And it’s important that you recognize what does and doesn’t work for you while meditating.

Do something that relaxes you before you meditate.

I really want to emphasize this. Meditation doesn’t have to be fun.. and being totally honest, it won’t always feel fun. I don’t always feel like meditating. Staying focused and still is still very hard for me sometimes. And if you’re a meditation newbie, it can be especially difficult. That’s why doing something relaxing before you meditate is a great way to ease your mind into it.

How do you usually relax? Maybe it’s reading something, lighting a candle, drinking a glass of wine, journaling, or doing some kind of physical activity. Before you start your meditation, think about what you could do to help you relax more.

Personally, cannabis is my favorite relaxation method of choice. In fact, it played a huge part in helping my brain get more comfortable with meditation in the first place.

Conclusion

You might not fall in love with meditation overnight.. and that’s okay. It’s actually a totally normal thing. It took a little while for me to really get into meditation, too. Some days, I still have to force myself to meditate.. and some days, I cannot wait to meditate. It isn’t always fun, but it’s so important and beneficial. Just like eating your vegetables and drinking your water!

Like many things in life, meditation takes work. In fact, meditation is literally a workout for your mind. You won’t always enjoy it. But just like working out, it’s more about the long-term benefits you’ll experience afterward.

Even if you think you aren’t making any progress, your meditation is working. And you will benefit from it later, whether you realize it at first or not. It won’t always feel fun, but it’ll get easier with time. The key is to stay calm, enjoy the beginning of your practice, and remember to trust. Trust that it will lead you into more self-awareness, self-love, and inner guidance overtime.

I hope this post has helped you believe that it really is possible for meditation to calm overactive minds. I’d love to hear what you thought of it! Also, if you have any special strategies or tips you’ve used to calm your overactive mind.. and if you found this post helpful, I’d so appreciate it if you shared it on Facebook or Pinterest!