By now you’ve heard about meditation. Everyone from your dental hygienist to Oprah swears that it changed their lives, cured their anxiety, and made them into the people they are today. One article even claimed that not only could meditation reduce your depression, but it also might make you a nicer person. So you are sold on its seemingly magical powers, and yet, you still aren’t doing it.

Maybe you have dipped your toe into the calm waters a few times: downloaded an app, fallen asleep to a guided meditation at night, or even shown up in your yoga pants to a Meditate and Mimosas event. But it just isn’t sticking. You haven’t had your life-changing moment, and what’s worse is you are clearly no good at it. It’s too hard. You can’t sit still. You think, maybe it’s just not for you.

In truth, starting a new meditation practice can be really uncomfortable and even disappointing, especially if you aren’t exactly sure what you’re supposed to be doing. Is closing your eyes and wondering “Am I thinking now?” really what it’s all about?

There is something you need to know.

YOU CAN’T DO IT WRONG. This is the biggest secret about meditation that everyone needs to be shouting from the rooftops, instead of smirking about from their cushioned high horse. THERE IS NO WAY TO GET MEDITATION WRONG. If you are going for it, whatever is happening for you is perfect. In its most basic form, meditation is the practice of being with what is.

With that simple truth in mind, if you are interested in giving it another go, I’ve got a few more secrets that are going to make it easier this time around, I promise.

1. IT’S A PRACTICE:

Just like anything else we practice, we start out pretty terrible at it and then we slowly get better over time (maybe). Think about your three year old’s first soccer practice. Or the time your boyfriend decided to take up the flute. Were they any good at it when they started? NO! They sucked. So if you show up to start a meditation practice and you think, “Man, I suck at this…” GREAT! You are in the right place! And ready to practice. Of course, the more often and the longer you practice the easier it will be. But please note, that even after meditating regularly for thirty years, you will likely still have meditations that you totally blow! It’s going to happen. But by then, at least, you will have learned how much that really doesn’t matter.

2. SITTING STILL IS HARD:

Like, really hard. Like, it hurts. Your butt, your back, your knees, your shoulders. It hurts. It is sometimes said that the entire practice of yoga that we think of in the West (physical poses and stretches) was created to make the body strong and flexible enough so that a person could sit still to meditate. If you are physically active in other ways the sitting will get easier. Until then, here are a few tips to make it less painful from the get go.

1. Lie down instead of sitting up. You want to be able to relax and focus, and if sitting keeps you from doing that, just lie down.
2. Elevate your butt/hips. Sit in a chair, on a thick pillow, a folded blanket. Try putting something under just your tailbone as a way to keep the spine long with less effort.
3. Get some lumbar support. I still almost always throw a pillow behind my low back if I’m on my couch.
4. Pick shorter amounts of time to sit for and work up to longer ones. Start with 3 minutes sitting, then work up to 5 and so on.

3. YOU WILL STILL THINK:

Phew! Let me just let you off the hook and say that you absolutely will still have thoughts while meditating. The brain is on! That’s good! Everything is functioning as it should. It is the brain’s job to think, and it is really good at it. The actual practice of meditation is focusing on something else (the breath, the body, guided imagery etc.) for short periods of time. Whenever you notice that you are “thinking” instead of whatever focusing you were “supposed” to be doing, awesome! Now you get to practice returning to your focus again, and again, and again, and again, and again…. I personally sometimes catch myself lost in a memory or a future plan and say, “great job thinking!” before returning to whatever it was I was “supposed” to be doing instead.

4. THERE ARE LOTS OF WAYS TO MEDITATE:

If you don’t like the meditation you are trying, try a different one! There are apps full of guided meditations. There are YouTube videos of frequencies tuned to your chakras. There is trauma-informed Yoga Nidra. There is Body Sensing. Breath Sensing. Mantra chanting. Sound bathing. Forest bathing. Singing. Dancing. Walking. Running. Sleeping. Yes, there is something to be said that if meditation feels difficult you might just need to stick with it. But if you don’t like what you are trying to do, sticking with it will be super hard. So go easy on yourself, and try a different way!

Okay, young grasshopper, I hope that these tips help relieve some of the pressure of meditating and remember, you cannot get it wrong. So take another swing with these new ideas in mind and simply observe what happens.