Interestingly enough, it took until I stopped trying to think of meditation as something to game or try and get something out of, for it to finally start working.

My personal hypothesis is that the inherent expectation of wanting/needing to feel some kind of effect every time I tried meditating ended up being the very blockade that prevented me from doing so. I kept falling into a negative recursive thought loop of, “I haven’t noticed anything yet. This isn’t working. There’s no point in trying to continue meditating” that cycled into a cascading growth of anxiety that prevented me from reaching a state of balance.

It took me many months to realize that I was trapping myself inside this loop, but once I became aware of it, I was able to almost immediately start seeing results. The biggest thing that helped me was coming to a realization that the thoughts in my head are, at the end of the day, just thoughts. They have no ability to harm or control me other than what I choose to allow them to. The thought loop I was putting myself into could only continue because I chose to let it.

When I meditate in the present day, you might think that I no longer deal with any of these issues. That’s actually completely not the case. In fact, I constantly still get it, especially at the beginning of my sessions, but now instead of stressing out, I just choose to let it go. By actively choosing to accept and let things go, the loop breaks right from the beginning.

>The biggest thing that helped me was coming to a realization that the thoughts in my head are, at the end of the day, just thoughts. They have no ability to harm or control me other than what I choose to allow them to.

This is probably one of the most important lessons i've learned in my life. Realizing this made a hugely drastic improvement to my emotions, my ability to control them and my ability to focus on things and pay attention. Learning to quiet that voice or just ignore it when I need to is a skill I think everyone should learn and would benefit from.

This reminds me of troubles I used to have falling asleep if anyone was making any noises nearby (I would get very annoyed at the fact that I was startled, which would make it even harder to fall asleep, in a terrible feedback loop). I think I managed to improve eventually, using the 'Paradoxical intention' technique that Viktor Frankl talks about in Man's Search for Meaning.

In my case it was to try to stay awake listening to all the sounds. Maybe combined with just getting up and doing something else if after a long time I still wasn't sleeping.

Very cool. I've been doing "the mind illuminated" technique for the past 4 months and it's slow going - I'm assuming because of my ADD. I am, however, far more patient with my children and content with my life in general when I meditate. I haven't seen much improvement in my ADD however, but I'm going to give it a few more months of 1hr / day practice before I try medication.

I'm probably unusual, but I noticed clear benefits within a week. Though, I was meditating while waking up first thing every morning, and the initial benefits was not immediately obvious except that I could lower my ADHD med dosage by a couple of mg and get the same effect.

Instead of trying to magically concentrate perfectly, I focused on identifying when my focus would move to something else. I noticed meditation is a practice of becoming quicker at identifying when I would lose focus, giving me the choice to come back to focus.

After a couple of months of meditating I was able to go off of adhd medication. Then maybe a half a year later I noticed my concentration was above average and had been for a while.

Meditation does work well on ADHD, but you have to be willing to take a break from your day to day worries, giving a mini vacation away from mental work. It's quite enjoyable.

I had a brief stint of about two months where meditation, combined with dietary changes, exercise, and most importantly a daily routine item that kind of motivated my day made me feel like I was actually productive. Plus meds of course.

I get obsessive about things, so I tried to use those obsessions to shape a regular routine that helped everything else fall into place. I focused my obsession on exercise, specifically jiu-jitsu, because once I got to class, I didn't have to think or motivate myself, I was just there and focused on learning and fighting. Then it turned into a positive feedback loop, I'd get external validation from my teammates, I was improving, I was doing it in the morning, so I absolutely had to get out of bed, and of course after class, I had nowhere else to go but work. So that fixed my habitually late problem as well. Being 10 minutes late to class was fine as long as I was on time for work. Then I could ride that dopamine rush to have a productive morning.

Then life happened, my routines where interrupted, and I haven't been able to get it back.