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If you’re looking to dramatically improve your mental health, happiness, sharpness, knowledge, and wisdom, unguided meditation could be for you.

At it’s core it’s an extremely simple practice. You simply need to sit, close your eyes,  breath, and try to be still.

In my experience there are two phases to unguided meditation.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what your truth is to you, but there’s a catch: you need to do this within your meditation practice.

You already know what truths resonate with you, you encounter them on a daily basis in every aspect of life.

But when you first meditate, you might have a feeling of like “what am I doing here?” or “this feels like a waste of time.”

This is the first phase of unguided meditation. It’s where you need to find your truth. In my experience the way to find your truth in meditation is to put in as much effort as you possibly can, for as long as you can.

You need to arrive at a deep eureka moment, where you realize inside your meditation something that makes so much sense. I think it has to be something that you wouldn’t realize outside of meditation.

The reason you have to put effort in to arrive at this point is that if you practice the more advanced technique of letting go, you might not be able to get away from the feeling that you are wasting your time.

This leads me to the second phase of unguided meditation. Once you’ve had your eureka moment through putting in effort, which is to say, once you’ve realized that there is actually value for you in meditation, it’s time to take the complete opposite approach.

The second phase of unguided meditation, which is the complete opposite of the first phase, is the phase of letting go.

Now you know what truth to you is in meditation, you can start the more real practice of letting go and focusing. It’s still an effort, but it’s kind of like the opposite effort.

The idea is that while putting in effort to let go and focus, you’re going to pleasantly surprise yourself when you arrive at the same kind of truths that you initially discovered in the first phase through putting in effort.

The first benefit of this is that you’re simply learning more, which is actually not simple at all.

The second benefit is that you’re learning to be productive while relaxing. You’re actually building up the skill of relaxing, while learning more and more and more.

The third benefit is that you’ll just start to enjoy being a heck of a lot more!

In my experience this makes all aspects of your life better. Everything that you practice, learn, or engage with, you can approach slightly differently. You can be responsive, rather than reactive. Your default mode of being might shift slightly to being more relaxed, and you’ll look for those beautiful moments of insight that you are used to having in meditation.

So to conclude – if you practice unguided meditation, get through the first phase, and start to reap the benefits of the second phase, you will find yourself happier, and with more knowledge and wisdom. You’ll have better mental health. You’ll feel more effective at life, and you really will be.

Unguided meditation doesn’t make life any easier, I don’t think anything can do that, but it can equip you with the mental tools you need to approach life head on with confidence, and you’ll enjoy it more too!