I love Mingyur Rinpoche’s approach to meditation. Too lazy to meditate? Too tired? Can’t focus? Don’t try too hard. Just sit. Make friends with your laziness or lack of focus. Play with it. Keep it short and fresh. Integrate meditation into your day as ‘mindfulness’ of what you are doing. Whenever you think about meditating, just do it, wherever you are, even if it’s only for a few moments.

My approach has always been: just sit. Sit with you mind and body exactly the way it is. Accept yourself as you are. For me, meditation has always been about loving myself exactly the way I am. Crazy mind, lazy mind, anxious mind, distracted mind, chatty mind, fidgety body, can’t sit still—whatever, just sit with that. If you lovingly accept yourself as you are, your mind and body will eventually calm down (or not), sooner or later. There is no ‘bad’ meditation. Play with your meditation practice. See how far you can stretch the limits of “bad” meditation and still call it “meditation”. The goal for my mediation is practicing acceptance, compassion and love for ourselves and others, not becoming an Olympic meditator.

Mingyur’s talk on anxiety is really helpful too.