One of the most common things I hear from clients after they begin meditating is some version of the same sentence.
“I don’t think I did it very well.”
Usually what they mean is that they spent most of the meditation thinking. They followed the breath for a few moments, then found themselves making a grocery list. They came back to the breath, only to start thinking about work. Then they remembered Christmas shopping. Then an argument with their spouse. Then something embarrassing they said three years ago.
Eventually they conclude they failed.
I don’t think they failed at all. In fact, I think they succeeded, repeatedly.
The misunderstanding comes from what we believe meditation is trying to accomplish.
Meditation isn’t about having no thoughts
There are profound spiritual traditions surrounding meditation, and I have tremendous respect for them. Meditation can become a deeply transpersonal practice, one that reshapes our relationship with identity, awareness, compassion, and consciousness itself. I don’t want to wave any of that away.
But even if we set all of that aside and look at meditation through a purely practical lens — through the lens of reducing anxiety — it remains one of the most effective psychological exercises we have.
The goal isn’t to eliminate thinking. The goal is to repeatedly recognize when thinking has captured your attention, and gently return to the present moment.
That distinction changes everything.
Every return is a repetition
Imagine your meditation is simply following the breath.
You notice the cool air entering your nostrils. You follow it down the back of your throat. You notice your abdomen gently expanding, and how that can feel quietly relieving. Perhaps you let the breath grow larger, up into the chest, the ribs widening. Then you exhale slowly, maybe with a soft sigh, hearing the gentle, almost musical hiss of the breath as it leaves your body.
And then —
you’re thinking about your grocery list. Or your boss. Or your child. Or the conversation you wish had gone differently.
That isn’t failure. That is the exercise.
The moment you notice your attention has wandered and gently guide it back to the breath, you’ve just practiced something extraordinarily important. You’ve practiced differentiating from the radio.
Throughout my work, I describe anxiety as a radio playing in the background. The station keeps broadcasting thoughts, predictions, memories, and worries. The goal isn’t to smash the radio. It isn’t even to turn it off. It’s to recognize that we don’t have to obey every broadcast.
Meditation gives us repeated opportunities to practice exactly that. And it’s worth naming what’s happening underneath. Every return is a small executive override of automaticity — the automatic process of the radio not only playing, but stealing attention and awareness from us without permission. Each time you notice and return, you take that attention back.
Repetition is the point
If we looked at meditation the way we look at strength training, no one would call it failure.
Imagine doing bicep curls. The repetition isn’t evidence that you’re weak. The repetition is how strength develops.
Meditation works the same way. Every return to the breath is another repetition. Another interruption of automaticity. Another moment of choosing rather than reacting.
Over time, that ability doesn’t stay confined to meditation. It begins showing up in ordinary life. The anxious thought still appears. But instead of automatically following it for the next twenty minutes, you notice it sooner. You return sooner. You recover sooner.
That is psychological strength.
Breathwork: a direct conversation with the nervous system
Meditation trains awareness. Breathwork often trains physiology.
One of the reasons I love breathwork is that it reminds us we have far more influence over our nervous system than most of us realize. Breath is probably the most direct line we have to it.
The simplest example is extending the exhale. A common practice is breathing in for about four counts and out for about six — roughly a sixty-forty rhythm weighted toward the exhale. That longer out-breath increases parasympathetic activity through the vagal pathways. In plain terms, we are communicating safety to the body.
Our thoughts may still be anxious. The body begins receiving a different message.
There is something quietly empowering in discovering that. Anxiety tends to convince us we have no agency. Breathwork demonstrates that we do — not over everything, but over more than the anxious mind would have us believe.
Learning not to believe the radio
One of my favorite practices is a more dynamic style of breathwork, the kind sometimes associated with methods like the Wim Hof Method.
You breathe in and out at a steady rhythm for several rounds — in through the nose, out through the mouth, or in and out through the mouth, either works. Then you breathe deeply in, and let the air out to neutral. Not the forced, fully-emptied exhale we do when we’re trying to push every last bit of carbon dioxide out, but simply back to neutral. And then you hold.
The first round I might hold forty-five seconds. By the third round I’m closer to a minute and a half.
Very quickly, the mind begins talking.
“You need to breathe.” “This is uncomfortable.” “You’re not going to make it.”
The radio becomes remarkably convincing. And yet, for most healthy people practicing appropriately, the body stays well within its limits. A trained person can go much longer than this feels possible from the inside.
Then something fascinating happens. There’s a kind of paradox to it I’d genuinely like to see the literature on: the body is under greater physiological challenge — part of you is saying I’m drowning, I can’t breathe — and yet the mind grows calmer. You begin finding ease in the middle of discomfort. You discover that the urgency you’re feeling isn’t always reality. It’s communication. Sometimes accurate. Sometimes exaggerated.
That lesson reaches far beyond breathwork.
Practicing agency
I’ve read countless books on discipline, grit, and willpower. Almost all of them explain why these things matter. Far fewer tell us how to actually practice them.
Practices like breathwork and cold exposure offer something surprisingly concrete. They give us a place to rehearse.
When you step under a cold shower, the mind immediately begins negotiating. This is too cold. Get out. Do it tomorrow instead. When you hold your breath, the same thing happens. You can’t do this. You’re in danger.
Often neither statement is true. The discomfort is real; the conclusion isn’t. Under a cold shower you are not in danger — all you have to do is step out. Holding your breath at forty-five seconds you are not in trouble — all you have to do is breathe in. Knowing that makes it very interesting to listen to the radio while it insists otherwise.
Again, we hear the broadcast. Again, we choose whether to obey it.
Over time we develop something deeper than discipline. We develop trust. Not trust that life will always be comfortable. Trust that we are more capable than the anxious mind so often suggests.
Practice before you need it
One final thought.
People often discover breathwork in the middle of overwhelming anxiety. And it does help. But I’ve found it’s far more effective as a preventative practice than an emergency intervention.
Using breathwork during a panic attack is a little like learning to swim after you’ve already fallen into the river. It’s better than nothing. But it’s much easier to stay regulated if you’ve spent months teaching your nervous system what regulation feels like before the crisis arrives. Practiced reactively, breathwork is minimally helpful. Practiced consistently, it lowers the likelihood of those high levels of activation in the first place.
And something quietly remarkable begins to happen with repetition. The breathing becomes an anchor, and the automatic processes start working for us instead of against us. I notice it in myself. When I become activated now, I often find my body has already begun slowing my breath before I’ve consciously decided to. The practice has become embodied. The nervous system has learned a new default.
That, in the end, is what we’re after. Not becoming someone who never feels anxiety. Becoming someone whose body remembers how to come home.
