Written by Rebecca D'Onofrio

Many of us are taught from a young age to seek achievement by intensely striving for whatever we think “success” is, fixated on the idea of hope, with everlasting happiness just around the corner.

But we never really find that everlasting happiness, do we?

This is what often brings us to a new meditation practice. Nothing else seems to be working but maybe we can still achieve that ultimate happiness through meditation: blissful peace, no more suffering. Doesn’t that sound great?

So when we first begin to practice, we bring all of that momentum with us. We think we will win at meditation practice, achieve enlightenment, and finally be free of all the discontentment we’ve been suffering from.

But that doesn’t really happen, either.

In fact, what we most often discover is a deep disappointment when our whole project of meditation starts to fall apart. This is where a lot of people give up on meditation, but it is not a cause for dismay — it’s actually a major sign of progress!

It’s a sign that all of our feverish grasping for some imagined happiness that is far off into some imagined future is finally starting to slow down and lose its grip on our mind. If we can stay with this initial discomfort, eventually our mind will begin to settle into the present moment, no longer looking for alternative “better than” experiences far off into the future.

The truth is, we can’t experience happiness, contentment, or appreciation while we are striving for something else. These experiences can only occur in the present moment. At the beginning of our meditation practice, we usually have a lot of this striving to work through until it finally settles down, like a dust cloud after it’s been stirred up by the wind.

It’s only when we stop looking for happiness somewhere else that it has the chance to show up in the present moment. Meditation practice helps us gradually relax and slow down our speedy, grasping minds so we can actually show up for all the richness that’s already available right here and right now.

So if you come across this experience in your meditation practice, don’t lose heart; as counterintuitive as it may seem, it’s actually good news! As the Dalai Lama said, “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”