Is Meditation A Waste Of Time?

Most who stick with meditation long enough for the practice to change their lives agree that meditation is one of the most underrated practices and don’t regret ever starting. 

Now, depending on how you see meditation and what you want to get out of the practice, meditation may or may not be a waste of time for you. 

If you expect overnight results or aren’t patient enough to sit with the practice, are attached to the outcome of your goals, and attribute the success of those goals or lack thereof to meditation, yes, meditation will be a waste of time for you. You probably shouldn’t bother.  

Meditation won’t solve all your problems but it will certainly make them easier to manage, assuming meditation doesn’t have any negative impact on you. 

The thinking that meditation is a waste of time stems often from those that never entered a deep stage of meditation, and to feel better about their failures on something, not just meditation, meditation can be a waste of time. 

I’m guilty of this myself when trying to integrate a habit that was difficult and telling myself it was a waste of time.

Now, there are of course legitimate cases where meditation isn’t advised to someone because there is always a dark side to things, but don’t make a decision based on what someone else tells you about meditation – not even me. 

Experience meditation for yourself and find out whether it serves a purpose in your life or not. However, in this article, I’ll give reasons why meditation is anything but a waste of time. 

Mind and Body Cleanse

Meditation is a bit like making the mind and body through a process of detox from stress, something that’s so prominent in many people’s lives.

If you had a preconceived notion about meditation being a waste of time, would you still see it as a waste of time if it meant you can go on about your day without the burden of worrying about what’s already happened in the past or what’s about to come? 

If you take a step back to dwell on how many times you’ve tried to get your mind to engage in any form of escapism, from the most subtle to extreme forms of escapism, often subconsciously, you’ll often find that as a result of letting go, things go your way. 

For instance, meditation can improve your quality of sleep, as a result, you start off your day on the right track, getting ahead of your day rather than letting the day get ahead of you and control your day. 

Conversely, you start performing better at work and at your goals, because you remove a variable that was delaying your clear thinking and robbing you of your attention, directing it to worry or what’s out of your control. 

If this mind cleansing sounds like a waste of time, meditation may not be for you, but you may not realize how much of a problem this can pose, until you start becoming mindful of it. 

Perhaps, you’ve reached a point where it’s the new normal, but at the same time, it’s hindering your potential. 

That’s right, meditation allows you to tap into your potential and where you once might’ve operated at 60%, you are now performing at 100%. 

You don’t have to take my word for it, you can experience this first-hand and determine whether there’s any substance to what I say or if you think I’m making this up. 

Take it from me and thousands of other meditation practitioners, the benefits of meditation aren’t exaggerated. But they can be slow, which is why it’s so common to give up before meditation makes any effect, thus, some start seeing it as a waste of time. 

Goal-Dependence

I advocate for meditators to have a goal when they start with the practice, but this can be a bit polarizing since what’s behind most successful long-term meditators is discipline and lack of expectations. 

But to attain those in the first place, it helps to set a goal with meditation but not be attached to it. 

Seeing the goal as a bonus or byproduct of the meditation without depending on it. It’s what gets the ball rolling with setting up the routine. 

Now, meditation on its own isn’t a way to achieve goals without putting in any extra additional work, those who give this image misrepresent the practice and have these wrong expectations, it’s no wonder some see it as a waste of time. 

Meditation helps you in many indirect ways, that you may not put any extra thought into until you’re presented with the positive changes. 

Over time, you develop a new way of thinking that lets go of expectations, which some would argue makes you less ambitious, but I’d say it makes you less affected and attached when things don’t go exactly as planned. The time span in which you achieve certain goals is outside of your control. 

With meditation, if you stick with it long enough, you learn to enjoy the process and may find yourself applying this thinking to your goals, and staying on track. Meditation teaches you to focus and cultivates discipline. 

Something which contributes greatly to a goal and keeps many from deviating or jumping from goal to goal, which is a reason alone many renounce. 

So if you consider your goals important for you, but don’t want to be affected when things don’t go as planned and still resume your pursuit of them with resilience, meditation is not a waste of time. 

Sense of Direction

This goes a bit hand in hand with goal setting, but many lack direction in their lives, and let their day-by-day happen without taking a step back and questioning where they are going. 

Meditation, since it allows you to be present and take a step back, also helps you to find yourself, and thus, find a sense of direction. 

Meditation is a journey, where, if you set a routine, can make your day more purposeful. Not having a sense of direction is what leads many to live unfulfilling lives, and even if you start meditation without a goal, one can form once you are practicing. 

You get to know what you want and you’re given what you need, since meditation is a personalized journey. 

If having a sense of direction to where you’re going sounds like a waste of time, and you’re okay with letting your day-to-day happen to you, then you may keep seeing meditation as a waste of time. 

Falling In Love With Nothingness

At first glance, sitting still in complete silence without doing anything seems like a waste of time. 

But it is also what allows creativity to follow, it’s a way to get away from the distraction and the noise we are exposed to on a daily basis, and even what the mind believes it needs, which is why many find resistance when meditating. 

The notion of falling in love with doing nothing seems foreign and a bit frightening, because it’s something new. Not what we are used to.

 But the silence you experience when you talk with yourself, assuming its positive self-talk can be comforting and even therapeutic.  

From my own experience, there’s nothing more rewarding than feeling ourselves be the solution to our own problems, almost as if what we seek is what we find inside. 

When we ask ourselves “what is the purpose of the nothingness”, we don’t get an answer right away, but it’s something that, along the meditation journey, we find. This can be at times, over the span of just days, if you’re fortunate, or months and sometimes years. 

But it’s all worth it, if you’re able to live a day-to-day life detached from stress, filled with clarity, mindfulness, and tranquility. 

In Summary:

Meditation will only be a waste of time if you see it that way and purely depend on an outcome, or don’t care about living a more stress-free life. 

But what happens to many meditators, even to those that might not have seen the practice favorably at first, is that they start meditating and the overwhelming peace they feel makes them not want to go back. 

It’s almost like starting to eat healthily and feeling good, the same as junk food makes many feel worse. 

Just like it’s hard to be healthy without exercise, meditation becomes comparable to those practices, but you don’t have to engage physically, but mentally. 

So, at first glance, meditation might seem like a waste of time until you have a handful of profound experiences, and thus, you have a change of perspective. You may not realize how much you need meditation until then.

Ultimately, whether meditation is a waste of time for you or not is something you’ll have to decide based on real practice, not what someone else says meditation should be like.