Why Your Mind Wandering During Meditation Isn't Failure

"I can't do this.... my mind keeps wandering."

It's something I've heard so many times when teaching mindfulness.

Always the same pattern.

• We sit down to meditate.
• We focus on our breathing.
• And for approximately eleven seconds, we've got it.  It's all going well. 
• Then out of nowhere, we're thinking about decorating, building projects, work or food! 

Or whether we replied to that email. - Oh - should I quickly do it now?

And that's the point we realise, we're no longer paying the slightest bit of attention to our breathing and therefore:

We must be doing it wrong! 

But what if that very moment that we notice our mind has wandered isn't evidence that our mindfulness practice has failed?

What if it's actually one of the most important parts of the practice?

Because something rather interesting has just happened.

We noticed.

Why Does My Mind Wander During Meditation?

Let's start by clearing up one of the biggest misconceptions about mindfulness.

We're not trying to stop thinking.

Our minds think.

They remember, plan, imagine, analyse, rehearse and occasionally produce the name of somebody we went to school with thirty years ago for absolutely no apparent reason.

Thinking isn't a design fault.

And when we practise focused-attention meditation, we aren't trying to somehow switch all of that off.

Instead, we deliberately place our attention somewhere — often on the sensations of breathing.

Then something entirely predictable happens.

Our mind wanders.

At some point, we become aware that it has wandered.

And we bring our attention back.

FOCUS → WANDER → NOTICE → RETURN

In my previous article, What Learning to Play the Piano Can Teach Us About Stress, I explored why this simple cycle can be thought of as a form of attention training.

But there's one part of that cycle that deserves a much closer look.

NOTICE.

Because without noticing, there is no return.

Am I Meditating Correctly If My Mind Keeps Wandering?

This question came up regularly in a weekly mindfulness class I taught.

The group contained quite a few high achievers.

And high achievers can find mindfulness rather entertaining.

They arrive with many of the qualities that have served them extremely well elsewhere in life.

They like to understand things.

They like to improve.

They quite like knowing whether they're doing something correctly.

Then we introduce them to a practice in which we talk about non-striving.

Don't try to get anywhere.

Don't judge the experience.

Don't try to achieve a particular state.

Just notice what is here.

You can almost hear the internal response:

Yes, yes. Absolutely. But how will I know when I've got good at not trying to get good at it?

It's a wonderful paradox.

And I don't think the question should simply be dismissed.

Because while mindfulness isn't about chasing a particular experience, that doesn't mean there's nothing developing in our practice. 

Can You Get Better at Mindfulness If You're Not Supposed to Have a Goal?

This is where I think we need to distinguish between achievement and development.

If I sit down to meditate with the goal:

Today I will have no thoughts and remain completely calm for twenty minutes.

I'm probably going to have a fairly disappointing twenty minutes.

And possibly become quite stressed about my inability to relax.

But mindfulness practice can still involve learning.

We can become more familiar with where our attention goes.

We can begin to recognise thoughts as thoughts rather than automatically following every one of them.

We can become more aware of sensations in our body.

And, importantly, we can begin to notice our own experience as it unfolds.

So perhaps mindfulness being non-striving doesn't mean we're practising for no reason.

Mindfulness may be non-striving. That doesn't mean nothing develops.

And one of the most interesting developments can be surprisingly easy to miss or even dismissed as a flaw in our ability. 

The Moment You Notice Without Being Told

When people first begin practising mindfulness, they will often follow a guided meditation.

The guide might say:

"You may notice that your mind has wandered. If it has, gently bring your attention back to your breathing."

And suddenly we realise:

Oh yes. I was thinking about booking a holiday.  In fact ,I often joke that my students think I'm a mind reader.  I'm not.  Wandering happens. 

And in this situation - the guide prompted us to notice.

Nothing wrong with that. That's where we all start. 

But then, with practice, something very intriguing unfolds. 

We're following our breath.

Our mind wanders.

We start thinking about tomorrow's meeting.

And then, completely unprompted:

Oh. I've wandered off.

Nobody reminded us.

Nobody rang a little meditation bell.

We simply became aware of what our own mind was doing.

Over years of teaching, I've come to see this as an important turning point.

Because we've moved from needing somebody else to draw our attention to our experience to noticing it for ourselves.

And there is actually language for this in the research.

What Is Meta-Awareness in Mindfulness?

Researchers studying attention and mind-wandering sometimes use the term meta-awareness.

Put simply, it's our awareness of what's happening in our own mind.

Researchers also distinguish between mind-wandering that is probe-caught and self-caught.

Probe-caught means something prompts us to check where our attention is.

Self-caught means we spontaneously become aware that our mind has wandered.

That's remarkably similar to what I've watched happen in people learning mindfulness.

At first - the guide prompts us to notice. 

Eventually, - we notice for ourselves. 

That doesn't mean we've reached some advanced state of meditation.

Our mind may wander again approximately four seconds later.

But something important has happened.

We've become aware of where our attention is.

And that matters far beyond meditation.

Why Noticing Your Mind Has Wandered Isn't Failure

It's like anything we do for the first time.  We learn to drive or we learn to play an instrument.  At first we need to be reminded of every single step.

It's even drummed into us, Mirror - Signal - Manoeuvre!

There's so much conscious effort involved that it can be difficult to imagine ever having a conversation while simultaneously operating the vehicle.

But gradually, through experience and repetition, things become more familiar.

Mindfulness practice is obviously not the same as learning to drive, but there's a useful principle here.

Practice changes what we are able to notice and do for ourselves.

That's why I think we need to rethink the idea that a wandering mind means we've failed at meditation.

If you notice your mind has wandered, awareness is present.

You can't return your attention until you recognise that it has gone somewhere else.

So instead of thinking:

"Oh no. I've wandered again."

we could become curious about the fact that:

"I noticed."

That's a very different way of evaluating the same moment.

What Does Self-Awareness Have to Do With Stress?

This is where things get particularly interesting for me.

Because I'm fascinated, not by whether we can become excellent meditators, but how we can apply that "noticing" skill in our everyday life experiences. 

Let's return to one of my favourite stressful meetings.

It finished at 11am.

It's now 8pm.

We're technically sitting on the sofa, but mentally we're still in the meeting.

We're replaying what somebody said.

We're constructing a better version of what we wish we'd said.

Then we're imagining what they might say tomorrow.

For a while, we don't even realise we're doing it.

We're simply in the thinking.

And then something happens.

Oh.

I'm doing it again.

There it is.

NOTICE.

We haven't solved the problem.

We haven't necessarily become calm.

The thought hasn't magically disappeared.

But our relationship with the experience has changed.

A moment ago, we were completely absorbed in the thinking.

Now we're aware that we're thinking.

And that creates an opportunity that wasn't available to us a moment earlier.

You Can't Interrupt What You Haven't Noticed

This is why awareness became the first stage of my Stress Interruption Method:

NOTICE → INTERRUPT → RESET → REWIRE

We can't intentionally interrupt a pattern we haven't recognised.

If I don't realise I've spent the last twenty minutes mentally rehearsing tomorrow's conversation, I can't decide whether continuing to do that is useful.

If I don't notice that my shoulders have gradually migrated towards my ears while answering emails, I can't consciously release the tension.

If I don't recognise that one difficult interaction has coloured the rest of my afternoon, I simply experience the reaction.

Noticing creates the possibility of choice.

That's why self-awareness matters so much when we're learning to manage our emotional reactions.

It gives us that tiny but important moment in which we can recognise:

Something is happening here.

And then decide what, if anything, we want to do next.

Does Mindfulness Improve Emotional Self-Management?

This doesn't mean that practising mindfulness turns us into permanently serene people who respond beautifully to every difficult situation.

I can personally confirm that it does not.

We're still human.

Things annoy us.

People upset us.

We become stressed, worried, frustrated and overwhelmed.

And sometimes our reaction is entirely appropriate to what is happening.

But awareness can help us recognise our experience sooner.

And the sooner we notice what's happening, the sooner we have an opportunity to work with it.

This is one of the reasons I prefer to think about mindfulness as practice, rather than simply relaxation.

The useful question isn't only:

Did that meditation make me feel better?

It can also be:

What am I learning to notice?

Is Mindfulness Progressive?

This is a difficult question because the word progress can sound slightly at odds with mindfulness.

We're encouraged to let go of striving.

To meet our experience as it is.

To stop constantly measuring ourselves against some imaginary improved version of who we ought to be.

And I value that enormously.

But I don't think we have to pretend that practice and learning aren't taking place.

Perhaps progression in mindfulness simply looks different from the sort we're accustomed to.

It isn't:

Yesterday I managed four minutes without thinking and today I achieved seven.

A quiet turning point might be:

Yesterday somebody had to remind me that my mind might have wandered.

Today I noticed for myself.

Or perhaps:

I used to replay a difficult conversation for an hour before realising what I was doing.

Now sometimes I catch myself after ten minutes.

And eventually, perhaps we notice while the pattern is beginning.

Not because we've become perfect at mindfulness.

But because we've become more familiar with our own mind.

So, How Do I Know If My Mindfulness Practice Is Working?

Perhaps this is the question my high-achieving students were really asking.

And I think we can offer a better answer than:

"Don't worry about it. You're not supposed to have goals."

We can become curious about what is changing.

• Are we noticing our thoughts sooner?
• Are we becoming more familiar with our habitual reactions?
• Do we sometimes recognise when our attention has become trapped in an unhelpful loop?
• Can we notice tension in the body before we've spent three hours carrying it?
• Are there moments when we recognise that we've become emotionally activated before we automatically act on that feeling?

These aren't scores or mindfulness targets.

And they're certainly not another reason to measure or beat ourselves up with. 

They're simply things we might begin to notice.

Which, rather appropriately, is the whole point.

Your Wandering Mind May Be Teaching You Something

So the next time you sit down to meditate and discover that you've spent the last few minutes thinking about food, replaying a conversation or wondering whether you've remembered to put the bins out, perhaps don't be too quick to conclude:

"I'm terrible at this."

Because something very significant just happened:

You noticed.

And if nobody had to tell you that your mind had wandered, that's particularly interesting.

Because that same ability to recognise where your attention has gone is one you can take with you when you stand up from the meditation cushion.

Into the meeting.

Into the difficult conversation.

Into the evening when your mind wants to return to something that happened nine hours earlier.

So maybe we can let go of our expectations: 

"How long did I manage to stay focused?"

And consider this: 

"Did I notice when I'd gone?"

Because before we can practise the return, we have to notice that we've wandered.

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About the author 

Julie Perrigo MSc is a Stress and Emotional Awareness Specialist, mindfulness teacher and creator of the Stress Interruption Method.

She holds an MSc in Mindfulness from the University of Aberdeen, where her postgraduate research explored the use of a structured digital mindfulness programme to support stress and emotional wellbeing. Julie combines her research and teaching experience with more than 25 years working in corporate environments.

She is also the author of The Emotional Hustle and founder of Just Breathe Solutions, where her work focuses on helping people understand the patterns that can keep stress going and develop practical skills to interrupt them.