Why is meditation so hard? It's hard because you begin to understand what is behind the curtain of your mind. If you have never taken a step back to look at your thoughts, meditation can be shocking and triggering.
Meditation is like working out for your mind muscle. It can be hard to be aware of your thoughts and this is partly because you have thousands of thoughts every day.
Furthermore, without understanding the intricacies and tactics behind mindfulness, you will have a tough time starting a meditation practice.
To validate that your subconscious is the main reason why meditation is hard, we compiled 50+ reasons (updated regularly) sourced from experts in the wellness space.
Below, we go into 5 typical subconscious thoughts that prevent a successful meditation practice + how mindfulness helps.
5 Typical Subconscious Thoughts
Meditation can surface thoughts and feelings that have been buried in the past. Why would we want to make ourselves think about unpleasant things? Well, you may not be able to truly practice meditation until you come to terms with your past and future. Buried feelings also surface themselves nonetheless in the form of anger, irritation and other negative forms of communication.
Processing these buried thoughts will help you learn meditation because there will be no thoughts left to distract you.
"We repeat what we don't repair." - Christine Langley-Obaugh
1) Rethinking Thoughts & Conversations
Have you ever found yourself thinking about how a particular conversation went during the day, or all the different ways it could have gone? We can spend hours overthinking without even being conscious of it. How many of the thousands of thoughts can you remember thinking yesterday and on top of that, how you felt after each one? How many emotions did your subconscious mind take you through?
Mindfulness Tip for Overthinking
You can't change what has been said or thought. If you feel the need to communicate further, try writing the thought down and letting it go during meditation. To increase your willpower, you can use scientifically proven tactics such as ritual by burning what you wrote. Another scientifically validated tool is visualization. In this case, you can imagine a physical manifestation of that thought disappearing into space.
2) Relationship Issues
Relationships are not easy. The way in which we communicate is also changing rapidly. Are you even on TikTok?
When you first start to meditate, you may find yourself thinking about all of these relationships you have and have had with people. You might be frustrated with how someone treats you, or you may overthink a future timeline.
Mindfulness Tip for Relationship Issues:
Let go of negative triggers during meditation by remembering that no one is perfect and we all make mistakes. One of the best ways to truly work through relationship issues is by thoughtfully crafting a response and talking to that person. One of the most powerful tools to use here is forgiveness, especially for yourself.
3) Missed Opportunities
"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." - Alexander Graham Bell
Things that were once the least of our worries are known for coming up in meditation. Missed opportunities that you may have gotten over in the past already may just come rushing back bringing all those same anxieties and thoughts that came with it.
This is another example where mindfulness helps:
Before letting an anxious thought like that run amok in your psyche, being mindful of your thoughts will stop the thought in its tracks.
If your mind is stuck in the past, you are missing out on the present moment. Working on adopting a growth mindset will build a strong foundation for you here as well because people with growth mindsets know that all failures are just data points that help you make better decisions in the future.
4) Checklists
We all have things to do and people to see, but there's only so much you can do in a day. if you are not working on your checklist, you might have trouble meditating because you feel like you are being unproductive. Mindfulness can help with this as well. When you take a step back from your thoughts, you can reprioritize on the spot and make room for meditation and delay watching the next episode of something that will likely be there tomorrow anyway.
Scientific evidence has proven that you will be more clear and productive after a meditation session - all the more motivation to prioritize meditation and forget thinking about your to-do list for the time being.
5) Fears
There are over 300 clinical phobias and thousands more when you consider the smaller things we tend to fear in day to day life from getting into a car accident to catching a cold.
There is no quick and easy solution to become fearless, but the general practice of mindfulness and meditation helps you identify, confront and eventually release fears.
Mindfulness is Key 
Learning to manage your thoughts helps with over 50% of the reasons why meditation is hard, and leveraging mindfulness is a great place to start.
Mindfulness can address all of the typical subconscious thought examples above that can come up in thought-form while meditating. Once you are able to manage your thoughts and focus on the present moment, the elusive meditation begin to surface.
So, in order to increase your chances of appreciating meditation, learn mindfulness first. Want more reasons to learn mindfulness? Check out these 3 Benefits of Mindfulness Backed by Science.