I'm making a better effort to meditate, but I don't know if I'm doing it right. Focusing on my breathing and releasing thoughts is hard and if I relax too much, I fall asleep.
If you have related issues when meditating, have you found better ways to meditate or alternatives that give you similar results?
I really liked your comment about thoughts running their course. Something I feel like meditation has really helped me notice is how fleeting thoughts really are, even when not trying to meditate. When you develop the practice of not indulging in them while still "giving them their space" (so not forcing them away either) they do just seem to fade away on their own. When they're not being fed they retreat. Some thoughts like to show up more than others, and some like to stick around longer, but meditation really gave me a confidence to let the thoughts be and trust that they'll fade once they've had their tantrum. If I'm lucky and I notice I'm on a funk whenever I'm not meditating I can see it's because I've been indulging in whatever worry or angry thought for the past whatever minutes or hours. And then I can use the confidence from meditation to remind myself that if I can stop indulging in and extending those ephemeral thoughts then my mood appears sorta silly and it's curious that I got so upset over what feels like vapor in my mind lol. It's just very thick sometimes