Before a meditation or work session, it helps to know why you're there and what you're about to practise. This episode explains the six-point preparation from The Mind Illuminated: motivation, goal, expectations, diligence, distractions and posture. Start with one manageable session, then see whether the preparation helps you actually begin.
Recorded in October 2023. Source clarification, September 2026: the six-point method comes from Culadasa's meditation teaching. Despite the episode's current show notes, it is not an ancient Stoic checklist.
Sitting down is only the beginning
You can spend half an hour on a cushion planning tomorrow. You showed up, but the thing you came to practise barely got a look in.
The recording starts with that familiar problem. A little preparation makes the session less vague. Why sit today? What would count as a reasonable effort? If you've been falling asleep, staying alert may be enough. If you're new, completing a short session may be plenty.
The goal needs room for an ordinary, messy mind. Expecting instant calm gives you something else to fight with.
The six points, in order
The original method is reproduced by its authors in Six Ways to Prepare for Meditation. Here is the short version discussed in the episode:
- Recall your motivation. Why does this practice matter to you?
- Choose a realistic goal for this particular session.
- Notice your expectations and loosen your grip on how the session should feel.
- Commit to making the effort you've chosen.
- Anticipate distractions. Deal with the ones you can arrange around beforehand.
- Settle into a comfortable, supported posture that lets you stay alert.
You can run through the points mentally or write a few words in a notebook. Then begin. Spending the whole session perfecting your preparation would rather miss the point.
This is education, not treatment. Keep breathing comfortably. You can keep your eyes open, use the feeling of your feet on the floor, change position or stop. If meditation brings distress or a sense of disconnection, stop and return your attention to the room. Diligence does not mean overriding pain or distress.
Taking the preparation into work
The episode's extension is practical: ask the same questions before a writing session or training session. You need to know what you're trying to do before you can tell whether your effort is helping.
A reasonable goal for the next block of work is more useful than a demand to have a brilliant day. Name the distraction you already know is coming. Put the necessary materials within reach. Make the first action obvious.
This can sit alongside Stoic attention, which concerns how we judge and act. The traditions should still receive their own credit. Culadasa's six points are a preparation method; they are not a recovered instruction from Epictetus.
For the longer routine around a work session, read Work Rituals. For the distinct Stoic account of attention, see Prosochē.
Sources: The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa, John Yates, with Matthew Immergut and Jeremy Graves, and the authors' linked extract. The comparison with Stoic attention was checked against Epictetus's discussion of attention. The recording's language about enlightenment describes the book's framework, not a guaranteed outcome.
Full transcript
Lightly edited for readability.
The historical recording follows. Its six points are preserved, with spelling and obvious transcription errors corrected. References to becoming enlightened or becoming more successful are the speaker's framing, not promises. The comments about posture and practising regardless of how you feel should be read with the comfort and stopping guidance above. One awkward closing phrase is retained because its intended wording cannot be established from the published transcript.
Today I want to share with you a technique that's been very helpful for me in my meditation practice, but I've also been applying it to other areas of my life and I really find it useful. In the meditation book, The Mind Illuminated by Dr. John Yates, also known as Culadasa, he talks about the six-step preparation to do every time before you meditate. That book, by the way, is fantastic. It's got loads of really good tips, and it breaks down meditation in a very systematic way. So if you like the sort of systematic, structured approach to doing things, the Mind Illuminated is a fantastic meditation manual for you. It breaks down the act of becoming enlightened into ten stages, and each stage has a specific goal and accompanying practices that you can do to take your meditation to the next stage. But let's go back to the six-step preparation.
So usually when I used to meditate, I would just sit down, throw on my guided meditation track, and get into it. Sometimes it would be fine, but if my mind was particularly busy that day, it would take a while for me to get going. It was almost as if I was going through the motions and only realised I was properly meditating five minutes before the ending of the session. So I'd be sitting for 20, 30 minutes and have five or ten minutes of actual focus meditation. Meditation is self-guided to a large degree. Even if you're following a guided track, the guidance is still quite passive.
Let's take the example of showing up to a one-on-one boxing session, right? Your trainer is there holding mitts, they are saying left, right, left, right, left, right, kick, kick. You can't really go wrong there. You have to physically follow along with the instruction. But if you showed up to a boxing session and you kind of just sat and walked around and tapped a bag, you could say that it's still good that you showed up, but you weren't really doing the thing. The same applies to meditation. It is possible to sit down on a meditation cushion and just think for an hour and not even try to meditate.
So the framing of there is no good or bad meditation is true, providing you actually try to meditate properly. So Culadasa, in his book The Mind Illuminated, recommends a six-step process. Before you even go into your meditation, you review six things. Number one, what is your motivation for practising? This is usually a broad motivation. It could be awakening, enlightenment, peace of mind, just something that inspires you to practise in a general sense. Next, we have the goal.
For this particular session, today, now, what are you trying to achieve? What are you hoping to get done? How has this week's meditations been? Now, if you've noticed that you've been sleepy during the recent meditations you've been doing, then your goal can be in this session, I want to remain awake. If you've noticed that you've been very distracted and entertaining yourself in your mind when you're meditating, then this goal could be I want to remain focused. If you're brand new to meditation, your goal can be really simple. I want to complete the session. Then we move on to expectations. In your heart, what are you expecting? Do you think it's gonna be good or bad? Just tap into that. And step four is are you disciplined? Are you going to show diligence? Drop the expectations. Are you here to actually practise?
Make that commitment. Yes, I am. I'm gonna drop everything, I'm gonna put my phone on aeroplane mode, I'm gonna make sure that I'm ready for this, and I'm going to be diligent. Regardless how I feel, what I think, I'm here to practise. So it's a commitment to yourself to actually practise meditation. Number five, review distractions. What are some internal distractions that could pop up? Do you have any anxieties or worries, things that are bugging you at the moment? And external distractions. Are you expecting mail, a phone call? For the internal distractions, just make the note that these may come up, and if they do, you're going to let them go and practise anyway. For external distractions, try to manage them, you know, like I said, put your phone on aeroplane mode. But also you can just make the commitment that if they come up, you're going to handle them smoothly, mindfully, and then return to your meditation session.
The sixth step is posture. Now, getting too hung up on posture is not that important, but it's still good to check in with yourself. Are you feeling alert? Are you feeling this sense of nobility and alertness, right? You don't want to kind of lie down on your side in a foetal position to do a meditation on concentration, right? That's obvious. But there's a continuum between there and being really upright and alert, and you want to find what's comfortable for you. Just check in with yourself, maybe take a few deep breaths, and then you can begin the meditation. You can do this in 20 minutes. You can also do it in about 60 seconds or less. You know, you can do it as quickly as you like or take as long as you like to do it.
Usually, when you first start doing it, it will take a little bit longer, and then over time you'll be better at just tapping into it more quickly. But the reason I was really excited to share this with you today, beyond it being a fantastic meditation tool, is that it can be applied to pretty much anything. You're about to do a work session. What is your motivation for working? What is your goal? What is your expectations? Are you going to be committed? What are some distractions? How are you physically going to show up? It could be applied to a training session. You're about to go lift weights. What is your motivation for lifting? What is your goal for this session? What are your expectations? How do you think it's going to go? Dropping those expectations, how hard are you going to try?
Are there any distractions internally or externally? How can you shift your environment or posture if you want to extend that to your advantage? Music, pre-workout, clothing, etc. So I find that running through these six steps as a preparation for many things in life can be useful. It can be done with a notebook, a journal, or it can be done mentally. It really helps you get clarity on what you're doing and is going to not only make you more successful in the things that you're doing, but it's also going to help you focus on what's actually important. A lot of us are kind of running around from thing to thing, and we don't really know why we're doing it. What is our vision? What is our goal?
How can we maximise the time that we spend doing it? One of those unconscious thought processes around it. So have fun with it. Play around with the six step preparation with both meditation and other things you do, and see how it goes. Just to finally recap, you have motivation, goal, expectations, diligence, distraction, and posture. And I'll see you in the next episode of the Stoic Handbook Podcast.
Go deeper
If you want structured practice, the 7-Day Stoic Challenge is free. Nine audio lessons and a 42-page workbook.