Meditation is about bringing your attention to the present moment.
The arm. That tension in the neck. The bird singing. A thought arising. A sudden feeling of sadness. That shifts and disappears. The foot against the ground. The breath. The bird, again. The head moving.
(To start, it's sometimes recommended to focus your attention solely on the breath. See what works for you.)
This is called the flow: perceptions, thoughts, and emotions arise, transform, then fade away. Everything passes.
But regularly, we get stuck on a thought.
We wake up as if from a dream, realizing we've been ruminating on something for several minutes. This fixation that blocks the flow is called (quite fittingly) "an attachment."
It's normal, it's part of the process: we notice it and come back to the present.
Some even say that this back-and-forth between thought and the present is the heart of meditation, like a muscle you work through the repetition of a back-and-forth motion.
Then, you carry a bit of this flow into your daily life.
And everything becomes easier.
--
Related: