If you're just starting to learn meditation, either with a guided meditation group or by yourself, you try for five or ten minutes each session; try to sit every day at the same time, morning or evening, whatever suits you best. You let the daily five to ten minutes to extend to fifteen or twenty minutes when the weeks go by, but you certainly don't try and push the pace.

Meditation isn't about tightening the teeth in tenacity. It's about sitting quietly with yourself, and though it involves its own kind of discipline this has nothing to do with stiffness than with compliant and letting go.

When the certain thoughts or feelings arise, you let them to pass through and out of attention like clouds reflected in water. You don't try to push them out, but leave them to move of their own pace. Regardless of how 'important' the thoughts seem to be or how pressing or worrying the sentiments, you don't hold on to them or let one thought or emotion to start another and another till you are off on a daydreaming trail that takes you far away from the simple issue of the in-breath and the out-breath.

If, nevertheless, you do lose control, gently but definitely return to your breathing the time you realize this has cropped up. Avoid being intolerant with yourself or persuading yourself you'll never learn how to meditate. Your wandering mind is simply demonstrating to you just how much you have to practice your meditation techniques. It is assisting you, prompting you, showing you how little control you have over your own thoughts. The right response is gratitude, appreciation towards that part of your mind that has realized you are wool-gathering and that has reminded you to return to your point of focus.

I cannot overstress how important this attitude of gratitude is. If you curse yourself each time you become aware you are lost in thought, you will not only be provoking the unwelcome emotion of self-disgust, you will be conditioning your mind not to remind you when it is wandering later on. You are in effect punishing it each time for reminding you, and certainly it doesn't like being punished. So it will remind you less and less often, and you will find attention becomes harder and harder. In response to the frustration that this brings, your mind will then start whispering convincingly to you that meditation is a total waste of time, and that you would be well suggested to find something greater to do with your time.