Don't you worry, I have plenty of other red flags besides inability to concentrate to keep me worried :).
I've tried meditation before, but didn't really "get" it. The instructions always tell me to let go of my thoughts and concentrate on a mantra or my breathing, but not a single time during the two months I followed a meditation program was I able to do so properly.
Exercising is one of the few things that even remotely work for stress relief. I've also done yoga and it works, but not any better than jogging or weight lifting.
I’m confused all instructions you found said this. This is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do.
When you calm down your hamster wheel of a brain will get bored and pull out a thought naturally. There is no point in fighting this.
The point of meditation is usually to become aware of the thoughts we have, metaphorically holding them in front of us and observe them without judging. You’re supposed to think “oh it seems I have that thought, interesting” without analyzing, just being aware. This is similar to hearing someone out instead of immediately trying to solve their problem or argue with them. What you will find after going through some obvious thoughts is that some will appear that you didn’t know you had anymore, because you pushed them away into your subconscious mind.
I used the “Waking Up” app (not free but has a 30 day thing that’ll get you through the introductory course), and it was as if the content was targeted at people who’ve tried and didn’t get it. Mantras are not the focus.
There are many types of meditation, but the kind getting all of the attention in studies (for good reason) is the mindfulness variety.
The reason Yoga suddenly clicked for me was that I brought the mindset from meditation into the Yoga practice. Exercise (cycling and long walks) is always beneficial, but my body awareness increased so drastically with Yoga that I feel like a different person.
That may have more to do with my history of dissociative tendencies, but I do think there’s a connection between a good meditation practice and Yoga becoming something more than just exercise. It becomes an entry to flow.
I ended up going on a self-funded sabbatical to focus on sorting out my personal and internal life, and and the #1 change that has led to rediscovering deep focus was starting a mindfulness meditation and yoga habit each morning. These core habits led to changes in how I was relating to the worries and created space for me to sort through the underlying stressors.
YMMV, but I realized that some of the things I was worrying about were just consuming energy (despite being legit concerns), and I started actively reframing worries using some of the exercises in the book “Learned Optimism” (Martin Seligman, 2006). This book also made me realize how deeply hardwired my pessimistic defaults were, and these defaults were the source of a lot of my daily rumination and worry.
All of this to say, if you are at all similar to me, it might be worth considering the lack of ability to find flow a big red flag worth actively investigating. I don’t know if I could’ve avoided burnout, but I’m sufficiently convinced now that internal work is one of the most important (and accessible) ways of addressing this.