Yeah, that's what it's like when you start. It's not so much about "trying to not think" as it's about "sitting there, vaguely listening to your inner voice chatter away".
Having something else to focus on can help - chant a mantra (just "om" works okay if you don't wanna look for anything more Perfect For You), count your breathing and reset the count every time your inner voice interjects something or when you get to ten, stare at something (I like just staring at the grass sometimes and watching how my visual centers start acting when they get really bored with looking at it).
A big key is to stop being angry at yourself for failing to stop that internal monologue. It's a hard thing to do! Instead of beating yourself up, just shrug, forgive yourself for doing it (maybe even say "I forgive myself for failing to quiet my inner voice" out loud, this activates different parts of your brain), and go back to whatever you're doing to focus on next-to-nothing.
If you can block out the time, I found that my meditation skills got a lot better when I stopped trying to do it for a few minutes at a time and started setting a timer for thirty minutes. Some days I can stop thinking easily. Other times I keep on fighting it for like twenty minutes. But doing it for a long stretch like that gives you more chances for your twitchy brain to get bored and STFU.
Good advice here, absolutely! Having a thought, even getting distracted by a whole chain of thought, doesn't mean you are a failure and you should stop the exercise. It takes some getting used to this idea, but repeatedly coming back to the exercise is the exercise.
It's much much less about just blanking out or how long you can maintain the focus and much much more about how you deal with all the craziness that your subconscious is doing to you. Minute by minute; each time it happens. Because it's not going to stop happening, during the exercise or not. Your mind is going to do what it wants; figuring out what you can do with that fact during the exercise then carries over to the rest of life.
I will add that it's taken me a long time to get to the point where I'm not frustrated with myself for getting distracted, so I'm not trying to say this is easy. On the contrary. But it's been worth it for me.
Having something else to focus on can help - chant a mantra (just "om" works okay if you don't wanna look for anything more Perfect For You), count your breathing and reset the count every time your inner voice interjects something or when you get to ten, stare at something (I like just staring at the grass sometimes and watching how my visual centers start acting when they get really bored with looking at it).
A big key is to stop being angry at yourself for failing to stop that internal monologue. It's a hard thing to do! Instead of beating yourself up, just shrug, forgive yourself for doing it (maybe even say "I forgive myself for failing to quiet my inner voice" out loud, this activates different parts of your brain), and go back to whatever you're doing to focus on next-to-nothing.
If you can block out the time, I found that my meditation skills got a lot better when I stopped trying to do it for a few minutes at a time and started setting a timer for thirty minutes. Some days I can stop thinking easily. Other times I keep on fighting it for like twenty minutes. But doing it for a long stretch like that gives you more chances for your twitchy brain to get bored and STFU.