When meditating, be your own refuge. Take what works from different techniques and make it your own. The many different meditation instructions out there are a guide. Generic templates, there to help you find your own way in. It is okay to play around with them, to create your own recipes to get into samhadi. 

Part of meditation practice is about tweaking things, experimenting, trying things out, seeing what gets results. Keep what is useful and disregard what isn't. Everyone has their own style. There is no one size fits all.

It is like learning a musical instrument. At first it is dull because you can't instantly make music, you have to learn how to tune the instrument so it produces the right tone. Then learn the notes, chords and position of fingers. You have to train all these different muscles, and it hurts at first. You can't get it to make the sounds you want in the beginning, and wonder if you ever will. There are scales to learn, and generic songs that teach you about structure, progression and timing.

Learning any skill in the beginning is frustrating and difficult. It can feel repetitive, boring, tedious, the mind wanders, day dreams, gets restless, feels reluctant to practise; but one keeps oneself going with the knowledge that what one is doing now, will enable one's future self to be able to make music one day. That desire is what drives one into putting in the time, dedication and effort to learn the skills needed to get there.

One learns how to talk to oneself, to keep oneself going, to be patient, and content with not getting the results one wants straight away. One learns to wait, and have faith that what one is doing now will one day pay off. It takes time for skills to develop, for new habits to be formed. The process can't be hurried, and it can also take different amounts of time for each one of us, as we don't all learn at the same speed.

This is a desert we all have to cross when learning something new. But as with any training, if one persists at it, keeps a consistent daily practice going. The effort will build up a momentum over time, and eventually there's a tipping point where it suddenly feels easier, and things become more effortless, there is confidence, and there is flow, and you wonder why you used to find it so difficult because it feels so natural now, intuitive, like second nature. At last one is playing the music.

Meditation is like this also.