Meditate the Day Away
In the fast-paced world inundated by technology to the left and right of you at any given moment, we find ourselves drained out and running on unimaginable stress levels from day-to-day. I’ve been caught in the midst of it all, trying to run faster and faster to keep up with everything but only to find myself eventually feeling like a complete mess just trying to keep up.
Meditation or finding time to sit still for a couple of minutes a day has helped me tremendously find a way to block everything out and come into awareness with our humanity and general spatial perception. As a result of the pandemic and shelter in place orders, I would have thought we’d be able to come closer to our grounded state of humanity. However, that seems to not even come close to the true state of matters.
Before going on further, why should we even bother meditating? We’ve all heard about the groundbreaking discovery of meditation in so many people’s lives and how that has transformed all facets of their life. Let’s take a look at how meditating can improve your life from the perspective of different relationships so everyone can relate:
Relationship to Self
This is the relationship I believe most people struggle with, no matter what stage in life they are at… well maybe except for young children. Boy, do I miss those days… I digress. The benefits of meditation are endless here:
More room for happiness as depression decreases
The sensation of pain drastically reduces and/or becomes more manageable
Slowed state of mind to help decrease anxiety and racing thoughts
Relationship to Health
I feel like a broken record stating how important looking after our health is, but I’ll keep playing this record as long as we’re living through the time that is 2020. Meditation is primarily aimed at improving one’s physical health in a variety of ways:
Maintaining weight levels as a result of decreased stress eating
Manages heart disease, cancer, and high blood pressure
Potential to reduce age-related memory loss
Personal Relationships
There are numerous ebbs and flows when it comes to personal relationships with family, friends, romantic partners, etc. More often than not, people are on different wavelengths at a given moment, leading to incompatibility and degradation of personal relationships. By meditating, we can find our personal relationships burgeon to new heights as a result of:
Increased self-awareness to understand what you truly value in a relationship
Greater capacity for patience with others
Building greater empathy to experience longer-lasting harmony
Professional Relationships
Business relationships have a stark connotation of being black and white, as defined by accomplishing a certain business goal for all parties involved with a strong dash of being personable to form the ideal relationship. However, more often than not, we see things go sour once you start to bring out metrics and goals, but we can find a greater aptitude for our vocational lives as a result of meditation through:
Higher brain integration to improve functionality in a variety of settings
Improved creativity and imagination
Greater aptitude to be present in your business
Now that’s a lot of benefits to reap from such a simple practice! I’ve found myself benefiting from a number of them as a result of having only started meditating about two or three months ago. Let me tell you that it’s a struggle though at first!
When you first start meditating, you might find yourself pressed to empty your mind and just be present with the moment. Within the first 30 seconds to a minute, you’ll find your thoughts wandering left and right on to-do lists or asking if you remembered to turn the stove off. Let those thoughts subside - except you should probably go turn that stove off just for precaution before going on.
It’s as hard and as easy to say that you need to just break past the first hurdle, and then it will become easier to incorporate into your daily routine as if it was second nature. I, personally, meditate at night just before going to sleep to help with my sleep routine. Most people like to meditate at either the beginning or end of the day, sometimes even in the middle of the day, but there’s no best time in my opinion. If anything at all, it is the fact that you have an anchor point in your day to restore calm and inner peace that is most important.
Harking back to the idea of constantly running at 100 mph and trying to continuously keep up with the world, meditating has helped center and slow my internal beat. It’s hard to truly encapsulate the power of meditation in words, but I find the analogy of how the greatest professional athletes somehow find a way to slow things down and perform at otherworldly levels as the greatest comparison to how you’ll feel throughout life post-incorporating meditation into your life.
Slowly, but surely, you’ll start to feel “fuller” and more enriched as a result of the clarity and peace of mind that meditation brings. Give it a try and start your meditation journey. Most will get hung up on the “how”, but it’s as simple as setting aside 10 minutes a day and sitting as still as possible as you check in with yourself. Be patient with yourself and find a method that works for you. If you need the inspiration to get started, there are a variety of techniques you can read about online that center around breathing techniques, creating a space specifically for meditation, and relinquishing control in the moment.
Beauty in the journey - that’s what we’re all about here at Introspective Musings and that couldn’t be any more true when it comes to the journey that unfolds when embarking on the practice of meditation. No one’s journey will be the exact same as someone else’s, but we can find solace knowing that there is a community out there willing to shed light on its experiences to, in turn, help out everyone else in his/her journey. With that said, I’d love to hear about your thoughts and experiences with meditation below in the comments section! Meditate the day away!
“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti
