3 Practical Types of Meditation that Unlock Your Potential

Karim Elsheikh
Jul 23, 2017 · 4 min read

In the past, I thought meditation was for weird hippies and woo-woo people. I was totally wrong, and here’s why.

Millions of successful business-people, entrepreneurs, writers, athletes, actors use meditation for it’s practical benefits. Research has shown that meditation increases gray-matter in our brains. That’s the stuff that helps us with attention, emotional resilience, and information processing.

From my personal experience and research I’ve done on the subject, there are three types of meditation. All three are practical and can help you unlock mental blocks, focus on your goals, and destroy inner fear.

If you don’t know how to meditate at all or you’ve never done it before, read this first. Afterwards, come back for the three types of meditation I’m going to share with you.

Reflective Meditation Can Help Destroy Inner Demons

The first type of meditation that I’m going to share with you is called reflective meditation.

Reflective meditation is all about reflecting on the past and dealing with the negative emotions from that past that we bring into the present.

If you’ve taken my free video training course on How to Gain the 5 Qualities of Successful People, you know that resilience is one of the key qualities for success.

Reflective meditation helps build emotional resilience because we actively expose and deal with negative emotions from the past.

Steps to Have a Successful Reflective Meditation Session

Step 1: Once you get into a meditative state, allow your attention to move to your past.

Step 2: Shift your attention from thoughts to the emotions behind those thoughts. For example: if you had a bad argument with your spouse, you should shift your attention from the argument itself to an emotion, like anger or frustration.

Step 3: Repeat these emotions to yourself, welcome them into your mind. Feel the emotions without judgement, and don’t label them as good or bad.

Step 4: Now, accept what happened in the past and let go of the emotion. Imagine the emotion flying away like a balloon that you just let go from your hand.

Step 5: Repeat this process for each of your emotions, until you feel calm and relaxed.

Awareness Meditation Improves Focus and Concentration

The next type of meditation I have to share is also the most common. It’s called awareness meditation, otherwise known as mindful meditation.

Awareness meditation is all about bringing your focus to the present moment. Bringing your awareness to the present moment helps build focus over time. In fact, awareness meditation has been used as natural therapy for patients with ADHD.

Even if you don’t have ADHD, the ability to focus is vital for successful living. Without concentration, we can’t build great relationships, careers, or businesses.

Steps to Have a Successful Awareness Meditation Session

Step 1: Once you get into a meditative state, allow your attention to move to the present.

Step 2: Focus on sounds, sights, and feelings without judging or processing them with thoughts. Just observe.

Step 3: If you’re having trouble bringing your attention to the present, try to take deep breaths and focus on your breathing.

Step 4: If you have a distracting thought, don’t panic. Allow that thought to happen, then tell yourself “back to the present” and shift your focus back.

Step 5: Eventually, you’ll feel calm, relaxed, and mindful. Try to stay in this state for the rest of the session for maximum benefit.

Visual Meditation Eliminates Fear and Mental Blocks

The last of the three types of meditation I have for you is rarely talked about, but very useful. It’s called visual meditation, and it focuses on the future.

Visual meditation is about bringing your awareness to your plans for the future. Visual meditation (otherwise known as visualization) is best done in the morning to start the day.

Visualization helps us eliminate fear and mental blocks by simulating uncomfortable events before they happen. For example, if I have to sit down and write a long blog post today, that’s going to make me uncomfortable. To relieve some of that discomfort before I start, I can visualize myself writing the blog post successfully.

Our subconscious minds can’t tell the difference between a mental picture and reality. Like dreams, mental visions seem very real to our subconscious minds.

Visual meditation can help prepare our minds for difficult or uncomfortable tasks ahead because we can carve out a mental comfort zone before we begin. That way, we become much more confident.

Steps to Have a Successful Visual Meditation Session

Step 1: Once you get into a meditative state, allow your attention to move to the future.

Step 2: Create a mental picture in your head of the most difficult or uncomfortable things you know you should do that day.

Step 3: Imagine yourself successfully working on those difficult things.

Step 4: Imagine yourself making some mistakes, but quickly recovering and continuing with the tasks.

Step 5: Picture completing the tasks and feeling a sense of joy and satisfaction from the accomplishment.

Conclusion

Now that you know the three types of meditation, it’s time to put them into practice and unlock your potential.

I would start with awareness meditation if you’re a beginner, then move on to visual and reflective.

If you meditate consistently, you’ll notice incredible changes in your focus, productivity and happiness levels.

What’s your favorite of the three types of meditation? Post your opinion in the comments below, I reply to every comment.

Want more success strategies?

Click here to learn how to gain the 5 most important qualities of successful people.


Originally published at www.innerconqueror.com on July 23, 2017.

Karim Elsheikh

Written by

Founder of InnerConqueror — helping you become exceptional through parables, lessons, and techniques | Author | Software Engineer

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