Assisted Meditation — 7 minute kickstart to the day

“Start your day with a fresh mind”, I’ve heard that advice innumerable times on how to make the best of my day, I’m sure you have too. But how exactly can we achieve this fresh state of mind?

My first instinct when I wake up in the mornings was to immediately reach for the phone. Research confirms that I’m a part of the 80% of the population that does the same. I inundate my mind with friends’ night time updates, news from around the world, quarter life poetry, tastefully arranged breakfast photos on Instagram and the list goes on. 15 minutes into this ritual, I’ve been pulled into a hundred different directions and have lost the wonderment that this is indeed a new day with endless possibilities.

Monks meditate deeply to achieve a serene state of mind; if you’ve had a decent sleep (more coming on that in a future post) then you’re already very close to having a serene mind. So why ruin that by a deluge from the phone screen?

So how do we move to an even calmer state of mind post waking up?

Of course, DON’T look at your phone at least a good hour into the day once you’ve had time to get into the state of mind that you want to be in to accomplish your objectives.

Complement this with a dose of what I like to think of as “assisted meditation” : going through a morning ritual of clearing my entire desk of any distraction save 2 sheets of paper and a pencil. Then spend 7 minutes trying to let go of all thoughts; having been so deeply ingrained with the urge to continuously have notifications thrown at us, this is not going to be easy. This is where the paper and pencil come into play. Write out every single thing that pops into mind — picking avocados for “Guacomole night”, calling mom, your annoyance with workplace issues, etc.

Doing this over and over everyday, not only will you notice how a sizeable chunk of your everyday thoughts tend to revolve around similar issues but hopefully the amount that you write will keep going down on a weekly basis as you learn to still your mind. The aim of this exercise is not to come up with To-Do lists or do any sort of serious analysis on the stream of consciousness but simply to give the mind a chance to become still by emptying it of the hundreds of thoughts bouncing around.

Share this and start a conversation on how you supercharge your mornings!