4 Honest Lessons About Meditation That Will Blow Your Mind
If a 27-year-old can give it a go, so can you.
I never thought I’d evolve into a meditation-enthusiast.
It’s not that I didn’t think highly of the concept when I first started. I just didn’t think I needed meditation in my life.
I mean, shouldn’t a 27-year-old be exploring the world like there’s no tomorrow? Maybe.
But perhaps meditation is something we should also consider exploring.
After all, what’s the harm in “giving it a go”?
If you stay open-minded about the process, you might stumble onto some powerful lessons — about life and yourself.
With my one-year meditation anniversary fast approaching, let’s take a look at what caught me by surprise.
Only You Can Care for Yourself
“Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort. ” — Deborah Day
This sounds obvious, but meditation is all about you. That’s right, it’s perfectly fine to be selfish in this regard.
When you choose to incorporate meditation into your daily routine, you are effectively signalling to your mind, “Hey, I just want to let you know that I’m here for you.”
Doesn’t sound so selfish after all, eh?
Most young people (me included) spend several years without practising good self-care. We often live by the need to keep hustling, while continually moving forward.
We never stop to recognise that we too need a bit of “me-time”.
When we spend our lives like hamsters on a spinning wheel, we fail to look after ourselves. We become unattractive — both to ourselves, and to others.
Instead, treat your mental wellbeing like a million bucks — do everything you can to protect it.
Lesson #1: Meditation is a way of taking better care of yourself. And you deserve to do so.
With the Right Perspective, You Too Can Make Hard Tasks Become Easy
“You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.” — Alan Alda
There’s no two ways about it, meditation is hard work.
Sure, the concept ‘sounds’ soothing, and the end state ‘looks’ relaxing. But like most things, the idea is often more alluring than the process itself.
Frankly, not enough discussion is given towards the difficulties of meditating.
Will you be able to conquer relaxation immediately? Nope.
Should that stop you from trying? Absolutely not.
To truly reap the rewards of meditation, you have to be willing to fail when you first try.
You have to endure the frustrations of not being able to centre your attention on a single thought or image. You have to feel uncomfortable and agitated when you realise you’ve lost focus. You will want to give up.
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” — Epictetus
With the right perspective, with the acceptance that meditation isn’t meant to be easy, you will find success. You will discover the additional benefits meditation can bring to your life — even if you don’t think you need it right now.
And once you do, once you embrace these benefits, you’ll wonder why you never got into the habit sooner.
Lesson #2: Don’t let failure get to you. Embrace the struggle that comes with trying to meditate. It’s all part of the journey.
The Art of Making Better Decisions — Make Better ‘Small’ Decisions
“It is in the small decisions you and I make every day that create our destiny.” — Tony Robbins
The way I see it, our lives are filled with two types of decisions. There are the big ones — the job offer you accept, the person you marry, the home you decide to buy.
But there are also the small, often ignored, ones — whether you hit the snooze button in the morning, whether you and your partner decide to argue about the toilet seat lid (again).
The problem with these small decisions is that they are often made without much thought. As a result, they fall victim to how we’re feeling at the time. Most importantly, small decisions fall victim to a cluttered mind.
When you approach teeny-tiny decision nodes with a lack of clarity, you become prone to making horrible choices.
You watch another hour of Netflix when you should be going to bed. You skip an apple because a jar of double-chocolate-chip cookies is staring right at you.
After a while, the quality of the small decisions we make goes on to determine the level of contentment we feel throughout our daily lives.
If you want to have better days, practice the art of making better decisions by approaching them with a clearer mind. Meditation is a perfect way to do so.
As Psychology Today writes,
“Practicing meditation can help clear away the mind’s chatter.”
Lesson #3: The benefits of meditation extend well beyond the few seconds of relaxation felt while meditating. Rather, meditation goes on to determine the quality of the decisions we make throughout the rest of our day.
Why Make Meditation a Habit When It Can Become a Hobby?
“Good habits formed at youth make all the difference” — Aristotle
Most ‘newbies’ treat meditation as a habit they should implement into their daily lives — similar to eating more fruit and vegetables, going to bed earlier, watching less TV, and so on.
And even after a few weeks of maintaining a solid routine, meditation will continue to feel like an annoying chore — similar to how you don’t feel like heading to the gym on the 1st of February, but you have to make use of your now-paid-for annual membership fee.
Like most habits, there exists an inflection point through the process — a moment when you’ve broken the burdensome feeling of a habit and entered into the realms of a hobby.
Such an inflection point exists with meditation too.
Make no mistake about it, to get to this stage, you must view meditation as a habit that you eagerly wish to form. To do so, consider some of the techniques recommended by James Clear in ‘Atomic Habits’.
For example, you could try ‘habit stacking’ e.g. “after I brush my teeth, I’ll spend a few minutes meditating”. Or ‘temptation bundling’ e.g. “after I meditate, I’ll reward myself with a fresh cup of coffee”.
In essence, your journey of meditation must first begin as a habit to later develop into a hobby. But rest assured, it will eventually progress into something you enjoy doing.
Keep this in the back of your mind and you’ll feel more motivated than ever to keep going.
Lesson #4: Keep at it for long enough, and meditation will become something you enjoy doing, not something you have to be doing.
A Final Thought
The beauty about meditation is that you simply have no idea how your mind and body will react — what you’ll learn, the emotions you’ll feel, or the level of self-awareness you’ll form.
Ultimately, meditation is a journey in itself. And like every journey, there are powerful lessons that can be learnt.
The trick is to stay open-minded about what you might find along the way.
Approach meditation with a sense of curiosity, and a willingness to give it a go.
Who knows what you too will learn after one year.
