Does Being More Zen Mean Losing My Competitive Edge?

This was the type of question I had been asking myself lately. Let me explain. After about a year of a start-and-stop meditation practice, I made a New Year’s resolution to meditate every morning. My goal was not necessarily to maintain a perfect record, just to build space in my life for regular meditation.

It took a few weeks of daily meditation to make me finally realize the thing that the Headspace app has been trying to tell me for months — meditation is only the training exercise, mindfulness is the ultimate goal. Kind of like how a regular exercise habit helps you live a healthier lifestyle.

When this finally clicked I was feeling pretty proud of myself but then quickly started to wonder — what does it mean if this becomes part of my regular routine and is no longer compartmentalized to just 20 minutes of my morning? Do I want to walk around being “mindful” all day? Can I practice mindfulness while still being competitive and impatient to get things done?

Unfortunately I don’t have the answer for you as I have yet to maintain even 1 full hour of mindfulness, let alone a whole day. I’ll keep you posted as I know more. But in all seriousness I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, and here are some of the things I have learned that might help explain:

• Mindfulness is not about changing your personality. In fact, quite the opposite. The goal is to get to know your own mind better, so that you can observe the thoughts and emotions you experience more objectively. For me, this means I still get frustrated and anxious and angry — but now I get swept up in those emotions less often. Not every time, but some of the time, I can recognize that feeling when it happens and appreciate the value of it, but then move on without needing to dwell on it.
• Mindfulness is not about stopping thoughts. Rather, practicing mindfulness is helping me to build my own intuition about what types of thinking are productive for me and what types are not. By strengthening my ability to observe emotions as they arise, I am getting better at distinguishing the thought patterns that cause me unnecessary stress from the ones that don’t.
• Mindfulness is hard and does not happen overnight. Turns out I didn’t need to worry that if I try to be more mindful I’ll suddenly turn into a completely different, blissed-out kind of person. Because it’s really hard to be mindful. It’s sort of like when someone says they don’t want to lift weights because they’re afraid of getting huge — it just doesn’t happen like that.

It continues to be a fun learning process for me and I’m enjoying the new perspective I’m getting on my own thoughts and emotions. Have any of you tried meditation? Would love to hear if this resonates with your experience or not.