What I learned from my first 15,000 minutes of meditation
The quickest hack towards better living
Your life is one long journey. It’s like a ship going towards a certain goal millions of miles away.
When this ship’s bearing is one degree off compass, it will eventually find itself hundreds of miles off course.
This minor change over a course of time can have the effect of producing a profound change.
That’s what my past 2 years of meditation feel like.
Ever since the first session, I’m hooked. It taught me perhaps the most important lessons of my life.
Meditation helps you find and drive towards success.
Meditation helps you become the person you need to be.
Meditation helps chase away the evils, so you can become your best self.
Meditation helps you:
- See
- Feel
- Enjoy
- Think
- Progress
- Organize
- Prioritize
- Self-actualize
- Drive impact
- Choose your life
I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned over the my slight course correction, so you’ll get motivated to give it a go as well. So here are my eight lessons.
1. In order to listen well, you need to go into quietude
When I was traveling Morocco on my own for two weeks, I had a lot of silent time. At one point, I went on a trekking trip in the mountains, where I was basically all by my self for three days. It was in those days that I really got to know the inclinations of my own mind.
I’ll be honest: it’s easy to lose the battle with Facebook, LinkedIn or Whatsapp for your own time. But if you really want to understand your inner world, your bright and dark sides, your personal strengths and weaknesses, you need to go into quietude.
2. To take hit after hit and reach higher, be mindful
Samurai warriors were obsessed with meditation. When they were pressured or even hurt, they remained calm. Why? Because they knew that the thinking mind is what messes you up. It takes awareness, focus and mindfulness to solve this.
Chasing growth requires you to take risk. Don’t have your mind fixed? Trouble…
Anyone who knows me, knows I’m crazy passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship. I started my own startup, but failed to take it off the ground. One quote that really resonated with me afterwards, and gave me the confidence to move forwards, was:
“Leadership is about growth and passion, not about brilliance.” — Carol Dweck
But how do you put yourself into this mindset?
Meditation.
By having my mind fixed, I could take on more hits. It helped me rediscover my real self-confidence, by connecting it to my readiness to grow, not my brilliance.
3. Putting positivity first
The way we think about happiness is wrong. We keep setting goals, thinking that if we reach them, we’ll become happy. Then every time we reach success, we change the goal post of what success looks like.
Even in getting the wonderful things we long for, we tend to live in want of something more, of whatever might come to us next. This can only go on so long before life becomes meaningless. If happiness is on the other side, you’ll never get there.
But how do you reverse the order? How do you start from happiness and reach success from there, instead of the other way around?
Meditation.
You don’t meditate to stop bad things from happening or bad thoughts from appearing. You do it to deal with them in a way that brings more happiness.
Thinking is what messes you up. Awareness, focus and mindfulness solve this.
If you want a simple hack: practice writing down three things you’re grateful for each day, for 21 days in a row.
4. Peacefulness is always there
The way you see things fluctuates by the day, so you have to focus on the things that are always there- yourself, your existence.
By thinking of the past and the future, we afflict ourselves pain. We judge that pain instead of facing it head on.
Restlessness, unease of mind, can simply be stopped by seeing that there’s nothing “out there” to get, because everything, within this moment, is whole and complete.
But how do you practice this?
Meditation.
A restless mind is basically a blue sky covered in clouds. Peacefulness- the blue sky- is always there behind the clouds.
Conclusion
Meditation is the first step of change. It helps me deal with my restlessness, insecurities and challenges. This minor effort helps me course-correct my ship every single day.
If you want to try it out, check out headspace.com*. They offer a free 10-day introduction, which got me hooked.
*I’m in no way affiliated to Headspace.
Two last things…
If you liked this article, please do 👏 and share it with your friends. Remember, you can clap up to 50 times — it really makes a big difference for me.
