Why should I practice mindfulness meditation?
I get asked this question a lot.
Probably because in all of my books and podcasts and posts online,
I'm always advocating the practice of daily mindfulness.
I push it so much that I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again.
So I feel like it's vital that we look into why.
Why do I practice?
Why do people practice mindfulness meditation in general?
And I think the best summary is that it is the cornerstone of all self-improvement.
That's a lofty statement,
But let me back it up.
Self-improvement is basically the act of choosing the long term over the short term.
If you think about diet or exercise or investment or education or getting organized or anything else that you'd be doing as an act of self-improvement,
Really it's about making choices that will benefit you over the long term.
Choosing the better food now so that your body is more functional later.
Choosing to spend the time to exercise now so that your body is better later.
Choosing not to spend the money now so that you've got it and it's investing and is working for you later.
Choosing to spend the time to educate yourself now so that you've got better career options and life choices later on.
In every one of those examples,
We could choose different ways to spend our time and effort and resources in the current moment and things that would probably be far more pleasurable and enjoyable,
At least in the short term.
Cake tastes far better than lettuce,
But over the long term,
A diet of cake would be catastrophic.
So when we apply the practice of meditation to self-help,
To thinking about the long term,
It enables us to make better choices.
My personal experience of meditation and how it's changing my mind is that it allows me to have a little bit of a space between my thoughts.
In the past,
Prior to meditating,
Something would pop up and I would just do it.
I would do it without focus,
Without thinking about it.
I would just sort of be at the whims of instincts and impulses and habits and addictions.
I would want to do something and then find myself doing it.
Whereas nowadays,
The more I meditate,
The more likely I am to notice those inner workings of my mind.
And by noticing those inner workings,
I'm able to best counter them.
If I notice a feeling of addiction or anger or temptation or whatever it would be that would trigger me to act in a short term,
Less desirable manner,
I can then instead choose a different approach.
I could choose the more beneficial long term approach.
And what's more,
Mindfulness meditation gives me the tools to investigate those feelings of anger and temptation and addiction.
What does it feel like to crave something?
What does it feel like to be bored or angry or tired?
Often we fear the feeling more than the actual feeling itself impacts us.
So for example,
Any of us that have broken a bone,
The fear of breaking a bone is extreme.
But when it happens,
It's not as bad as it seems in the sense that it hurts,
We can't stop it,
We don't like it,
But it's happening.
And in the act of it happening,
We sort of grow to accept it.
But because of our fear,
Because it's innate that we do so,
We do our best to avoid it and we want to run from pain,
We don't want to experience it.
But when it's occurring,
Maybe not even necessarily something as extreme as a broken bone,
Pain isn't pleasurable,
But it's just another sensation.
And in the same way,
Addictions and cravings and all of those things have a taste,
A sense profile,
They feel a certain way.
And you can ride them out,
If you have the tools of meditation,
At least that's my experience.
And beyond those sort of benefits,
There's also the obvious benefit of increased focus and clarity.
Mindfulness meditation,
The practice of mindfulness meditation,
Trains us to draw our attention back to a meditation object.
Our mind wanders,
We draw it back.
Our mind wanders,
We draw it back.
That skill of training the monkey mind,
Of focusing our brain is transferable in everyday life.
It means you're able to better read books,
Focus on work tasks,
Keep going and pushing through the exercise session,
Focus in a meeting.
You're a better listener because you're able to be more attentive and actually hear and focus and stay with the conversation as opposed to losing your mind to daydreams or any distractions or other thoughts.
It makes you feel more clearer and calmer and sort of exists with a bit more clarity.
And this approach just leads to a generally more pleasant,
Less extreme existence.
Prior to meditating,
Prior to establishing a daily meditation practice,
I would notice that my moods would fluctuate wildly.
Very,
Very high and very,
Very low.
And it would sort of oscillate like a fish tailing car between those two states.
Now,
That's obviously not an ideal situation,
But I noticed that when I meditate,
I don't go up so high and I don't come down so low.
And it might be like,
Well,
Why don't you want to go up so high?
That sounds great.
And yes,
In the moment,
Those feelings are quite pleasurable.
It's nice.
But the problem is,
Is that it's like the analogy,
You know,
What goes up must come down.
And I found that in those states of being up quite high,
I would inevitably drop because I would start doing too many tasks.
I would make too many commitments.
I would believe that I'm going to last in this up elated state forever.
And inevitably I'd become overwhelmed and I would crash.
And then the lows would be equally low.
A better approach is to be a little bit calmer,
Be in the middle ground.
And meditation gives me that.
There are further benefits for general life and functionality.
As meditation starts to improve my blitted focus and all the things that I've previously said,
My functionality with work and home life and relationships also improve.
So it becomes this sort of growth cycle.
There's this synergy that mindfulness gives and it's led to the ability to work more,
Find better,
More fulfilling work and just be able to accept my existence.
This is what life is for me.
There's good parts to it and bad parts to it,
But I'm okay with it.
I'm able to accept reality as it is because I'm more grounded in that reality.
Mindfulness enables you to see the truth of what is happening in the world as opposed to living in a delusion of your mind's creation.
But I want to highlight something.
Me talking about these benefits and you experiencing them are a completely different thing.
You can listen to people talking about the benefits of meditation all you like.
The only way that you can truly get those benefits or understand what it means is to do the practice and to do it daily.
Because really,
It's almost like you're defragging the computer of your mind or reformatting it or running a different operating system.
It will be hard for you to see the benefits from your current state because the thing seeing those benefits hasn't yet experienced them.
A non-meditative mind is kind of like a drunk mind in the sense that its perceptions both of itself and of the external world are slightly altered,
Are a bit more dull,
Aren't quite as grounded in reality as a sober mind.
So in a similar sense,
A mind that doesn't meditate is more erratic,
More prone to delusions and daydreams and distraction.
It's less calm.
And when you start meditating very slowly but inevitably,
Your mind will be able to focus,
Slow down and see the world more for what it is and see itself more for what it is and how it's performing.
And that,
Once again,
Is a self-fulfilling cycle of improvements.
