How You Can Improve Your Life in 10 Minutes a Day - Thursday, March 1st

Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years, all over the world. It was originally meant to help deepen understanding of the sacred and mystical forces of life, but today, meditation is commonly used for relaxation and stress reduction. Meditation is considered a type of mind-body complementary medicine. It can produce a deep state of relaxation and a tranquil mind. During meditation, you focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. This process results in enhanced emotional and physical well-being. 

The emotional benefits of meditation include gaining a new perspective on stressful situations, building skills to manage your stress, increasing self-awareness, living more consciously, focusing on the present, and reducing negative emotions. Studies show that meditation may also help such physical conditions as allergies, anxiety disorders, asthma, binge eating, cancer, depression, fatigue, heart disease, high blood pressure, pain, sleep problems, and substance abuse. The reason behind the effects of meditation is that it reduces stress levels and alleviates anxiety. If we can reduce stress, many health benefits follow. Spending even a few minutes daily in meditation can restore your calm and inner peace, and practicing it regularly allows you to experience tremendous benefits.

People in the contemporary world meditate for many different reasons. These people come from all walks of life. From rich to poor, entrepreneurs and blue collar workers, young and old, spiritual and non-spiritual, and everyone in between. You do not have to be of a certain religion, income level, or ethnicity to meditate, and that is the appeal of such a practice. Meditation helps to relieve tension and stress, helps you focus and sleep better, helps you to remain calm in stimulating situations, and helps you to remember to live in the moment, to think before acting and to be patient. Meditating is easy to do, and does not take a lot of time, so the benefits of meditating are well worth the effort. From this simple daily practice, experts and novices alike have claimed that meditation has helped them to gain inner peace, increase their self-awareness, learn to live in the moment, and even cure insomnia..

Consider your body to be like your bedroom. The more cluttered, unorganized and untidy your bedroom is, the less productive you can be in it. The same is true with your body – every day we add clutter – negative thoughts, emotions and energy from all different sources – people, media, our environment, and work. Meditating cleans out that clutter so you can clear your mind and be productive again. You clean your room and if you work at it daily, it stays clean. You meditate, and if you do it daily, you keep your mind clear, and gain inner peace. 

There are approximately 60,000 thoughts in your head on any given day. Meditation gives you clarity for those thoughts. It acts as a mental filing cabinet, so you can really focus on the thoughts you need to act on. The more you meditate, the more self-aware you become. This internal clarity makes it easier to understand your own thoughts, and desires; and the way you think, feel, and react. It allows you to make decisions without being so easily swayed by outside factors, and instead by listening to your own inner voice. Meditation increases your connection with you inner intuition, and helps you focus, be objective, remain grounded, and react thoughtfully. With this self-awareness, you learn to live in the present. Meditation also helps to make you more efficient, attentive and receptive, and you maximize every moment by doing so.

Meditation is known to help reduce and cure insomnia, as well. One of the primary causes of insomnia is racing thoughts. The bombardment of thoughts on your mind can result in anxiety, stress and depression, all of which make it more difficult to sleep well. Given that meditation clears our your mind and helps you to focus, it leads to a calmness that not only helps you ease into a deep sleep, but also helps you to sleep better. When you sleep, your body works to repair itself from the damage done while awake. This includes building muscles, repairing your skin, and clearing out mental clutter. When you clear out the mental clutter while you are still awake, you allow your mind to rest fully while you are sleeping. 

Naturally, there are some objections to meditating. According to numerous studies, the mental association of those who meditate is of people who have severed ties with mainstream society and are living solitary lives in pursuit of enlightenment. This stereotype insists that only the strictly religious and isolated individuals, including monks, priests, and hermits, can benefit from meditating. Some people also think that meditating is too difficult, takes too much time without an immediate, tangible output, and that it does not actually work. However, the opposite is true.  

Scientific studies show the positive effects of meditation on the brain. Last year, an article in Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging by researchers from Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the Bender Institute of Neuroimaging in Germany, found that brain activity changed in a group of 16 participants who had not previously meditated. Among the enhancements: learning and memory processes, emotional regulation, and perspectives. Meanwhile, a study at American University published in 2009 in Cognitive Processing found that college students who meditated experienced enhanced brain activity.

The greatest facet of meditation is that anyone can do it–anywhere–for free. You do not have to go off on a ten-day mountain retreat, or take up yoga or tai chi. Meditation can be done at home, in the office, and just about anywhere in between. There is no special equipment needed to mediate, and no special training required for you to start doing it. Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, meditates. Steve Jobs meditated. Facebook, Ebay, and General Mills executives are meditators. Google sets up separate rooms at their headquarters so senior staff members can meditate. 

Among leaders and business owners, meditation is growing increasingly popular, because the practice encourages alertness in the present moment, a pause to relax and focus, and an opportunity to re-center one’s self to be a better leader. Often leaders get caught up in what happens next versus what is in front of them right now, and by living in the present moment – dealing with what you can control and letting go of what you cannot – you can make better decisions. 

Over the last ten years, wellness programs in the workplace have increased significantly with the overarching goal of alleviating stress and promoting work-life balance. Meditation helps improve concentration, and a clear mind makes you more productive, especially in creative disciplines like writing. Most people do not use the majority of their brains, and the power of the subconscious mind is one in which past intellectuals have tapped into, including Thomas Edison, Buddha, Confucius, and Einstein. The subconscious mind is much more insightful than anything the conscious mind can create, and meditation helps you to tap into your subconscious mind as a source of inspiration. It also provides management benefits: increased focus, control, and regulation of emotions, all of which help leaders pay attention to what really matters. 

During meditation, you become an observer to reality. By this, it is meant that you become more observant of how people act around you, how your environment runs, and how you think and feel. You become detached from your ego, and with that detachment, you become calmer and more level-headed. With this detachment, you will also find it easier to observe, process, assess and react to everything around you. You become more able to be objective when you react to stressful situations. It also helps you to approach problems in a non-judgmental and non-reactive way. The more in control you are, the more you can focus on what you are going to do. The best leaders are in complete control of their emotions even in the worst situations.

There is no one formula to meditation. It is as straight forward as taking a moment to pause, turn off your electronics, and give yourself a moment of quiet. The immediate physical impact: blood pressure decreases, and brain activity is less frenzied. Get comfortable. Get into a favorite chair or sit on a cushion. The physical environment should not be a distraction.

Focus on your breath. Observe the in-and-out flow of your breathing, and stay focused on that sensation. Breathe from your diaphragm, not your chest. Clear your mind. Put the to-do list aside, and practice every day. A meditation session can be as short as five or ten minutes, sitting on the edge of the bed when you first wake up. The practice of meditation is adaptable, make it work for you.

Meditation is a critical tool towards self-development and growth. It can be used as a way to renew your body and mind, and offers more benefits than any other discipline alone. In business, meditation offers increased focus, a source of inspiration, a sense of control, and stress relief. In your personal life, meditation helps you to live in the present moment, to stay in touch with your emotions, and to clear out mental clutter. Cultivating meditation as a daily habit can only improve your life, and can help you to maintain balance. If nothing else, it can provide ten minutes of inner peace each day, a luxury in today’s fast paced world.

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