It might seem like you’re just sitting there, but you’re learning to steer your mind.
Meditation is simply the shit. It may seem like just sitting there trying not to think, but it’s really a process of centering in oneself. Of learning to better manage our mental space. Of finding our best selves.
And it’ll start working quickly too, even if you find that you can’t get a moment of mental silence during your sit. This is because of increasing mindfulness, meaning an awareness of what is happening in one’s mind.
If you’re a fellow flawed human, you’ve probably heard yourself say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did it, it just happened!” (Not. Fun.)
Mindfulness helps get rid of that sort of banal unpleasantness by properly introducing us to our minds, thereby meeting our motivations. And when we start to see the why’s behind our did’s — they change.
And then there’s the recognizing of harmful thought patterns: seeing the negative self-talk, all the replaying shite memories, the limiting beliefs, and all the other ways we let our minds bully us.
Meditation and mindfulness help create a detachment from all that unpleasantness, which helps it to lose momentum, allowing us space to chooseto create a more nourishing mindset.
Our society seems to think we’re a mere collection of our past thoughts, that they define us — but our minds our tools, they are not who we are.
We think, therefore we are, sure sure sure.
But we can also think about thinking and change it, working to ban harmful conditioning and replace it with awesome; therefore we are also more than our minds.
Our minds are just tools.
And meditation helps empower us to use them better, to gain control — so a tool isn’t always calling the shots. (We get enough of that in politics, yes?)
It’s super easy to get started too.
Here’s a quick how-to:
- Get in a comfy position. You don’t need to pretzel it up, know lying down can lead to sleeping, but other than that, just be comfortable in your body.
- Focus on your breath. Feel the air moving through your nose, filling your lungs, and effortlessly flowing out.
- Don’t engage with your thoughts. As Mooji says, “Let every thought come and hug you, but you don’t hug anything.” Don’t judge it, try to not mentally react, just note it and return to your breath.
- Repeat, repeat, repeat! It’ll get easier with time, really it will. Eventually, you’ll start enjoying the peace of clear mind, which is addicting once you know it.
- Anywhere. In my cubicle days, I used to depend on bathroom stall meditations to find my center and get through the day — you can truly meditate an-y-where. Try it on a walk, focusing on the sensations in your body as it moves.
- Anytime. Well, you can’t meditate while having a conversation, not a decent one anyways — but you can rock the mindful 24/7, simply by keeping an eye on your mind. Keep a detached, yet discerning, perspective; giving energy to inspired thought patterns, and ignoring the others, which will get them to peter out.
