Mindfulness and Meditation
Meditation is a practice that has been implemented for thousands of years to help strengthen one’s ability to remain present as they go through life, undisturbed by the outward physical word and focused solely on the essence of existing. Along similar lines is mindfulness, or simply living life in an aware state, as opposed to the active action of meditation. These age-old concepts can be used to ease anxious tensions, improve focus, and even improve productivity.
Why Everyone Should Be Meditating and/or Practicing Mindfulness
When you sit down to meditate you can think about it as exercising a muscle. The difference is that the muscle that your are working out is simply your ability to allow all thoughts to dissolve and to simply be present in the current moment. It has been used to achieve a higher lever of awareness for the elite for millennia, and it can be used to fight stress and anxiety in today’s modern workplace. What’s more? Even 5 minutes a day can leave to marked improvements in one’s day to day attitude. The most important thing is to maintain a habit.
How To Meditate
For most people who are new to meditation, the practice can be quite intimidating. What do you do with your hands? Should you cross your legs? Do I have to close my eyes and think “ohm”? It’s really a lot easier than you may think, and these days there are helpful applications like Headspace that you can use to guide you a long in the process. Some will even start by just taking three minutes out of their day to listen to the same song and simply try to focus on the song. There are really tons of options, you just have to figure out what works best for you in your current situation. The most important thing is that you choose a practice that you can follow. Two of the most common types of meditation are Vipassana and Transcendental Meditation (or more commonly TM). For beginners, you might want to try some other forms before you get into TM, as it usually involves an expensive course and can seem a little gimmicky. However, for some people the expense can actually be quite a strong motivating factor, so again it really depends on your personallity type. Vipassana on the other hand is much more approachable, and once you are able to adopt it into your lifestyle you are much less likely to have to rely on guided meditations.
Fitting It Into Your Schedule
As we’ve mentioned a few times in this article, the most important part of meditation is an unbreakable habit. The practice is not something that returns results after a single day – they take time and persistence to see the massive mental benefits. That said, while you want to make sure that your method of meditation is not too complex, you also want to make sure that your schedule is not too overbearing to jive with your life. If you make a goal of meditating for 30 minutes a day right off the bat, you’re likely to miss that goal and give up forever. However, if you start off with just a minimum of one mindful minute per day, you are much more likely to be able to keep that goal and internalize it into habit. Don’t make such a big deal about it, just try to incorporate it into your lifestyle little by little.