10 Things I Learnt From a Consistent Meditation Practise
1) Meditation is a totally personal experience Your experience will be different than mine. That is what makes it truly unique and beautiful. No one can tell you what you should and will experience. You have to do it to understand the practice, and what you get out of it will be specific to you.
2) It is not about clearing all thoughts - thoughts are NORMAL It can seem daunting and overwhelming to take even 5 mins to sit with yourself and your thoughts. But, thats usually when we need to do it the most. Meditation is not about completely clearing your mind. Its about letting the thoughts come, observing them, and letting them pass. Once I realised and accepted that, it made it a much more enjoyable and useful experience. Its a great tool to really tap into how you are feeling.
3) Everyday is different There are days where I feel I can sit in my own thoughts and meditate for hours, and there are others when I really can’t concentrate. And thats ok. I include it in my daily routine because I am now aware of the benefits and I don’t want to go a day without it, but there are some days I do it for 5 mins and others where I do it 60 mins. And thats ok.
4) It has made me SO much more present in daily life This has shocked me and made me realise how often I was not actually present, because I was always thinking about whats next or what had just passed. Meditation has made me so much more aware of the present moment, its hard to explain, but I just AM. I feel like I now have a balance between ‘being’ and ‘doing’, and its the best.
5) I am calmer, and respond rather than react It really has created space between my thoughts and my reactions and I‘m here for it. Its as though I have a moment in between thoughts to really observe them and decide how I feel before I react. I am calmer. I have clarity. Things do not p*ss me off like they did before, things never seem as bad as they may have before, and life generally feels more manageable. I am in total control of how I choose to react to something, and it is actually this that determines my emotions. Not the other way around.
6) There is no destination There is no end where I can say ‘ok, completed it’ with meditation. Its a tool to have in my tool kit that helps me stay balanced. I can whip it out whenever I like and I genuinely notice if I miss a couple of days. Just like in life, its all about the journey.
7) It creates space for ‘downloads’ to come in Things have popped into my head in meditation and I have genuinely not known where they came from. Unless we spend some time in stillness, our body and minds cannot catch up. The body mind spirit connection is often out of whack. Life is busy and giving yourself the space to sit and just be means you can really begin to feel into yourself, whats on your mind, how you feel, how your body feels and for ‘downloads’ to come into your head as little nuggets of inspiration that you didn’t even know you needed. It was in a yoga class meditation that ‘start a podcast called Wholeness with Hannah’ literally dropped into my head. I went home and did just that. et voila.
8) I am not my thoughts It is our thoughts that make us think we are stuck, or destined for mediocrity or that life is out of our control. You are totally in control of your own thoughts. We ALL have invasive, intrusive and unhelpful thoughts. Every single one of us. But now I know this and notice when I have one of these unhelpful thoughts, I literally stop the thought in its track and say ‘intrusive’ or ‘unhelpful’ and I reframe it. It is meditation that has given me the ability to do this. Its changed my world.
9) It has improved my focus and helped procrastination I am not saying I never ever procrastinate. But I notice now when I do it and I literally say ‘why am I procrastinating?’ , and it often turns out that its because I dont actually really care about or want to do the thing I am doing, which is a whole other problem that I can then rectify. I am able to focus on a task or conversation or even on just eating my brekky/lunch/dinner without the need to be on my phone or in constant convo.
10) I am in a much more constant state of flow, happiness and balance I had no idea meditation would change my inner world so much when I started it for 5 minutes a day. I used the app headspace to begin with and loved a guided meditation for relaxation or to drift off to sleep. I still love a guided one, but I also love just sitting with background music or nothing at all. I try to start my day with it for as long as I feel I have time for. I do it whenever I can or want to. I make it a priority. I stuck at it because I saw the benefits it was having on my mental health, my day, my productivity and my mood. I had attempted it a few times before, and I gave up, before I ended up sticking to it. The benefits do not happen overnight so it really is about building in a daily practise. I miss days because life is busy but I pick it back up. It is one of the best changes I have ever made. I feel like I am more able to flow through life and respond to what comes my way, rather than reacting, and I’ll take that as a win.