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7 Reasons You Should Start Meditating Right Away

Happiness | Lifestyle

Meditation is kind of weird. When you meditate, you’re trying to lose yourself, and in the losing, find a deeper you. What the hell is that about, right? Isn’t that the opposite of what it means to be a productive and contributing member of society?

Well, there’s a lot of research showing that regular meditation practice can enhance your productivity and focus. And let’s be honest, who couldn’t use a deep infusion of calm focus? Here are seven reasons you should start meditating right away.

1. You’re stressed all the time.

Are you always stressed out? Does your mind race furiously back and forth between tasks on your to-do list and push the adrenaline button after each lap? Stress is so addictive, and it’s become the invisible drug for a lot of us.

But stress costs you; it wears down your body and erodes the quality of your focus. In the process, you lose quality of life.

Stress is the byproduct of divided attention. Meditation is such an effective antidote to stress because meditating creates the opposite of stress by teaching you how to relax and focus on one thing. You and I are at our best when we’re focused on one thing: we become relaxed, confident, and on-mission.

2. You worry a lot.

A lot of us get used to relating to life as a problem. Whatever happens, it’s an issue and an obstacle. There’s always something to worry about. In that space, we assume a defensive posture towards the rich and spontaneous flow life experience.

In meditation, you connect to a part of yourself where nothing is wrong and nothing ever could be wrong. This is the part of you that is limitless and unbound. When you experience and connect to this part of yourself, you simply won’t relate to the idea that something could be wrong.

3. Your life has lost its luster.

For many reasons, a lot of us lose our passion for life at some point. We lose touch with our core passion and joie de vivre. It’s not uncommon for people to lose that sense that life is magical just as it is.

I’ve been meditating for 20 years, and I’ve found that meditation has the opposite effect. Every day, it helps me to shed the problems from yesterday and the fears of tomorrow and embrace life afresh. It helps clean the slate, enabling me to meet the day with innocence and mindful presence.

In that, life is never fixed and it’s filled with surprising and spontaneous joy.

4. You feel there’s more to life than “this.”

Do you feel that there’s more to life than this? If so, you’re not alone. That feeling is one of the main reasons I started meditating and spend 15 years in a yoga and meditation ashram. I found a powerful answer to that question through meditation.

In meditation, you discover a deeper sense of self. It’s filled with grace, exquisite peace, and silence. It’s also where you experience a deep connection with everything. In meditation, the boundaries between you and everything dissolve. There is just ONE. That is the most life-affirming experience you can have.

5. You want to concentrate better.

Meditation is all about training your awareness. It’s not about your mind. It’s more fundamental than that. In meditation, you learn how to harness the power of your attention. Most of us don’t exercise our attention. We let it flit about from thing to thing.

In truth, you have the extraordinary capacity to choose how to direct your attention. Like anything, this takes training and practice; it’s like a muscle you need to build. If you want to improve your focus, start meditating right away.

6. You love yoga.

If you love the calm buzz and the grounded feeling you get from yoga, you’ll love meditation, full stop. They go together hand in glove.

7. You love being “in the zone.”

Ever have those moments when everything clicks? You can’t do any wrong, and it’s like you’re seamlessly flexing and flowing with the current of life. You and the world around you seem to be working at a very high level of harmony and integration.

A lot of people call this The Zone. And one of the main qualities of being in The Zone is being grounded in the present moment. If meditation is anything, it is training in how to stay present and fully grounded in this very moment now.

If you love being in The Zone, meditation will help you create the conditions in yourself for that to happen more often.

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If you can relate to even one of these points, I think you should give meditation a try.

Be gentle with yourself; results take time, patience, and practice. But if you stick with it, you’ll recognize that the benefits of meditation are like the principle of compound interest. They build up and multiply over time, and eventually they overflow.

What does that feel like? Well, I can’t tell you exactly, because it’s different for each of us. But I can promise you one thing. It’s going to feel really, really good.

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