Last week I shared with my Masters Club that I’ve changed my perspective on meditation.
I am a huge fan of meditation and it’s benefits to me are obvious & immediate. When I meditate I’m happier, more focused, more efficient, more calm, more creative – and I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Yet, every single day I’m resistant to sitting down to do it. Every single day I don’t want to make the time.
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While journaling, I asked myself why I talk myself out of it. When I see “meditate” on my list, what are the thoughts I have that keep me from just getting started.
I realized that I viewed meditiation as something to spend my time doing and I always can justify a seemingly more pressing way to spend my time.
Yes, I could stop to mediate, but I really need to spend my time on this podcast or returning emails or making phone calls. I’ll do these other things first. They aren’t optional and meditation is.
BUT.
Meditation makes all the other things easier. It helps me get them done more quickly and with a better attitude. It helps me come up with ideas and solutions faster.
Meditation isn’t spending time, it’s investing time.
When you spend something, it’s gone. You can’t get it back. When you invest, it pays you back. There are returns on any investment.
Meditation is an investment.
I was on the phone with my girlfriend Ella last night and was telling her that I’ve been very consistent with meditation lately.
In a passing comment about it, she mentioned how great it is that I’m investing in myself in that way.
I immediately shared with her my recent realization about spending versus investing.
She remarked that there are probably very few activities we can do that actually pay us back. She’s right.
But there are some. The key is to challenge ourselves to find them and then to take action.
I told her how since seeing mediation this way, as an investment, I’ve started asking myself how I can invest in my business each day in addition to the time I spend there.
Many of my business tasks are time spent. Getting things done. Checking things off a list to keep the wheels turning.
Where can I invest my time to create those downstream rewards?
I want to challenge you to think about your lives this way, too.
How can you invest in your body or health today by doing something that will pay you back, make things easier and bring downstream rewards?
Maybe the 10 minutes it takes you to prepare and put dinner in the crockpot before you leave for work in the morning is an investment of your time because it saves you time and money later.
Maybe 10 minutes of stretching and foam rolling is an investment because it helps you prevent aches, pains and injuries.
How can you invest in your relationships in a way that adds more value than the value of the thing you did?
Begin by asking where and how you can invest in yourself today and then take action on the answer.
A year ago (January of 2017) I was participating in a group “Get Fit for a good cause” and challenged to meditate for at least 10 minutes a day for one week. On Sunday, the first day, at the end of the day, after dreading it all day, I attempted to meditate, it lasted less than two minutes. I gave up. I couldn’t focus and keep thinking about a million things.
I also had decided to quit smoking on January 20 of last year (thanks for the motivation to stop that bad habit). I was really struggling with the cravings and trying to find another way to deal with stress other than food, and I had been told by several people that I should give meditation a try again.
Then I was listening to The Minimalist podcast, they mentioned Dan Harris’s book, 10% Happier, so I downloaded that on Audible and gave it a listen. I became really interested in meditation and the benefits. I tried the app Headspace, and I started meditating more, but was not getting it in daily, even though I really felt the amazing benefits of calmness as well as helped me with cravings and truly helped me feel happier. Just simply listening to my breath is how I started, noticing how my body feels, I never did that!
I work in a stressful fast-paced environment and taking time to come out to my car and just take some deep breaths was the difference between responding calmly to someone or giving up and grabbing a candy bar.
That’s when I realized how important it was in my life. It took me a few months to get in a groove, but for the last 180 days I’ve meditated at least 10 minutes and sometimes up to 30 minutes in a day. It was only when I made the decision to wake up early and to schedule time to do it, that I was consistent with it, and that took practice.
Thank you for all you do. I’m so thankful that I found you a year ago. You’ve really helped me and now I’m ready for 2018 to be my year of push.