How To Get Your Life Back On Track with Meditation

"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour"
William Blake

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour. William Blake
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williambla150124.html

 
You know what this is about, right? You’ve heard it before. You may have even given it a try. But you don’t find time and you’re not very good at it anyway. It just feels like a waste of time if it doesn’t work.
 
The reason why you are interested though is because of the ongoing challenges in your life. Whether it’s your health, work, relationships or finances, you feel under pressure and life feels like it’s out of control. You need something that really works.

Well, meditation (you knew that’s what we were talking about, right?) does work. There’s any number of studies now which point to its helpful effect on anxiety and depression*. Individuals who practise it point to its beneficial effect on their lives in very specific ways.

Did you know? Research suggests that meditation helps stop the natural shrinking of the brain which happens naturally with age and it can even help grow new cells**.

I’ll hold my hand up at this point. Vested interest, you see. I am a meditator and approach it with the zeal of the recently converted. You’re probably not surprised at that but it may surprise you to know how much it has helped me within a matter of months.

 
Stress and an Overflowing Bucket

The thing is, I’d grown convinced some time ago that my recurring bouts of chronic fatigue were a result of stress. Not massive amounts necessarily, just everyday stuff which has built up over a long period of time. In short, my bucket was full and every time another of life’s stressors came along, the bucket started overflowing and I became quite ill.

What to do? Well, from all I’d read and heard, the one thing which perhaps had a chance of helping me to empty that bucket was meditation. I’d tried it a few years ago and practised it quite often and then stopped for reasons which are still not quite clear to me. Since then, it had always been an aspiration to start again but I kept telling myself that I wasn’t any good at it and therefore there was no point trying because it wouldn’t help if I couldn’t get it to work. 


With A Little Help …

Fortunately, with the help of a friend, I realized something very important – you don’t have to be good at it. That’s not the point. The point is just do it – just meditate. Do it and keep doing it and it will change your life. It could be the best gift you ever give yourself.


Success: Ten months later I’m sleeping better, I feel calmer and more importantly, the ups and downs of recovering from chronic fatigue have been removed and I am making sure but steady progress to regain my health.


To be fair, I started feeling those benefits after about a month but I wasn’t completely sure so I decided to postpone judgement. Nearly a year later and I’m a convinced meditator.


Starting to Meditate
 
So, if you’re inspired to meditate (and why wouldn’t you be?), what can you do to start?

Well, I can’t pretend to be an expert but what I know I learned from a guy called Paul Wilson***, who has written several books on the whole concept of calm. He basically makes it as simple as possible and removes much of the mysticism about it. In other words, you don’t have to sit in the classic pose, worry about your chakras or say, “Omm”.

These are my basic five steps to meditating which I’ve adapted from Paul Wilson.

 
1. Find a quiet spot, probably in your own home and wear some comfortable clothing

2. Take some time to make yourself as comfortable as possible. I prefer a reclining position but I’ve also meditated lying down and sitting up.

3. Take a little bit more time to just lie and rest and then after a few minutes do a full-body relaxation or progressive muscle relaxation****.

4. When you are fully relaxed begin the meditation

5. Take a simple one-syllable word which has no obvious meaning. (I use “One”.) Slowly repeat it silently over and over again to yourself. Keep going for about 20 minutes.


There, what could be simpler?


Challenges
 
Especially to begin with, you will find your focus wandering and your mind will be thinking about everything from what you had for breakfast to a random stranger you met 20 years ago. At that moment, just accept that your mind has lost its focus and start again with your one-word repetition. Don’t think you’ve failed or that you’re rubbish at it. In fact, don’t think anything. Just gently re-focus on repeating your “mantra”.
 
With practice, the length of time that you are able to focus on your mantra will increase but that’s not so important. What is important, is that you keep turning up and you keep doing it. Meditation is a habit which after a few months you will want to keep for the rest of your life.

Tip: to build up the habit, try a red pen and a prominently displayed calendar. Put a red cross on a day on the calendar every time you’ve meditated and see how long you can keep it going. If you break the chain, start again the next day*****.

The research has tended to be small-scale to be fair so there is a need for a large-scale longitudinal project which produces some robust results. However, the best evidence will be your own.

Tip: if you like challenges, how about starting off with a 30x30 challenge? Task yourself with meditating every day for 30 minutes for 30 days. If you succeed, try 100 days.

Don’t worry if it doesn’t work out for you to begin with. There are lots of different ways to meditate and lots of ways to build up the habit. It may suit some people to start meditating for one minute, the next day two minutes and so on. Do what works for you and do it the easiest way possible.
 
I don’t think meditation is a cure-all. However, it might just give you that foothold back in life that you’ve been missing. Through calming and giving you the mental ability to cope better with life’s misfortunes, it could be your most important tool in re-gaining your confidence and your zest for life.
 
Keep Calm and Keep Meditating!

 
FAQs
How exactly will I benefit?  
Well, that’s hard to say but the evidence suggests that it does help with anxiety and depression. People who practise regularly point to other benefits such as increased creativity. I’ve told you the benefits to me and you may be surprised at the people who do meditate daily, including Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Seinfeld. Check out the Million Meditators page of Facebook which links to reports on evidence for meditation.
 
How long before I see a benefit?  
Again, it depends very much on how often you do it and for how long. If you were to do it every day for a month, for about 20 minutes, there is evidence to suggest that after that time you’ll feel a positive difference in your mental well-being.
 
What if nothing happens?  
Nothing does happen. To begin with you may feel it is a terrible waste of time because you can’t focus and all the things you don’t want to think about go through your mind anyway. You may not feel particularly relaxed at the end of the session. The important thing is to give it time, be patient and know that it works. Because it does.
 
Why am I rubbish at it?  
I’ve been doing it for nearly a year and I’m still rubbish but I’m still getting lots of benefits. There will be days where you can’t concentrate and others where it goes like a breeze. Some days you’ll think it was pointless but feel great afterwards and on other days the opposite happens. Don’t bother about whether you’re a success or failure at it. Just do it.


 

Related Posts
Feeling Stuck? One Thing You Must Try Right Now.
Effort, Education and Growth Mindsets 
Get Uncomfortable

 
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Coming Up

Future blogposts on how I confronted my mental blocks to progress and how a morning self-care routine was the difference between life and death for one young woman.

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* From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22582738 quoted in Deepak Chopra's article in The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/how-meditation-can-help-a_b_8134058.html?ir=Australia

** http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/wellbeing/2015/07/05/renovate-brain-meditation/

*** https://www.amazon.com/Calm-Technique-Meditation-without-Mysticism/dp/0760715246

**** You can use this resource https://www.anxietybc.com/sites/default/files/MuscleRelaxation.pdf Personally, I don't tense my muscles first. In this resource, I would go straight to Release Only at the bottom of Page 4

***** I'm indebted to James Clear for this habit forming exercise http://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy which he in turn got from Jerry Seinfeld who just so happens to be a convinced meditator himself!


photo credit: bernat.rv <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/137220414@N03/28580877104">Serenity</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">(license)</a>

Feeling Stuck? One Thing You Must Try Right Now

This post is a little longer than usual because there’s a bit of a story and it’s very personal. I hope it helps you.

 
Ups and Downs

I’ve got a confession to make. Sorry to disappoint any of you but I find it hard to follow my own advice at times.
 
As with all of us, life comes and tests me and I wander paths in my mind which I would rather not go down. Before I know it, I’m at a low ebb and beginning to feel that things have got out of control – again.

Last year (2015) was such a year. I was making what seemed like good progress with my health. I was doing a programmes of exercises which I know help my condition (called M.E. or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and was building up stamina, so much so that I was able to swim 1km of my local pool a few times a week and do a daily strenuous walk. By Easter of last year I was feeling probably 90% “normal”.

Then one morning I woke up and realised my health had gone off a cliff. 90% had just turned into 10%. Just at the time when we were refurbishing my daughter’s room too. Monika ended up doing it all. I could perhaps hold something for a couple of minutes for her before needing to go and lie or sit down.

 
Downs and Ups

I began the slow process of recovery and the next few weeks and months were the typical erratic experience of ME which most people have. However, we enjoyed Monika’s 50th birthday and had a good holiday when I was able to do most things with everyone. However, in the middle of August, things took a turn for the worst and I deteriorated further so that by November, I had to give up walking the dog and making meals. I could look after myself but no one else. My days were spent mostly horizontally.

Anyway, I did start to pick up very slowly from there and round about February time I began making family meals again and in March walking the dog. I’m convinced by now that the consistent recovery I’ve enjoyed since has been due to the meditation habit I’ve developed (more on that in a future post) and by now I’m reasonably well and can do most things.

Anyway, get to the point, Reece.


Confidence

Okay, here’s the point. I didn’t know why I had those relapses last year.

In the past, I always knew setbacks were down to too much exertion when not fully well or too much background stress. Neither seemed to be the case this time and it unsettled me. Additionally, I’ve had this spell of illness since 2012 which followed on from a very long episode between 2004-2008. All in all, I realised, despite the progress I was making, my confidence was absolutely shot.

The thought of being fully well, for however long or short a period, I realised, seemed like a distant dream.

And then something strange happened.

I’d been making progress (which I'd put down to the meditation habit) but round about April time I stopped meditating consistently and couldn’t get the habit back.

What was all that about?

This really bugged me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was really stuck.

So what did I do?

I had a conversation with myself, using some of the coaching techniques I learned and developed five years ago.

 
Questions, questions

In the shower (no one can interrupt me there), I asked myself, “What do you think is stopping you from meditating?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“If you did know, what would you say”, I asked again.

I took a breath and knew that I knew the answer but didn’t want to verbalise it. “Because it doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I do, I don’t seem to get better.”

My answers, verbalised, rocked me back on my heels. The main thing I had grown convinced could help me, I wasn’t doing because, well, there was no point.

Did I really think that, I asked myself. Well it seemed I did and it wasn’t a good realisation. It made me look more closely at my life situation and I asked myself a further important question about what I wanted for my life and this is where the lack of confidence really hit because I just didn’t know. There didn’t seem to be any point in saying what I wanted because, well, in my mind, my future was pretty bleak.


Stuck. Again.

Then came the question to myself which has put me back on the road to recovery and given me positivity such as I haven’t had in several years.

“What don’t you want to happen?”

Jeez, I knew the answer to that one straight away but the realisation came as a shock nevertheless - I didn’t want to be stuck in the house on my own, a forgotten member of society, feeling like a basket case, when my kids have left home.

(Pause to digest that shock to my system.)

I slowly processed that bit of self-awareness and realised I had the opportunity to turn it into something more positive. I decided then that what I wanted was to re-start my coaching career (baby steps to begin with), re-start my blogging and start earning some money to contribute to the family budget and particularly to Alice’s university upkeep when she goes away next year.

So there you go. That’s what I decided and that’s what I’ve started doing. It’s taken me some further work to get over some pretty challenging mental blocks (more of them soon) but I have started some pro-bono coaching to get me back in the saddle and have posted several times recently on this blog.

Life feels for the first time in a while … unstuck.


Prison

My experience reminds me of when I trained as a coach and one of the most memorable lectures I had was with a coach who told us about the experience she’d had when coaching a prisoner, a “lifer”, someone who would be serving up to 30 years in jail. She was trying to establish what he wanted to focus his energies on, what he wanted to achieve, what goals he had but she found it very difficult to establish how he wanted to move forward with his life.

Eventually, she asked him the same question I asked myself, “What don’t you want to happen?”

That was when she knew she’d got through to him. He went quiet and then after thinking, he replied, head bowed and almost whispering, “I don’t want to die in prison”. Dramatic stuff indeed. She then worked with him to transform his fear of the future into a positive goal for how he was going to do everything within his control to be released as early as possible.


What does all this mean to you?

Firstly, you’re not the only one who’s ever felt stuck with how to move forward in their life.

Secondly, if you’re stuck, it may well be because your confidence and self-esteem have taken a battering from life’s cross winds. You may not be able to verbalise your dreams and goals because you’re convinced it’s pointless.

Thirdly, while you may not want any more severe challenges in your life right now, deep down there may be something which you really, really don’t want to happen further down the line? Only you will know what that is.


So, if you are feeling stuck, the one thing that you really need to do is ask yourself that same question.

“What do you not want to happen?”

 
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Next Post

The next Thrive blogpost will be a one-question interview with Paul McGee, aka The Sumo Guy! Make sure you see it by following Thrive via email (bottom of the page), RSS feed, Google Plus or Facebook (right hand side) or Twitter.

 
Coming Up

Future blogposts on a terrific strategy for moving forward and how I confronted my mental blocks to progress

To follow leave your email address in the box at the bottom of the page. You can also follow Thrive via the RSS feed, on Bloglovin, via Google Plus or Facebook or follow me on Twitter @PeteReece

 
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