Improve your return on investment. Stopping to smell the roses is great, but you can easily get a better return on the precious time you invest.
We search, often unsuccessfully, for ways to feel happier, deal with stress better and generally enjoy our life and work more. But life goes on getting busier and more complex as we strive to be everything to everybody; and there’s no end in sight. Ever wondered about meditating?
What is meditation?
You may ask what meditation is going to do to help us deal with all the difficulties that life is in the habit of presenting to us. The answer is "a lot" - if you’ll only give it a go.
Meditation is thousands of years old, and has as many flavours as your favourite ice cream shop. This means you’ll be able to choose a method that’s right for you. It’s often defined in pretty esoteric terms, but basically, it’s a way to put a pause in your life. By making a space, no matter how small, we give our body-mind the chance to do what it’s so good at: getting us closer to using our full potential, mentally, physically and spiritually.
Different types of meditation
Much meditation practice is a personal mix of techniques, and doesn’t have a particular name. But the commonest formal types are:
- Transendental meditation – uses a continually repeated personal mantra to bring a state of calm and quiet the mind. Finally, thought is transcended, and you come to a state of full consciousness. This type of meditation has been scientifically studied, and has been shown to be effective for treating such conditions as high blood pressure
- Mindfulness meditation – you watch the thought-by-thought progression of your mind, you are aware of the thoughts, and accept them without judgement. This is being used in corporate situations to help deal with stress, and to improve workplace performance. It’s also much used for dealing with health issues
- Body awareness – yoga, Tai Chi or progressive muscle relaxation are all methods of body awareness used as a way to focus completely. This too is popular for use in health issues
- Prayer – used in a spiritual or religious context, but still brings complete focus
- Focusing with the ears on sounds or music
- Focusing with the eyes on a flame or image
In the end, all meditation is about being right here, right now. While that mightn’t sound much of a goal, it’s the simple thing that our wellbeing hinges on. It’s only when we start to meditate that we come to understand how scattered we are.
Our minds are skilled at multi-tasking, and this is the underlying cause of stress. We can’t take one issue, work it out, make a decision and let it go, because nothing gets our full attention for more than a milli-second. We’re simply not aware of what’s going on in our minds most of the time. Thousands of issues get tangled up together, like a blocked sink, everything starts to back up. Meditation helps to unclog that sink because we learn to give our full attention to whatever needs it, at the moment. And we learn to accept whatever is there. For this reason you can find it being incorporated into psychotherapy.
Many major corporations are also finding value in using meditation in their workplaces. They understand the importance of not just dealing with stress, but nurturing the abilities of staff, and developing their potential. If those hard-nosed business tycoons think there’s something in it, we probably should pay attention. They know better than most how to get the very best return on their investment.
Find out more about how to add meditation into your life.
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