The Strong Within Affirmation Podcast
Education:Self-Improvement
396 I Allow What I Want To Come To Me | January 2018 Wednesday Week 5
Wisdom Wednesdays-#396 January 31st The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast
I Allow What I Want To Come To Me
Meditation…who has time for that, and why should I even do it? I get anxious sitting around trying to think about nothing. I mean 5 minutes of breathing and trying to calm myself is way too long for me…I’m a busy person; I got better things to do with my time. I have more productive things to do with my time.
And that’s what we can, or maybe DO, say when we think of meditation.
We’ve heard the benefits of what meditation does for us, such as it helps reduce depression, it helps to increase your focus, it can help to manage ADHD, it helps calms your emotions, it helps to lower your blood pressure, it can help with your sleep, and many more benefits than we have time to say in this podcast.
And even hearing all the scientific studies on proving how great meditation can be for us, why do we still not want to do it? Why do we feel it’s too hard? Why do we feel we don’t want to even try it? Why do we think it’s a waste of time?
I do get how easy it can be to not want to meditate…even after I’ve seen first hand the benefits that meditation has brought into my life. There still are times where I’ll say to myself that it’s too hard or I don’t have time. But the fact of the matter is it’s not that I don’t have time, it’s that I’ve gotten too busy and haven’t scheduled time in for it, and I’ve forgotten what meditation means to me.
For me, meditation is the calming that helps start my day on the right foot. It’s my compass making me more aware of the emotions I want to be living within. It’s the act of purposefully lowering my stress and anxiety to be able to function more efficiently throughout my day. But it’s so easy for me to forget to take a moment to calm my mind, my body, and my emotions…as I want to get through my tasks as fast as possible.
Take for example when I was brainstorming this podcast. I sat down in front of my computer putting my fingers on the keys and began clacking away trying to force all the ideas out, so I wouldn’t forget anything. I didn’t want to waste any time, as I have to finish the podcast up as fast as possible as I still have to record and get everything else ready for this particular podcast. And I feel the pressure stacking up as I focus on when I’m done with this podcast that I have another one to think about, and then another one after that.
Doing 365 podcast in a year puts a lot of pressure on me thinking about how I can’t miss a day, and that if I slack off I’m going to ruin my streak, and if I ruin my streak I’ll let you guys down, and if I let you guys down then you’ll never trust me and I’ll lose my audience, and once I lose you then I’ll be a failure, and soon after that I’ll be living on the streets a sad and broken man. Ok, it does sound ridiculous saying that out loud…but we put so much pressure on ourselves, not realizing the toll it’s taking on us.
And really unknowingly, I’m hurting my health, my mental sanity, and my emotional peace not putting these thoughts in check. And the way I do that is by meditating. And so after trying to brainstorm this podcast, after I feel the uneasiness in my body, the pressure and stress within me, I take my hands away from the keypad realizing that I was stressing out from trying to perfect this podcast.
I stressed out about trying to force something. And not just produce something good, but that I have to make the best podcast ever. It’s the thought that it’s never good enough, and I have to keep growing and making it better, and if every single one isn’t better than the last one, then I’m a failure. And so I sit and think for a moment to become aware of the subtle seemingly unnoticeable pressure I’ve put on myself. I work to understand and feel it in my body, I work to feel it in my mind, and I work to see how those thoughts were crippling me.
After I take notice of that stress, I ask myself if this is how I want to be? And if I am being honest with myself, I answer that question in my mind saying “no,” and then I take action by stepping away. I close my eyes and take some deep breaths. I don’t even have to do it for a long period of time. I’ll take about 5 to 10 deep purposeful slow breaths in and out…which usually takes me about a minute to two minutes to do…and something miraculous happens. I feel better. Meditation is about me connecting to something bigger than just myself.
Now I’m not saying it’s a miracle that everything that was blocked is now unblocked, but that the start of a different feeling begins to rise within me. It’s the building of something better within myself. It’s like my brain was being a dam to the water of calm and ideas within myself, and once I took those deeper breaths and purposefully slowed down…my life sped up in a good way. Not in one of rushing, but one in allowing something better to come to me.
And I think that’s why we say we don’t have time for meditation, or that it doesn’t work:
1) First off we haven’t practiced it enough to let ourselves create that relaxation within ourselves. We tell ourselves that we would rather be doing something else. Which creates stress and conflict to begin with. 2) And secondly, we haven’t asked ourselves why we would want to find that calm and ease in our lives. We live in a world where it’s rush, rush, rush…hurry up and get it done…hurry up so you can slow down…but we never actually slow down.
And maybe if you were to look at meditation differently you might make it a normal part of your life. Meditation isn’t about sitting and not thinking about things, it’s about calming yourself to the things that are happening. It’s not the act of trying to calm yourself to get things, it’s about changing the way you pursue things. It’s about finding the peace within yourself to allow things to come to you easier.
If you were to think about your car, pretend for a moment that you couldn’t turn the car off. You lost the keys, and if you turn it off, it might not ever turn back on again. And so you leave it running 24/7. Let’s say you get fired from your current job, where you only drove to work and then drove back home. So you get a new job as a newspaper delivery person, and you’re constantly driving this car non-stop. And every week your boss says what a good job you're doing, so he adds more deliveries to your routes which increases the demand on your car each week.
What do you think would happen to a car that doesn’t ever turn off, and for the owner who doesn’t have time to maintain it? It’s an inefficient way of running a car, and over time it would crap out and break down. Well, that’s what we do to our brains and bodies when we don’t take the time to maintain and decompress ourselves from the stresses that are continually happening throughout the day. Your brain never shuts off, and if you are constantly running without taking time to maintain it, then you are overloading your system. You are effectively becoming more and more inefficient.
So, what if you were to see your life as a car, are you maintaining it like you want to? Do you think you could operate at a higher performance rating if you learned to take better care of yourself whether it be by working out, eating better, meditating, or doing hobbies and activities that you enjoy? We think that working out, or eating right, and even meditating is hard because it’s taking time away from the things we have to do, or the things we’d rather be doing. But all those positive, re-centering activities, could be things that actually give us more time.
Think of your life as a pie chart. And for each slice in that pie, think of it as a part of your life that’s important to you and that it’s something you’d put your time and effort into. So things like your family, your work life, your fun time, your personal development, and your spirituality could all be different slices within that whole pie. Think about what slices are missing in that pie that you would want in there, like volunteering, or money management, or whatever else you want to put in your life.
So before, we might’ve been thinking that meditation would be a slice that would take away room from the other things in our life. We think to ourselves that meditation takes time, and I only have so much time—I don’t have any extra time to spare at the moment as I’m already spread so thin. But what meditation actually does, is it expands those life slices in your pie instead of taking away from them. It makes them bigger, it makes them more efficient, and it makes them better. It makes you more creative, it will help you to have more energy, it will help you to be more focused, and it will help you to be more balanced, calmer, and in control of yourself in every situation.
We think that to meditate we have to be like those gurus who do it for 30 minutes or an hour. And maybe that might be good for some, but you don’t have to meditate long to get great benefits from it. As I said before, when I sit down to write any podcast brainstorming session, I take 1 minute to sit back in my chair and take anywhere from 5 to 10 deep breaths in and out before I start working. And it changes my whole demeanor. I go from being blocked into feeling less pressure, less stress, and feeling freer altogether. The words come out easier, as I feel more relaxed and focused.
So if you want to be more relaxed, if you’d like to be more balanced in your life, if you’d like to be less stressed, if you’d like to be more creative, if you’d like to be healthier, and if you’d like to have things come more easily to you…then create a time slot in your life to meditate every day…even if it’s only for 1-5 minutes.
But if you’d like to be blocked, if you’d like to be more stressed, if you’d like to stay in the same spot you’ve always been in, if you’d like to keep forcing things, and if you’d like to feel out of control and tense—then don’t meditate, and keep living on autopilot. Keep your internal car running 24/7 pushing it harder and harder thinking that it’ll never break down.
In Greek Mythology there’s a story about King Sisyphus who was thought to be one of the craftiest and clever of all men. There are many different legends about his deceit and trickery…and one such tale talked about how he had tricked his way out of death. Thanatos, also known as Death, came with chains to bring King Sisyphus to the underworld. And King Sisyphus said there must be a mistake, and he didn’t believe him, so he asked to prove the chains worked by Thanatos putting them on himself. Which at the time prevented people from dying as Death had been chained up. Eventually, King Sisyphus finally was brought to the underworld, and for his punishment, he was to roll a huge boulder up a mountain every day. And when he would get almost to the top of that mountain, the boulder would be too much weight and would roll back down to the bottom. Making King Sisyphus having to eternally keep starting over… again and again, and again.
The lesson is about pointless and hopeless labor. And the punishment is not in doing the work for eternity, but it’s about being conscious knowing you are doing something pointless. And that’s what meditation does for us, it awakens us so we don’t have to be in autopilot, so we won’t be in a pointless struggle.
Because when we don’t take time to re-center ourselves, to recharge, to take better care of our minds, bodies, and souls…then we are like King Sisyphus thinking we are being craftier than the nature of life. We are thinking we can outsmart the Universe, and outwork it…instead of seeing if we took time to center ourselves we wouldn’t have to work as hard, we wouldn’t have to play foolish games in trying to beat the unbeatable Universe, and the things we want would find their way easier to us.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is a chance to be lazy; I’m saying this is a chance to be more productive and efficient in the tasks you set out to do. This is a chance to truly awaken yourself. And while I’ve talked about the benefits from what meditation will bring you, the reason we don’t do it is because we haven’t chosen the ONE reason why we would MOST benefit from it. Sure all those healthy things sound nice, but it can be overwhelming. And I believe the way we stick to something, is by finding the importance something will bring into our lives.
So, if there would be only ONE reason you could meditate and get the benefits of what you wanted from it…what would it be?
I know for me it’d be focus…because every time I meditate I feel laser focused and I get stuff done. When I’m focused, it works on every part of my life—it helps me to focus on my emotions more efficiently, it helps me to focus on my creativity, and it helps me to focus on my self-love…to be kinder to myself. Which always helps me be more productive and happier overall.
So instead of looking at why you don’t want to meditate, what if you were to look at all the benefits that meditation can give you, and you were to choose ONE that would make a huge difference in your life?
What if you chose that ONE benefit you wanted to expand upon, and you decided to do that by meditating every day for at least one minute? Do you think that you can spare one minute of your time to do something that might change your whole life?
That’s up to you, but I do hope you choose to take time to re-center yourself and allow what you want to find its way to you more easily…one way or another.
Today’s Personal Commitment:
Whatever you do today find a time to slow down and take some deep breaths in and out for at least a minute. And notice what happens to your body and your mind as you take your attention away from what you have to be doing, and focus only breathing slowly in and out.
And then look online for an article that states all the benefits you can get from meditation. After looking over the list think about the ONE thing you would love to get from the benefits of meditation for your life. And I challenge you to commit to 30 days of taking at least one to five minutes of your day to breathe slowly in and out focusing your energy on allowing that benefit to come to your more naturally.
The reason a lot of us give up on things that could be good for us is we don’t do it enough, we don’t make it a regular habit, we think it’s not working fast enough, we allow other things to distract us, and we lose focus of what we want. So find that ONE benefit that you want to allow more naturally into your life, and look less on trying to force things, and more into allowing the re-centering of yourself through meditation to help that thing you want to find its way to you.
I Allow What I Want To Come To Me
Thanks for listening. I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn
Contact info- email: chris@strongwithin.com phone:865-219-3247
Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free