3 Reasons Why Meditation Is Your Secret Weapon

My sleep schedule has gotten weird—or at least weird for me.

For the last several years I’ve averaged 5-6 hours of sleep a night without using an alarm clock. It’s been magical.

I don’t have any sense of fatigue and because I go to bed so early, I’m up ridiculously early. That creates this virtuous cycle where I have between 6-8 hours before my first employees show up. That means that I’m putting in nearly a full day’s work in total solitude. It’s unbelievably productive.

Buuuuuut…lately, I’ve been getting 7-9 hours sleep. The switch happened out of the blue. And since I don’t use an alarm, my sleep cycle gets to be whatever it wants to be.

But waking up so late has really chewed into my morning routine—and the thing that has suffered the most has been meditation

A couple of days ago though, I put my foot down and said even on short morning days I’ve got to meditate, and I was instantly reminded of why meditation is so important—even when you think you’re fine and don’t need it.

Here are the three reasons why I think meditation is so useful:

1. Connecting the Conscious and Subconscious Minds

I have a suspicion (though I'm unaware of any study that proves this) that we think on multiple levels. There's the obvious level where you actually hear the words aloud in your mind as if you have a narrator, but I think there are several other layers “below” this.

First, there’s the level that is still word-based, but where you only have the sentiment and don't actually articulate the words.

Then there's the purely emotional level of thinking.

Further still, there’s the pictorial level of thinking where you have images and feelings and so on. This is important because I think the mind does it's best work when all types of conscious thought are “quiet" and you drop into subconscious thinking or at least a state where the conscious and subconscious mind seem connected.

2. Achieving Peace of Mind

The sense that you are “quieting” the mind seems to be a side effect of triggering the parasympathetic nervous system, which has a host of neuro-chemical benefits. The best way to describe this is by saying that you feel peaceful, calm, and creative.

And this sense of peacefulness and creativity lasts for a non-trivial duration after meditating. It’s not like the jibber-jabber of your mind begins again at full steam when you stop meditating. It takes a while to build back up.

Also, the more you meditate, the longer this post-meditation period of creativity seems to last.

3. It Kick-Starts Your Productivity

Like some people say about making the bed, meditation sets my day off well because it makes me feel like I've done something productive. It's such a transformative experience that merely reaching that calm and creative, centered, peaceful state of mind feels like an accomplishment.

And to make it even better, if you use that state of mind to “thinkitate” on your biggest problems, you don’t just feel productive, you actually are productive.

In closing, I’ll say that on those days where your morning routine gets truncated, be careful what you cut out. Don’t let your schedule run you. Make sure that you’re taking time to meditate and prime yourself for optimal performance.

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