What Meditating for 650 Days Taught Me About Myself

“Meditation or a mindfulness practice is really about decreasing emotional reactivity so you can proactively create your day and create your life; versus, just being a walking reflex that sometimes screws up.” - Tim Ferriss 

For my entire life whenever I heard the word “meditation” I immediately dismissed it.

A picture of a hippie chanting “OOOOOM” popped into my mind every single time.

I eventually began to shift my view after I learned Oprah Winfrey, Ray Dalio, <insert successful person here> meditated and praised it highly for their success. 

I thought meditation was something you did to relax like taking a pill or going for a walk.

I was far from the truth. I began my meditation journey on a bus October 29th, 2016. I downloaded the Headspace app…put on my headphones..closed my eyes and followed the instructions.

I opened my eyes 10 minutes later…and everything was different. I didn’t know how to describe it or but things were just different...

I don’t have any science to describe this but anecdotally speaking…I believe my attention muscle was refocused.

For the first time in my life it felt like I was seeing things from a different lens. I was able to focus in on conversations and my surroundings a bit more instead of being stuck in my head all day.

I consider October 29th, 2016 the first day of my consciously aware life. I continued my 10-15 minute meditation practice every single day from then on out. I missed a day here and there because I am still human. Here’s where things get interesting. 

Within only one week…the foundation of my entire internal world started shifting. I couldn’t articulate this at the time but I actually became MORE pissed and angry. It felt like the life I had created for 18 years was melting away.

It felt like I was on the run from something. Luckily, at the time I didn’t understand the concept of self-development..because it felt like I was getting worse not better.

After another week I had a spiritual transformational experience in my life. It was a moment where I surrendered to myself…and understood that reality is a reflection of the exact decisions, choices, and effort I had ever made.

Until that point…the concept of doing things to improve your life didn’t exist in my mind.

November 8th, 2016 was the day I took responsibility for my life and started taking action to get where I wanted to be. Now, I don’t necessarily think someone can change overnight but that day was the line in the sand for me and I’ve never been the same ever since.

After that point I realized what actually happened. The reason why I felt meditation was hurting me was because I was gaining self-awareness about my life and ego/identity was slowly dropping the masks and facades it was holding on to for dear life. 

I struggled a LOT with social anxiety growing up. My anxiety rapidly fled just within a couple of weeks of meditating every single day.

What I learned was…

Your Life = Subject (you) x Environment 

Which means if you close your eyes and focus on your breath, in the present moment you are essentially creating your own environment and allowing a deep submersion of who you really are. 

My meditation practice has been the foundation of my existence. Every morning I meditate for 20-30 minutes and 5-10 minutes at night. I view mindfulness meditation as an exponential meta-skill that improves every single thing you do. 

Meditation isn't something you necessarily do to become unstressed. You meditate to find out why you're stressed. 

Self-Awareness

Humans are very complex creatures. I tend to think we are these vulnerable mushy beings but build layers and layers of defense mechanisms to try and hide who we really are from the world.

"I think sometimes that people are like onions. On the outside smooth and whole and simple but inside ring upon ring, complex and deep." - Karen Cushman

Mindfulness meditation is like peeling the layers of an onion of all the bullshit you’ve build in your mind. Stories, narratives, identities, all of the things that enabled you to get your emotional and psychological needs met in childhood. Sometimes, you have so many layers to your onion…you don’t even know where the real you is hiding. 

Partaking in a mindfulness meditation ritual every day enables your mind to be a self-sufficient system that makes it much less likely your ego will find something to cling on to. Which in turn means doubts and insecurities have a much less likely chance of living inside your mind.

You can’t get rid of your ego but keeping it in check and living a life fueled by gratitude is a much more sustainable and prosperous lifestyle. 

Presence

Looking back at my life..most of my anxiety came from thoughts worrying about future possibilities and thoughts are of the past: what has been, what could have been, what you thought happened vs. what actually did happen. 

Time is an illusion, which makes being controlled by time somewhat delusional.

The past doesn’t exist and neither does the future.

The only true reference point we have to this moment in time, and to this thing we label “existence”, is a feeling of presence, of being here in this body, of seeing the world through these eyes.

This is all that can exist, because this is what you feel right now.

You can’t feel the past or the future, but you can feel what it feels like to touch something right now, to see something, to hear something.

Meditation has rewired my attention muscle to live eternally in the present moment. Of course, I’m not perfect but I would say 98% of the time I’m living life with presence.

When you think in the present..you actually get to direct your thoughts to what you want to think about like making an impact...and eventually becoming an architect of your thoughts.

Don’t Have Time? Figure it out. 

Life is all about priorities and choices. 

Don’t have time to meditate?

Wake up 10 minutes earlier. Can’t wake up earlier?

Sleep early. Need more sleep?

Optimize your nutrition and sleep hygiene. Can’t optimize your nutrition and sleep hygiene?

Then live a normal average life.

Get my point?

If you tell yourself “I don’t have time to meditate” then that will be the story you tell yourself and will a have profound impact on your life. Just remember what I said at the beginning of this article.

Sometimes, I feel like I don’t have time to meditate because of circumstances and sometimes my mindset. 

I then remember this ancient Zen saying….you should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day unless you're too busy. Then you should sit for an hour. 

So it’s exactly when I feel stressed and rushed is when I need to meditate the most and give my brain a deep bath of mindfulness. 

However, on some days it’s 100% possible you can’t sit down and close your eyes for 20 minutes. Do it for 5 minutes. 

On the days I’m not able to meditate..I do a couple different methods that help emulate the effects. I learned this from Aubrey Marcus' Own The Day Own Your Life Book.

When I'm on the go and I don't have time I do something called a wide eyed peripheral gaze while I’m walking and taking big deep breaths. I keep my breath as an anchor and visualize my body walking on planet earth. Again, life is all about choices. 

A common misconception I hear is “I can’t clear my mind”.....me neither…wait can anyone? No. It’s literally impossible for a human to clear their mind. That’s not even the point. 

If you want to learn how to mindfully meditate download Headspace, Insight Timer or watch a YouTube video. 

If I can get anyone to start taking action in their own lives…it would be to pick a mindfulness habit. Give it at least two weeks before you make a judgement on the activity. The highest performers in every single field…almost always have a mindfulness habit.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes! 

I also a host a podcast that is heavily correlated with meditation.

If you’re looking for a technological self-development podcast that focuses all about the human experience transformation in this 21st-century world, you should definitely check out my podcast, Humans 2.0 

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