Written by: Laura Flanagan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
You might ask, "Why is meditation important?" One of the most important (and possibly overlooked) reasons is that the mind is your most valuable asset. What’s going on in your mind can make you happy or miserable, successful or broken, energetic or lifeless. In short, the quality of your mind dictates the quality of your life.
So, then, what is the power of meditation? It helps you to know your mind and master your mind - gradually. And this affects everything else ... all aspects of your life.
There are four main “skills” that meditation will help you develop. These are such important skills that you can consider them “superpowers.”
1. Focus. Focusing means that you can zoom your attention in on anything and sustain it there, ignoring distractions. The length of time you can sustain your attention increases with practice. The ability to focus is essential in all spheres of life: career, education, finances, and performance. We live in times of continuous distraction – our attention span keeps getting shorter. We lack focus because so many things are competing for our attention, and as a result, our mind easily gets dispersed everywhere. Focusing allows you to:
Be more present in your daily activities, rather than getting lost in your mind
Be a better listener and communicator
Avoid falling into the trap of multitasking, enabling you to become more time and energy-efficient
Enjoy the blessings of your life more deeply, however small (a good meal, time with your family, your favorite hobby, etc.)
In meditation, we are training this skill every time we zoom in our attention into the object of our focus (breath, mantra, etc.).
2. Perspective. Meditation helps us over time to not get sucked into mental and emotional stuff. It’s the ability to see with clarity and serenity, to let go and move on. Oftentimes we don’t want to dwell on something, but we just can’t help it. Emotions are usually the driving force for this. They can get complex and messy pretty quickly.
Maybe it’s a traumatic incident from your past or an addictive emotional pattern such as victimization or negative self-talk.
Perhaps everything is going well with your day, until someone says something that triggers you to fall down a rabbit hole of confusion, anger, and doubt.
Or maybe it’s just your thoughts bullying you into interpreting things through the lenses of fear and pessimism.
In situations like these, finding perspective comes in handy. It frees your mind, allowing you to see the bigger picture. It won’t stop those nagging thoughts and feelings – but it will allow you to view them more like a cup of salt thrown into the ocean, rather than a cup of salt thrown into a small bucket. In meditation, we train perspective every time we realize that we’ve gotten sucked into a stream of thoughts, and reclaim our attention by removing it from that thought-trap.
3. Pause. People often refer to this as 'being present' - which many already understand as one of the powers of meditation. When we live in an unconscious, automated way, we become the product of our environment. We often react, rather than respond. This is the nature of the untrained mind. We act on the loudest impulse in our heads. We reproduce our past conditioning. Very much like a popular ski hill, when getting off the lift, our skies (if we do nothing to prevent them from doing so) will fall into the overly carved pathways of other skiers. Our untrained minds fall into the same neural pathways and we repeat our patterns over and over again. Living a creative and fulfilling life requires just the opposite. It requires that we are intelligently present in the moment, acting mindfully. For that, the ability to pause is essential.
Pausing gives us space to:
Avoid acting on anger or other destructive impulses that can permanently ruin relationships and prevent us from experiencing deep love and compassion. We have probably all experienced regret by acting impulsively and without pause. Without the pause, regret has an opportunity to walk through the front door and take a strong seat.
Break bad habits. Remember the paths on the ski slope. Pausing before acting allows us to see other 'untraveled' paths along the slope so that we don't fall into the same grooves in the hill.
Find clarity about what’s really going on.
Make wiser decisions based on the needs of the moment.
Re-align your actions in life to your core values.
Think less, worry less, and be more.
Reacting without thinking is easy – it’s the path of least resistance. Pausing is harder – it’s a skill that needs to be trained, a virtue to be developed.
In meditation, we train pausing every time we notice that we’re distracted, and we interrupt that stream of thoughts. It’s a condition for you to be able to zoom out.
4. Reboot. The powers of focus, perspective, and pausing come together as the ability to “reboot".
Think of your mental world as a computer with a hard drive, always near capacity. Some of your files and programs are informative, entertaining, or useful. Others are full of old, useless information. Some programs or files may be addictive, taking your attention away from new and healthy programs or files.
The problem is that the computer doesn’t obey you all the time. The computer randomly opens programs or files that induce anxiety, fear, or negative emotion. Sometimes you try to open a new window on your computer, but after five seconds you find yourself back to the original window.
The more you develop the abilities to focus, gain perspective, and pause, the more you keep your computer running efficiently and for your benefit. As a result, your favorite windows and programs get more screen time, and the crappy ones end up being deleted.
The protocol for rebooting is:
Notice that a negative program has come up. This could present itself as fear, anxiety, negative self-talk … even labeling the emotion can help.
Pause it. Take a deep breath in and then step back with pause. Rather than fighting it, realize that you can choose not to watch it.
Perspective. Take a 50,000 ft view so that you can see the bigger picture. Remember that your consciousness is larger than this thought or emotion. Don’t try to resist the thought but realize that you don’t need to focus on it.
Open a new program. Just like opening a new window in the browser on your computer, open a more helpful or enjoyable program.
This is rebooting. It is an exercise of harnessing your attention – developing the power to decide what it should be focused on. When we meditate, we train the mind every time we gently return our attention back to our chosen object (breath, mantra, etc.). And we may do this hundreds of times in our meditation. Think of the opportunity to strengthen the mind in this way! It is like taking our mind to the gym.
If you would like to learn to harness these 4 Superpowers, the upcoming Change Your Mind, Change Your Life 8-week Meditation course could be for you! Or consider gifting the course to a loved one. It is a great way to start a new year. The class begins on Saturday, Jan 2nd, 2021, at 9 am CST. We meet weekly for one hour and you will be provided recorded guided meditations for the different focus each week. You will also receive an e-book to assist in learning the skills and methods we will use in the live course.
To learn more, click here!
See you in the New Year for a new YOU!
Blessings & Light,
Laura
Laura Flanagan MS, RYT, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Laura Flanagan is a Scientist by education and career, but she recently left her corporate job and moved to Costa Rica with her horse to open an Equine Therapy Center. Concurrently with her career as a scientist, she has been teaching Yoga and Meditation for over 18 years. Laura is a Yoga Instructor, YamunaÒBody Rolling Instructor, Meditation Teacher, and Director of the Socrates Center in Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica. She has helped thousands of clients with physical pain through her certification with Yamuna who uses a form of small ball therapy. She has used her Yoga, Body Rolling, and Meditation practices to assist in her own recovery from breast cancer. She is also enrolled in the Functional Nutrition Counselor program through the Functional Nutrition Alliance.
