A consistent daily meditation practice is one of the best things you can do for your ongoing mental health.
Put simply,
It will change your life for the better.
The problem is that those benefits take a while.
It takes a while to see the results.
I'll give you a gym analogy.
If you were to do one day of hard exercise,
Chances are you and other people wouldn't see the immediate benefit.
You wouldn't notice any body composition changes or fitness changes or strength changes after that one day.
But after a month or maybe two months of consistent work,
You would start to see results.
It's almost as if there's a lag between actions and rewards,
Both in the gym but also with meditation.
You start meditating today and then in a month,
Two months,
A year,
You really start to see the compounding benefits on your life.
You're making better decisions.
You know yourself more.
You're just a little bit more at peace.
You can handle negative mental states.
This is great and I encourage long-term,
Continual,
Consistent practice.
But what benefits can we get from meditation straight away,
Right now?
And then to me,
There's a couple.
There's a couple of benefits that you can get in your first session.
The first one is the ability to never feel boredom again.
It sounds outlandish.
It sounds crazy.
But if you know how to meditate,
Boredom is no longer a thing.
Well,
I'll be more clear here.
The feelings of boredom will arise,
But you will no longer suffer.
One of the things you can do with meditation is make feelings,
Sensations,
Internal phenomena as your focus point,
As the object of meditation.
So you might be working on your breath or some other sort of anchor as your focus.
But if you're feeling bored,
Turn your attention to those feelings.
What does boredom feel like?
What are the subcomponents of boredom?
What other things are being triggered?
Basically,
If you investigate what boredom is with open curiosity,
You'll in fact no longer be bored,
And you'll be discovering more about yourself.
It's an interesting trick.
When I do this,
I immediately notice my brain bouncing around.
I notice feelings of discontent or anxiety or restlessness or a whole variety of other sort of sub-emotions that all put together become boredom.
But when I investigate that feeling that we know as boredom,
The truth of how I'm truly feeling reveals itself.
Not only am I no longer bored,
But I'm also learning about myself.
So I encourage you to try this.
The next time you sort of check into the fact that you're bored,
Don't just jump on social media.
Don't just eat some food.
Don't just do something mindlessly.
Instead,
Take a seat,
Take a big slow breath,
And then you'll take a seat,
Take a big slow breath in through the nose,
Out through the mouth,
And just inquire,
What is it am I actually feeling right now?
What's going on in my mind?
You might discover that those feelings of boredom dissipate.
Now,
True,
They might come back,
But you can just do it again.
So that's the first thing that I've noticed that you can pretty quickly give someone this ability to deal with boredom.
Just a little bit of mindful attention,
And you're there.
And if your thoughts start to wander,
Right?
When you're focusing on your breath,
When you're meditating,
Your thoughts start to wander,
You bring it back.
If your thoughts start to wander into daydream,
Right?
Well,
Yeah,
You're not being mindful anymore,
But you're also not bored,
Right?
So we've dealt with boredom.
You no longer have to feel bored.
And the second benefit that you can very quickly,
If not immediately,
Get from mindfulness is the ability to alleviate strong emotions.
Now,
This one requires a little bit of practice.
You can get the benefits straight away,
But it becomes a bit of an art form because there's endless depths to this one.
The basic premise is that once you can identify what you're feeling,
It starts to dissipate.
So once again,
You feel an overwhelm of anger,
Jealousy,
Embarrassment,
Emotionality of any sort.
Take a moment,
Sit,
And just look at it,
And really try to see it for what it is.
Look at its component parts.
Look at what you're feeling.
Look at it as mindfully as possible.
Use whatever you're feeling as the object of meditation.
Your mind wanders,
Bring it back.
Your mind wanders,
Bring it back.
It's almost like you're inviting this emotion,
Whatever it is that you're feeling,
This strong overwhelming feeling to express itself,
To say,
Hey,
This is what I am.
This is what I need from you right now.
Hear me out.
And you're giving it the space to talk.
It's almost like you're being your own therapist.
So you sit down,
Take a big slow breath in through the nose,
Out through the mouth,
And draw your attention to your emotions.
And just give it the space to talk to you and just watch it mindfully.
You might find that it takes a little bit of time,
But once you correctly mindfully observe that emotion,
It will start to dissipate and go.
Now,
It might come back straight away,
Or it might come back in an hour,
Later on that day,
In a week,
Right?
But you'll notice that there are gaps.
You will find some alleviation to that suffering.
Now,
If those times that it keeps coming back are very quick,
Watch that,
Because you'll notice that there's times where you're feeling it and times where you're not feeling it.
Or more specifically,
I should say,
Times where the emotion is present and times where the emotion is not present.
So you just take a seat and observe your emotions.
Now,
Like I said at the start of this talk,
The more you practice,
The better you get at this skill.
But in terms of alleviating boredom and extreme emotions,
It is right there and available to you right now.
You can do it.
All you need to do is take a seat and just observe how you're feeling.
I wish you a wonderful day.
