These are some aspects about how meditation and mindfulness have an impact in your life, if you take them as habits in your daily activities. To suffer less and be happier!
1. Self-confidence
Have you ever had moments in your life where you think, you simply cannot do something you want to do? Moments where you doubt yourself and don’t believe in your capabilities? Have you ever stop doing something just because of the fear of failure? Maybe you will be relieved to know, you are not alone. Those are things that, in different ways, have happened to most of us. You will be happy to know that it is something you can manage and that you can leave the doubts about yourself behind you.
The confidence level someone may have correlates directly to the amount of control over her/his thoughts and feelings (this is not surprising). With more and more thoughts and feelings, it’s bigger the chance that some negative ideas come forward and diminish our confidence.
An example: you are in a meeting at work or in the middle of a conversation with someone you care about. All of the sudden something happens that triggers a negative thought in your mind and a feeling of insecurity start to grow. More negative thoughts come to you: you remember past situations in which you felt like that and the anxious premonition of that happening again grows in you. Then, instead of listening to the conversation or doing what you should be doing, you start focusing on that negative feeling. Those thoughts are like a train going fast towards a cliff. Sometimes this sensation freezes you and you feel like your efforts to maintain confidence were gone in a flash.
How can meditation help you to build confidence in yourself? Meditation can help you reduce the speed of that train and stop it altogether. Doing meditation regularly can help you have greater control over your thoughts and feelings. This way, if a negative thought about yourself comes to you, you can stop it and avoid it hurting you.
Meditation also helps you change your focus so that you and your flaws don’t become the center of your attention, but whatever you’re doing or the conversation you’re in. Meditation also helps you to increase the stream of ideas and positive thoughts.
It is important to be aware of the kind of thoughts we have and to have a healthy inner monolog. If you concentrate fully in living the present moment (whatever you do, do it with full awareness of the moment), it is less probable that you have negative thoughts about yourself. Change your focus: don’t think about yourself but about what you are doing.
2. The art and the skill to accept and let go
Sometimes it is hard to accept things as they are. We cling on to ideas that belong to a world of illusions and hopes that doesn’t correspond to the real one. When we realize that we feel sad, depressed and maybe angry.
Doing meditation allows us to let go things easily, to stop cling on things that don’t let us move on, to stop judging and criticizing not constructively, to let us go…
If we don’t agree with a situation and we can do something about it, let’s do it! But if it is not the kind of thing we can do something about, it is best to let it go and move on.
3. You are responsible for your life (discipline, concentration, focus)
Our life is in our own hands. What we can do in the time we have depends only on us. Although we all know that, we tend to forget it. For instance, when we come late to an appointment or meeting and we blame the traffic, or when we don’t do something we must do and try to find an external cause for that behavior. Those are situations in which, some way or another, we transfer the responsibility on our own life to an external agent or situation; situations in which we let our happiness depend on other people and not on ourselves.
If you want to do something then do it, don’t try to find excuses! Decisions are actions. Some changes require us to review our life habits. What do you want to change or improve in your life? Believe that, whatever it may be, you can do it and it is something that depends only on you.
If you are responsible for your actions you will be also aware of the consequences they have, and this will lead you to make the kind of decisions that are better for you and your environment.
We are responsible for our lives, our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions! It’s our decision to be happy or not! Don’t let others control your mind.
4. Enjoy your life, live the present moment
If you think about the content of your thoughts you will probably find that most of them refer to past events (why did I do that? Why didn’t I do that?) or future events (what will I eat tonight? How will the tomorrow meeting go?). It is not unusual then that we are sometimes not aware of what we are currently doing.
One thing you will learn if you meditate frequently is to let go thoughts about the past and the future and focus more on the present moment, not only through your thoughts but also with your actions.
Through meditation, you will find that source of peace and serenity that is always in your center, that place you can go in any moment and that will always welcome you with peace and love. That is the real peace, the peace that comes from inside, peace that you can be and share with other people, with nature, and with your environment. It is through the development of inner peace that we contribute to world peace. Inner peace + Outer peace = Sustainable world peace. PIPO!
Sabai feeling!
I would like to finish with a fragment of a text I wrote during the flight back from Thailand to Colombia:
“I go back to Colombia with my bags full of memories and my life full of new experiences, with a lighter, freer and more peaceful mind. I go back with my mind and heart open to love, kindness and the joy of life! I go back with new habits that will help me continue this journey the best way possible. I go back without really going back, because I know deep inside me that I will return to this beautiful country, where I experienced and learned so many things.
I go back with the decision that, from now on, every step, every word, every thought and every action will be conceived with the purpose to contribute with something positive to the world. That will make me happy! May the energy of love and peace guide always our decisions!”
Sandra Liliana Gómez Sánchez