For many of us who are either regular meditators or are committed to some other form of consistent mindfulness regimen, many of us find that it is no coincidence that we found this path. For myself, as with most others I have spoken to who are following a similar mindfulness journey, we have adopted our practices and studies for a specific reason, as a result of specific events in our lives. To help make mindfulness or meditative practices more understandable and relatable I just wanted to write an article to share my own experiences that led me to the world of mindfulness and meditation, and which techniques I first started doing that have let me to be a daily meditator, a mindfulness business owner and someone who teaches these practices to professionals and corporate work teams.
How I Discovered Mindfulness & Meditation
I first crossed paths with the world of mindfulness and meditation when I was 24 years old, initially thinking little of it. It truly was a topic that I had little interest for until a serious knee injury caused me to rethink most of my future. Up until that injury, I had very few plans for my life other than one simple rule – snowboard as much as humanly possible. Growing up beside a ski hill in Ontario, Canada, I spent most of my time outside of school on the snow every winter. This lasted through elementary and high school, as well as through university. Up until that time, it was one of the only things that made me feel whole, purposeful, passionate (aside from a few other sports). In the very final semester of my university degree, with money set aside from several summers of grueling forestry work in Northern Canada for my move big snowboarding migration to Whistler, British Columbia, I tore two large ligaments in my knee. Though far from life-threatening, it was an injury that sent me into a spiral of depression, confusion, disappointment, and self-loathing. Delaying the 4-year dream of moving to Whistler that had been the light at the end of my tunnel throughout school, only to be stuck with a 14 to 16-month recovery regimen in my very non-mountainous hometown felt painful, to say the least.
Though depressed as all hell, as the millennial that I am, I took to the internet to begin working with the cards dealt my way. Upon rigorous Google searching, I stumbled upon a man named Eckhart Tolle and decided to finally put the Kobo e-reader gift from my aunt Jane one year earlier to good use. It was one simple yet confusing concept of his that opened the floodgate of personal realizations – that we are not out thoughts, we are only the one who is experiencing them. And therefore, we can consciously detach from, and choose the thoughts that happen in our minds. I first read this in his ground-breaking book: The Power of Now. Since that time, I have met likely 2 dozen other mindfulness fanatics who attest that this book “woke them up”, and completely transformed the way they see the world. Though I have since read a wide array of books on mindfulness, meditation, psychology, and the subconscious mind, it was this book and several other works from Eckhart Tolle that transformed the way I see the world and sparked my endless curiosity for mindfulness and all its related fields.
To learn more about Eckhart Tolle click here and visit his website.
How I First Started Practicing Mindfulness
I know for most people, the first thing that comes to their mind when discussing mindfulness is the practice of meditation. Though meditation is perhaps the most known mindfulness practice in the world next to yoga, mindfulness can actually be practiced through a wide variety of means.
Journaling
For me, before I took the plunge into full-on, proper meditation, I first began to practice mindfulness through journaling. For me, this meant writing down my thoughts and experiences as a means to process the emotions I was feeling. I found that this quickly became a very good tool for finding greater self-awareness about my own mental-emotional tendencies. This awareness became the cognitive foundation that allowed me to catch myself falling into spirals of negativity – you know, those times when we are so attached and identified to a negative thought that we find ourselves unconsciously stuck in a state of stress or unease. The journaling process helped me catch mental spirals before they gained the power to ruin my morning, day, week, or month.
Daily Gratitude & Positivity Affirmations
I also began to intentionally choose to adopt a regimen of positive self-talk, a practice many people like to call “affirmations”. On a daily basis, if not more often when first beginning, I would consciously either write down or read all of the positive things in my life, as well as all of the positive beliefs I wanted to experience more of (feelings like competence, self-belief, courage). By affirming the things I was grateful for, and affirming the kind of person I want to, and am choosing to be, I began to shift my baseline way of thinking into a mental model that slowly became more and more positive. Since that time, it has become clear to me that much of our thought patterns in life are entirely habitual. Whether we adopted them from those who are close to us, or rooted those ways of thinking in habit form all on our own, we have the power to change these patterns. I personally found affirmations and gratitude journaling to be some of the best neuro-linguistic programming to reprogram the mind to adopt a better belief system. The key here is regular repetition to lock in the thought patterns before they slip away.
Embracing Present Moment Awareness
Lastly, I began to intentionally bring more presence into all areas of my life. When I would go outside, I would focus on the present moment as best I could. When I would be doing a knee rehabilitation workout, I would focus on the exercises and each sensation of the experience, and when having conversations, I would focus as intentionally on the individual/s I was conversing with as possible. This intensive focus on the experience of the present also helped me to build the skill of letting go of the thoughts in my head as they would arise. Focusing on the present is not easy, but once you develop the skill of detaching from thought, it is something you can do no matter how stressful or taunting those thoughts may be. This new experience of presence felt to me, like the “consciousness” so often mentioned by Eckhart himself in nearly all of his books.
How I First Started Meditating
Truthfully, it was a few years after I started adopting mindfulness in general into my routine through the previously mentioned practices before I decided to dive headfirst into learning how to meditate. Though I was indeed very well read about, and had attended many one-off meditation events or classes, I was not a daily/regular meditator until about 3 years after I first read The Power of Now. When I did choose to try meditation, I was working in a corporate office downtown Toronto, where I felt some serious work-related stress for the very first time. As I have since come to know, this is an entirely normal experience for many of us in the corporate world, with work being one of the top 3 sources of stress reported by most individuals across North America. For me, I was enticed to finally embrace meditation as a regular practice when learning more in-depth, about the neuroscience backing its purported benefits – some of which being, measurable reductions in blood pressure, reductions in the stress chemicals (cortisol), strengthening of grey matter in the brain, and reductions in anxiety by physically altering the amygdala within the brain. As an individual who regularly struggled with debilitating anxiety for nearly a decade, I decided that I needed to give it a try – the key being regular practice, I wanted to go all in and experience all of the benefits available through meditation. Getting used to meditation was challenging, but it was an enjoyable experience after just a few weeks. In the beginning, I would meditate 10 minutes once a day. I then upped this to 10 minutes twice a day, in the morning and halfway through my workday – when I was the most on edge. I then began meditating 15 minutes twice a day, and since that time my practice has evolved quite a bit. Nowadays, I meditate every day, for at least 30 minutes in the morning and at least 10 minutes before bed. I have found this practice to be incredibly beneficial for me to do at these times, as they set up both my day, as well as my rest for success.
How Mindfulness Has Helped Me
Mindfulness practices, as well as meditation in particular, have helped me in a wide variety of ways. To be honest, it has transformed the way I live entirely for 7 years ago when I first discovered it. I think differently, I show up differently, and I take actions differently. Mindfulness has helped me to be more productive, and it has helped me to update my self-image and belief system software to be a better version of myself. I still experience challenges, and stressors, just like everyone else, but with my new skillset, I combat them differently than before. It has helped me broaden my horizons, and it has improved my physical and mental health, two reasons why I am so passionate about sharing this work, and all the knowledge I have accumulated with so many other people around the globe. To keep things simple, here is a list of the areas of my life where I have experienced the largest shifts, either directly or indirectly from the adoption of mindfulness that all began from a knee injury back when I was 25 years old.
Reduced Stress Levels
Adopting this lifestyle has helped me first and foremost, to manage stress significantly more effectively. Mindfulness, more than anything else, is a really good tool for managing stress. Nowadays, and right when I began adopting these practices, every time I felt stress, I was able to know what I could do to combat it. Not only this, through practicing meditation, journaling, presence, and all the other activities mentioned, I was able to successfully train my brain to become more resilient to stress in general. When situations would arise that brought when them some level of pressure or tension, I became more able to approach them with a level-headed mentality, and a calm state. This ability to stay calm under pressure has helped me a wide variety of circumstances from relationships, to work, business, and travel.
Better Sleep Quality
Probably the most unexpected benefit I experience the most drastically was improvements in my ability to fall asleep, as well as in the quality of my sleep. Before meditating, in specific, I used to struggle to wind down at the end of the day in order to get to bed. I also would struggle to sleep for a full 8 hours a night. I have since learned how unhealthy it is for the human body to function under these circumstances, but back then I was oblivious to all of this. Meditation, luckily, completely transformed the way I am now able to get a good night’s rest. My suspicion is that with drastically reduced levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) and adrenaline pumping through my veins throughout the daytime hours in general, my body is able to release sleep hormones much more naturally when the evening comes. Most people who adopt a daily meditation practice will tell you the same thing, that meditation has improved not only their days but the way they sleep as well.
Erased Anxiety Levels
This is something that may not occur as dramatically for everyone, but for me specifically, meditation virtually erased my anxiety. It is important to note that it was not just sporadic meditation that supported this result, it was the adoption of a daily, committed meditation practice that transformed my experience of anxiety. Daily meditation has been proven many times over, to re-shape the physical structures of the brain related to anxiety and stress. For me, it was a daily, early morning meditation practice of 20 to 40 minutes (depending on the day) that created this for me. After several years of meditating, I even sometimes notice during busy weeks when I meditate less, that minor bouts of anxiety slowly begin to return. Meditating daily has helped me develop the skill of processing information effectively, focusing on the things I can actually control, and acceptance of the present moment however it chooses to arise. Slowing down and being present is a skill that is often overlooked in our Western culture, which glorifies busyness and hustle.
Decreased Reactivity
Although it is definitely not my most proud confession, I can definitely admit that until discovering techniques to better manage my stress, I used to be quite reactive. Stress would trigger anger, frustration, or any number of negative emotions unnecessarily. I have found that in the last few years, this side of my personality has evolved quite a lot. Meditating has helped me stay calm and aware in moments of pressure, instead of jumping into reactivity. I have found that processing the situations of my life according and responding to them, has been a much more effective life skill than simply reacting. The calmest and composed people are often the ones leading our societies and I now find calm and quiet composure to be one of the most admirable traits in those around me who possess it.
Improved Focus & Attention
Meditating, at its very core, is a mental exercise in the skill of focused awareness. As a lot of the science also states, I too have found that after a few years of daily mindfulness practice, my focus is far better than it used to be. I am able to complete my to-do list much more consistently and effectively than I had prior to meditation and mindfulness. This focus also applies to the ability to stay focused on the present moment, and out of mental chatter. By focusing on what I am doing better, I have found that I generally feel happier, I get a lot more done in a day, and I also complete my tasks with a much better quality of work. From what I have learned so far, are very few things that can replace disciplined focus as a tool for doing better work, or getting more done in the same amount of time.
Reduced Mental fatigue
I read about this over and over again before ever believing it to be true. Reduced mental fatigue was something I noticed early on after my adoption of daily meditation practice. During this time, I was working in a somewhat busy corporate job, that definitely required a lot of problem-solving, socializing, and thinking on my feet. By about mid-afternoon, I would nearly always begin to experience some sort of mental exhaustion. During this point in time, I was meditating once in the morning, and once and in the middle of the afternoon. I don’t know whether it was the act of mixing meditation into my afternoons or the regular practice in general that provided me with more energy to get through the day. In all reality, it doesn’t really matter which one it was, it worked really well. My opinion is that when we feel stressed or mentally tired, meditation can serve as a tool in the moment to reduce those feelings and bring us back to balance. However, I do believe that a regular practice of mindfulness and/or meditation can also help our brains adapt and become more resilient to the pressures of workdays similar to my own, which will allow us to be more resilient against fatigue overall.
Conclusion
As with many others who have adopted meditation and mindfulness in a disciplined fashion, I came to this world from a place of desperation. I stumbled upon the concepts and lessons as a last resort method to subside my anxiety and stress. For me, it was not an easy habit to develop, and it did indeed require several years of committed practice. With that in mind, after choosing that mindfulness was worth the level of discipline it would require, these practices have transformed my life. At the age of 25, I was an incredibly anxious individual with far from enough confidence that would be necessary to pursue my hopes and dreams. What I learned through mindfulness, was that my lack of confidence was based on mental chatter, worry and self-demeaning thought patterns that truly, were not even real. They were only real in my head and had no basis in the real world. Now, before I allow this rant to get too far out of hand, mindfulness is not a cure for everyone, and it is certainly not a one-stop solution for mental illness. However, mindfulness brings with it a strong toolkit for acting rationally and intentionally in the world. It can help us reduce and manage stress, and show up differently than we are used to. For some people like myself, those changes are enough to improve your self-awareness, change the way you think, and as a result, transform the way you show up in the world.
