I liken starting meditation to working out.
You know, we hit that boot camp a few months out of the Wedding day, get fit for Summer, Sydney to Surf, Tough Mudder. The first month of training is brutal, then we push past our personal best and hit turbo. We collect all the praise from our peers on our changing appearance like a coin collecting Super Mario and come that special day or season, we social media the crap out it.
Then we hit regular Joe again. More pizzas on the couch, less time pounding the pavement, cause… meh…
I think I’ve worked out the reason why we do this. It’s because we anchor our purpose on events rather than just doing it for ourselves.
The same can be said of meditation. A lot of people are drawn to meditation to manage stress, get more energy, be more productive at work, to silence those not so helpful thoughts. And there’s also the lure to raise one’s IQ. All this is great but they are all natural by-products of meditation. Pretty awesome ones at that.
Yet the real reason why we should be motivated to meditate is because we deserve time for calm, mindful rest at least once a day. All that other stuff will just happen because of it. A win/win.
Why is this important? Because if we’re just goal orientated or attracted to novelty then in time we can easily run out of steam. We should just be enough.
So imagine a kind of life where there weren’t things to chase. Where those events, milestones all still happen but they’re all part of a longer timeline where we aren’t driven to arrive anywhere in particular.
When I first thought about this it made sense and at the same time it didn’t.
I was worried. A woman who thrived on goals and saw them as signposts of success, I thought that approaching life with this new point of view would mean that I wouldn’t be all that motivated.
Put into practice, however, I’ve never been so committed to my health and wellbeing in my entire life. Because of it, this has been my best year yet. And a result, life and its joys are not weighted on those stand alone events.
We may not get to pro athlete level or enlightened Buddha, nor should we expect to work to such extremes. Heck, if we get there yay for us.
What we really should be doing is hitting our personal best at all times with a healthy dose of keeping it real. There will still be the odd day of pizza on the couch, or that not so blissful meditation session where our mind wanders. And we shouldn’t feel guilty about that either.
Take that time out away from the busy day to day and be still. Yes, it takes discipline. Though I’d rather discipline over Regular Joe cause Regular Joe is boring. We’re better than that.
More and more that good voice in our head will get louder. And because of it, we’ll start treating ourselves in the best possible way in all areas of life.