Meditating has been
a roadblock in my path to well-being. Or at least that’s what I think but I met
some useful advice
today: meditation is not about keeping the mind from wandering, but letting it finish
its wanderings and come back to the present, awareness of the physical state –
breath most importantly, so much so, that it burns itself out of aimless buzz,
for a time at least.
This is why they
say meditate for at least 20 minutes, at least once a day. Doing this lets the
mind run out of steam for the time as far as distractions are concerned. Once
the clump of noisy thoughts is dealt with, what remains is, surprise surprise,
a clear mind to deploy at the tasks of the day.
And goodness
knows we have distractions. These distractions are closely linked to our
insecurities. Is it Facebook notifications that I can’t keep from checking out –
why am I so concerned with what people might be saying of me? Long term goal:
learn to offer a wide berth to others’ opinions of me.
Is it messenger
beeps that I have to answer as soon
as they come in? Learn that people who need an answer would not mind waiting an
hour to receive a reply. This cuts out unnecessary chatter to a later,
less-fraught time. It puts one in a position to drive one’s work and leisure.
Having a list of
things to do can get overwhelming, especially if it is high-involvement tasks
like meditation and reading. But yes, they’re both on there, and journaling
too. But the bite-size advice says that I stop reading once I find something
moving/useful to my day, and write down a few thoughts on it. This is sure to
help internalize the wisdom, and that’s what I’m doing here.
But you Internet,
with your mind-boggling trends, make for a problem. There are hundreds of
sub-standard advice columns dishing out wellness advice. And then there are
those that do dispense good eggs of wisdom, but there are listicles which
demand that you get to the very end of the article, and if you do not read all
the way down, who knows what transformation you are missing out on? You can’t
obviously stop after you find the first useful bit of insight. Here’s your portion
of FOMO on a platter.
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