Are you running your life or is your life running you? My life was running me until I learned that I had to slow down to speed up. By speeding up, I mean getting more done and being more productive. It sounded counterintuitive to me too to think I had to slow down to speed up, but it’s real. My goal is to help you ignite your life and get organized so that you can live a spectacular life.
Some years back, I would get up every morning and would hit the floor running. At the time, I worked in big business and was a mom to my young son. Life was crazy. I never stopped, went to work and took orders. I took orders from my boss, took orders at work, and I did exactly what everybody wanted me to do. It came to a screeching, crashing halt when I lost my husband, my beautiful life and had to start over. I don’t want that to happen to you. I know a solution that will change everything, and it’s meditation.
What are the Benefits of Meditation?
I want to share with you three benefits of meditation and why it’s so important. You must slow down and start every morning getting your heart and your head together in the right place. Does that make sense? Boy, if you told me that years ago, I would be like, are you kidding me? I have no time for that. You’ve got to believe me. It is the answer to so many issues. Try it yourself and share this with someone you love that is on that proverbial treadmill going crazy, moving faster than they can keep up with their life. Meditation can be life-changing for you and others if you follow the steps below.
Benefits of Meditation #1
Meditation will reduce stress and improve your health. No kidding! I was a CPA, a finance person, and when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I left that world and opened a wellness center. That was 20 years ago when I changed careers. I have spent the last two decades researching and understanding why my mom ended up with two unrelated cancers. One of them took her life at the age of 65. The stress compounded her disease, which is not acceptable and doesn’t have to happen if you know how to manage your life. By working with amazing researchers and doctors over the last 20 years, I learned that stress in our lives is the number one contributor to health issues such as cancer, heart disease and other ailments that can affect us.
Stress and Your Brain
So it’s important to learn how to get rid of stress, and one of the biggest ways is to slow down and spend some time with yourself. Spend some time in the morning, which is the best time before you get into your day before all those external forces start bombarding you with issues, demands, and questions. Take some time for yourself. Look inward, find peace and calm your brain. Premeditate about things that are going to go on during the day. If you know you have a stressful business meeting, slow down and think about it. Put the thoughts in your brain about how you are going to handle that meeting or that negotiation or that conflict with a child. You will have those thoughts in your brain so that when it occurs, you could react exactly the right way in a non-stress environment.
As a left-brain person, it didn’t make sense that the stress I couldn’t touch and feel was affecting the cells and the molecules in my body. It’s been scientifically proven, but I encourage you to do your own research. Trust me when I say if you take time in the morning to meditate and to be still, it will significantly reduce the stress in your life. And remember, you have to speed up to slow down and meditation will help in ways you cannot imagine until you’ve tried it.
Benefits of Meditation #2
The second benefit of meditation helps unleash your creative side. I am a left-brain person, and therefore I don’t have much creative space. Left-brained people think analytically, we think in numbers. It’s difficult to be creative. Meditation has allowed me to be more creative. I do have a right brain, whether I want to recognize it or not. And when I sit still, I can get into that space.
My son is a singer-songwriter and lives in New York City. He has taught me a lot about this creative space. So when I ask him for some help with things, he will say to me, there’s only so many creative juices to access on any given day. Why? Because our brains are busy doing left brain kind of things, whether it’s organizing or carrying out duties, responsibilities, taking care of kids, taking care of stuff at work. Those activities do not engage our creative space at all. To get into that creative space, you have to sit still and allow thoughts of your past and your future to go away, and be in the present so that your creative brain can become active.
It seems crazy, doesn’t it? But think about it. What do many great writers do? They have a space that they go to. They go to a retreat or a place that’s quiet, which is evidence that to get into our creative space we must have peace of mind, we need to put ourselves in that state of mind. So the second benefit of meditation is to access that creative, peaceful state of mind.
Benefits of Meditation #3
The third and perhaps most significant benefit is that you can find your purpose for life in the meditative state. We need to be still and look inside. The only way to do that is to sit still, close your eyes and get into that meditative state. That’s how I continue to refine my purpose for living. I believe my purpose for living right now, in these years, is to share with you all the things I’ve learned. It’s so amazing, and it makes me feel so good to be able to share this with you to help you avoid a lot of the things that I did. And not only avoid them for the pain of it but avoid them so that you can leap forward faster and do more with the years that you have ahead.
I wish someone had convinced me years ago, in my late 20s and early 30s, the benefits of meditation. Sitting still and actually getting into myself, I could have avoided a lot of pain and been able to have an even greater impact on the world. Isn’t that what we all want? Aren’t we always looking for real peace and happiness? I’m living proof that meditation in the mornings will help make that happen in a deeper, more meaningful way.
