Give Peace a Chance:
With Meditation and Mindfulness Practice
#YourThoughtsAreNotFacts
The greatest lesson I learned in therapy is: my thoughts and feelings aren’t facts. To clarify, it’s not that my feelings aren’t valid. But ultimately, thoughts and feelings are in the category of imagination…They aren’t factual.
This concept was a total mind fuck initially, leaving me in a bit of an existential crisis. I realized that nearly everything I believed to be true was simply a figment of my imagination. I had fabricated an illusory world around me. This lesson was a total game changer for my life. I recognized that my thoughts are not equivalent to reality. This awareness created more options and possibilities for my life. If my thoughts weren’t real, then the opposite of my thoughts could be true. Maybe my husband actually did love me. What if I actually was worthy? Maybe I wasn’t completely hideous…What if I actually was beautiful? Maybe I didn’t “have to” do so and so. Was it perceivable that I wasn’t totally powerless and helpless in areas of my life where I was miserable…?
Maybe my life wasn’t in total shambles…Those were only thoughts after all. And maybe everything I believed to be true about what people think about me, wasn’t real at all. By the way, what other people think about you is actually none of your business…but I’ll save that for another blog.
What Does Meditation Have To Do With Our Thoughts?
Meditation is simply the act of acknowledging your thoughts and feelings without judgment. With practice, we can “gain control” over our thoughts and feelings. Counter-intuitively, we learn to accept thoughts and feelings without attempting to change or control them. Learning to be aware of our thoughts and feelings during meditation practice becomes something we can carry over into our day to day lives. This translates into a useful tool called a mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is meditation practiced during our lived experiences.
For example, being more aware of my feelings during a heated discussion, lowers the chances I will allow myself to respond to those feelings by saying words I will later regret. Being mindfully present during a test by noting the presence of anxiety, and allowing yourself to redirect focus to the words in front of you, lowers the chance of being carried away by those feelings and losing valuable time. I can learn to be aware of my unhelpful thoughts while trying to live a healthier lifestyle: “I can’t resist the temptation.” “One slice of pizza isn’t enough.” “ I cannot live happily without the foods I love.”
Assessing your thoughts gives you a chance to create new and more helpful ones if current thoughts aren’t serving you or helping to accomplish your ultimate goals. “I choose to avoid too much sugar because it’s harmful to my body.” “I can eat pizza in moderation.” “I have the discipline to stick to my goals and commitments.
The Power of Thoughts
If thoughts were not powerful, then meditation and mindfulness would be useless. Thoughts have the power to direct your decisions and cause a domino effect of feelings. If you can learn to create healthy thought patterns to replace old ways of thinking, your life will begin paving a path in a new direction. This is why people find so much benefit to mantras. “I can do hard things” as opposed to “this is too hard” directs your steps and actions in two very different directions.
Rumination can become a habit. It is the act of continuously and repeatedly concentrating on the same thought, which we’ve already established is likely not factual. This is harmful because we begin to shape our perceived reality with false narratives. Meditation and mindfulness can help to redirect and train our ruminating thoughts.
Our brains love to create patterns, this includes patterned thoughts. Rumination is a form of habitual thinking in which we create scenarios and narratives in our minds about people and events, which may not be reflective of the whole picture. This is harmful to us in the long run, because those thoughts become a blind spot to our options and a roadblock to moving forward.
Who Can Benefit From Meditation?
Ultimately, anyone can benefit from meditation. Even if you’re an average or above average mentally healthy person, meditation increases awareness of our thoughts and feelings. This allows us to become more grounded in the moment.
Personally, meditation became a necessary part of my daily life. So much so that I invest about $60/yr into the app Headspace. The app improves my life in multiple areas: sleep, exercise, creativity, eating, addiction habits, focus and more.
I lived in a dissociative state for most of my life due to childhood trauma. Being dissociated means being detached from your body. Your mind learns to escape the present moment by getting lost in your thoughts as a way to cope or protect yourself from the traumatizing reality. Although this method allowed many of us to survive awful experiences long ago, the brain is now stuck on repeat. While your mind is trying to help, it’s actually harming you in the long run, protecting against threats which are no longer present. Now, instead of escaping a threat, we are escaping the beautiful word that surrounds us. We are missing out on all the experiences that make life worth living.
Why Should You Meditate?
Although meditation is an ancient practice, science has only recently been able to verify the benefits of its use. The neurological effects of meditation are demonstrated heavily in scientific literature. Meditation thickens the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain that helps us to make decisions, concentrate, and regulate our emotions. Meditation impacts the levels of neurotransmitters produced in the brain. For example: increasing serotonin, decreasing cortisol, & increasing endorphins, to name only a few.
Relationships both to self and others have shown improvement with meditation practice. Even our relationship with food & exercise can be demonstrated with meditation. Weight loss and fitness programs are now necessarily adopting meditation and mindfulness practices to increase efficacy and improve success rates among their clients. People who engage in sports find that meditation actually improves performance and achievement. Meditation and mindfulness can help with public speaking and other phobias, such as test anxiety.
Meditation and mindfulness creates a mind-body connection. This syncing of thoughts and actions creates powerful and amazing results that seem almost dream like and magical. But actually…Yeah, science!
What Are Some Resources To Get Started
I personally try to incorporate at least 10 minutes a day of intentional meditation. But once you begin the practice, mindfulness becomes a part of your day to day routine. You’ll begin to recognize moments in your day that you aren’t grounded in the physical word and your body, and it becomes an opportunity to be intentional and practice mindfulness in those situations: at work, in conversation, while exercising, eating, during creative moments, and even during sex.
I recommend the following resources for beginning meditation and mindfulness practice.
https://www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app
Use this Link to Headspace to receive guided meditation instructions by experts in the field
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
Are you considering seeing a therapist? Search for therapists in your area with this resource offered by Psychology Today.
https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene
Yoga is life. Yoga With Adriene is a great way to practice mindfulness with light-hearted mind-body connection techniques.
Thanks for reading. Wishing you much love and support on your journey my friend. If you enjoyed this blog, please check out others like it using the link below.
