Meditating is one of the most important ways to promote mindfulness, calm and self-control.
If we look at the habits and routines of the world’s most successful people. Will find that they have a lot of things in common and one of those habits is meditation!

People such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, to Tony Robbins, and Elon Musk describe meditation as being a key tool that helped them achieve everything they did.

When you meditate, you learn a method to forget your worries and to simply let your mind ‘be’. More importantly though, you develop greater concentration and greater focus which prevents your mind from getting into an anxious mess to begin with!

So how do you begin meditation?

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One useful strategy is to start with the body scan technique. To get started, sit somewhere comfortable with your legs crossed and your hands on your knees. Keep your back straight, your chin up and forward and your eyes closed but make sure you aren’t in a position where you can fall asleep!

Now you’re going to simply ‘scan’ your body by focusing on each part one at a time and then making a note of how it feels and relaxing it. Before that though, you begin with your senses. Listen carefully to the world around you. You’ll find that there are sounds that you have completely blocked out until now and you’ll notice birds tweeting, cars honking, children playing and wind howling.

Feel the temperature of your skin, notice if you’re on a slight gradient and even look at the light as it dances through your eyelids. Now focus on the top of your head and start to take your attention downward to your cheeks, jaw and then neck and shoulders. Stop at each point and make a note of how it feels: are you carrying any tension? Are you feeling any pain? Release tension in the muscle and then keep moving.

Eventually, you’ll reach the very bottom of your body. At which point you can begin to concentrate on your breathing for a while. Breathing should be ‘belly breathing’, which begins with the gut expanding and then fills the lungs all the way up. Breathing steadily and rhythmically will slow the heart rate and put you in an even calmer state. Finally, bring your attention to just below the navel and hold it there. This is your center of gravity and concentrating here will ground you.

What you'll notice

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You might notice your thoughts start to drift from time to time. If this happens, don’t let it concern you. It is normal and not the end of the world, just quietly dismiss those thoughts and then return to the focus. Finally, repeat the steps in reverse order and bring yourself back around. That was a body scan meditation!

This is a powerful tool because it is forcing your to direct your attention and to ignore the outside thoughts. More importantly, it is engaging you with your own body, physicality and surroundings. And when you do this, your sensations become richer and more vivid.

Eventually, if you keep practicing this skill, you should get to the point where you can begin to become more mindful and more present at will... even while moving and engaging in other tasks. That means just taking a moment to actually look at the world around you. Pausing to see what you can hear. And fixing your posture. It means not getting so caught up in your own thoughts that you let life pass you by, or that you live in a constant state of stress and anxiety.

Benefits

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Once you can do this, then you will find that nothing can stir you in quiet the same way unless you want it to. You can always just enjoy being in the moment and forget the past and the future. You can enjoy living and taste the amazing taste of that chocolate biscuit while that email sits there in your outbox completely unsent.

This is the key to happiness: you can choose to react positively instead of negatively. You can choose to view things as a challenge or an amusing hiccup instead of a serious threat. But it is also the key to unlocking your full potential so you perform better and achieve more!

@bitdollar

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