Success Through Stillness

That’s from the first chapter in the second section on “Why You Think You Can’t Meditate.”

Excuse #1: I just don’t have the time to meditate.

Hah.

Yah, right.

As Russell says, if you don’t have twenty minutes to take care of your mind, you really need TWO HOURS.

We come back to this all the time. If you’re not yet meditating, let’s be honest.

You have twenty minutes.

(Russell follows Transcendental Meditation’s recommendation to do two twenty-minute sessions and he’s selling me on adding back the twenty minute PM session as I’ve only been doing the twenty minute AM session for years. And I KNOW I have the twenty minutes in the PM I can easily carve out to make this happen. It’s not the time; it’s the decision + discipline…)

Russell walks us through all the other areas of our lives we somehow find the time to keep optimized—from exercising and washing our car to brushing our teeth and doing the dishes.

Not to mention all the time we spend entertaining ourselves—from TV to constant check-ins on our smartphones, social media, email, etc.

The issue isn’t the time per se.

The real issue is that we haven’t made a decision that a) our minds are our most valuable assets and b) meditation is one of the most powerful ways to keep our minds strong and healthy and, therefore c) optimizing our minds via meditation is worth a modest investment of time.

So, back to you.

How much time do you invest in DELIBERATELY keeping your mind awesome?

Time to let go of the time excuse and step it up a bit?

P.S. Fact is, you’d be better off skipping your tooth brushing and brushing your brain. Dr. Rudulfo Linas tells us: “I go to the dentist once a year to see how my teeth are doing, but I don’t think of going to the neurologist to see how my brain is doing. Clearly our brain is more important than our teeth. We can have false teeth; false brains are not around.”

Say hello to Excuse #2: “I’m No Good at It.”

When I was trained in Transcendental Meditation nearly a decade ago, one of the most powerful lessons I learned was the wisdom that we *never* want to judge our meditation.

We just sit and meditate.

What we might think is our “worst” meditation may, in fact, be our BEST meditation. Although our brains might’ve been buzzing with whatever stress was going on, the fact that we sat for our twenty minutes might have been *just* what we needed to cool our brains off enough to go out and face the day with more grace and equanimity than we might otherwise have had.

If you think you need to have a still mind to be a meditator and judge those buzzing sessions as horrible/useless/whatever, you might give up and lose the benefits right when you needed them most.

So, don’t judge your meditation. Just sit.

Here’s how Herbert Benson—one of the world’s leading researchers on the scientific benefits of meditation—puts it in The Relaxation Revolution (see Notes): “Here is a typical, simple response that I give to such performance-focused anxieties: ‘Don’t worry about how well you’re doing! Don’t worry about whether the relaxation response is really working or whether your mental picture is maximizing your health benefits. Just do it!’ I also frequently use the analogy of brushing teeth. Most of us are concerned to one extent or another with dental hygiene, but we don’t dwell on the tooth-cleaning process. We just work away with that brush every day. Almost no one evaluates the brushing, to say, ‘That was a good brush!’ or, ‘Too bad—that was a bad brush.’ We simply do it! Similarly, if you’re taking a pill your doctor has prescribed for your cholesterol or blood pressure, you probably don’t wonder, ‘Am I putting this pill in the proper side of my mouth? Am I swallowing it correctly? Is it really going to work?’ Again, you just do it—and that should be your approach to mind body treatments.”

Do you judge your tooth brushing?

No. You just do it.

Let’s just brush our brains.

P.S. Imagine what your TEETH would look like if you decided to skip brushing them for the rest of your life. They’d probably rot and fall out, eh?

Why do you think your brain can maintain optimal performance without similar attention? Note: It can’t.

That’s one of the first Ideas in the section on “The Physical Benefits of Meditation.”

In short: Your limbic system drives your most basic emotions and is responsible for your fight-or-flight stress response. Your amygdala is constantly monitoring every situation and letting the limbic system know if there’s a threat.

So, imagine your limbic brain as a car owner. Your amygdala is the car alarm system.

If you’re SUPER SENSITIVE TO EVERY.SINGLE.LITTLE.THING. in your life, it’s like having an alarm system that goes off every time another car drives by or a stiff breeze happens to kick up.

That’s SUPER annoying for everyone involved. :)

Of course, your limbic system is important and we need to know when we’re being truly threatened/someone is actually attempting to steal our car. But if we perceive every little thing in our lives as a big deal, we’re going to flood our bodies with constant “alarms” that enervate us and everyone around us.

Meditation helps fine tune that alarm system such that we no longer go nuts when someone cuts us off on the way to work or in line at the movies or insert your trigger here: ___________.

With an optimized alarm system, we can appropriately judge that tiny thing as a non-issue and maintain our equanimity. And, of course, we can deal with the even bigger things with even more grace and poise—seeing those challenging times as opportunities to rise to the occasion and put all this stuff into practice rather than as threats to our existence.

So… How’s YOUR mind alarm system?

Let’s dial it in.

That’s from another chapter on the benefits called “Finding Your Focus.”

Sian Beilock echoes this wisdom with her own research she shares in Choke (see Notes). In that study, students who had a simple TEN MINUTE meditation training before a pressure-filled math test scored a half grade better than those who didn’t. (B+ vs. B-)

So, if focus + clarity are important to you (or your kids), meditate.

That’s from a chapter all about the benefits of meditation on our creativity. As Russell says, “A calm mind is a creative mind.”

I love the image of a snow globe. (Russell has a lot of great, practical metaphors.)

Shake it up and you can’t see what’s actually inside the globe. Let it sit there and all the snow will settle, allowing you to see what’s inside.

SAME THING WITH OUR MINDS.

If we’re constantly shaking up our brains with external and internal S.T.I.M.U.L.A.T.I.O.N. it’s *impossible* to see the powerful goodness inside.

Meditation helps with that.

So does unplugging more often.

And so does CREATING before reacting (as we discuss in Creativity 101).

Let’s create more space for those awesome ideas to bubble up.

That’s from the end of Part Five on “How to Meditate.” We’ve gotta be consistent if we want to see lasting benefits from our meditation practice. Once in a while just isn’t going to cut it.

Marcus Aurelius uses the same basic metaphor for training our minds in Meditations (see Notes) where he tells us: “Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.”

And, here’s how Matthieu Ricard talks about the power of a regular practice in Why Meditate? (see Notes): “It is essential to maintain the continuity of meditation day after day, because in this way your meditation practice gradually gains substance and stability. It is like the way a small trickle of water little by little turns into a stream and then a river. The traditional texts state that it is better to meditate regularly and repeatedly for short periods of time than to do long sessions every now and then.”

Plus: “For a plant to grow well, you have to water it a little every day. If you just pour a bucket of water on it once a month, it will most likely die between waterings. The same applies to meditation.”

Here’s to consistently soaking our souls with good thoughts and deep meditation as we shine brightly and give our gifts to the world!