Seven Reasons to Learn to Meditate

SEVEN REASONS TO LEARN TO MEDITATE

Learning to meditate changed my life. I was a nervous, stressed-out middle manager in a Fortune 500 company who didn’t know how to relax, let alone get in touch with my inner self. I had no time to think about my inner self, I was too busy worrying about how my outer self was performing. The pressure I was under was tremendous. I had been brought in from the outside to start a new program of an inside sales group—we were going to sell product to smaller accounts over the phone. At the time it was a fairly new concept and not very well accepted in the marketplace. I had led a similar team in a similar company, so I was picked.

I started the project with a great deal of enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was diminished on the very first day. I found out that almost no one wanted me or my program to be there. Usually when starting such a program, the acceptance of the customer is your primary concern. I soon found out that the customers were the least of my worries. First, there were the field sales people who had been laid off to make room for my new department. Then there was the support staff that had been replaced along with the field sales people—many were still there and resentful, some had been laid off but were still in touch and spreading their complaints to anyone who would listen. Then there was the IT department who had been ordered to build a new sales system from the ground up in a very short time window—very supportive but they had been asked to perform on an impossible deadline. And there was the manager that I had replaced—still with the company but in a new position that she didn’t like.
All of this was set in motion before I arrived, but the message was clear. There was a concerted effort to make sure that I, and those who worked for me, would fail. Crucial information was purposely withheld, equipment mysteriously disappeared, rumors were started, phone calls weren’t returned—all of the usual political tricks. To say I was stressed out is an understatement.

I had made one friend at my new company, and she very astutely observed that I was in need of a massage. It so happened that her sister was a massage therapist, so off we went after a long day at work to get a massage. Her dear sister worked on my stiff neck for one hour, and was unable to make any progress in getting me to relax. She privately declared to my friend that I was a hopeless case.

So that’s how I rolled through the endless business days--cramped, tired, stressed out, paranoid and cranky. I worked harder and harder, falsely believing that this was how I would succeed—just kept putting one fatigued foot in front of the other, kept my head down and hoped for the best.

My Journey of Self Discovery Provides Added Benefits

I really backed into my meditation practice through my desire to learn how to hypnotize myself. Throughout this time period I kept getting a little message in my head that I needed to learn hypnosis. I had attended a past life regression seminar a couple of years before. This experience left me hungry for more information. I was strongly getting the message that I needed to learn self-hypnosis in order to learn more about my life purpose and plan--and to figure out why I now found myself in such a pressure-filled situation as my current job.
So I enrolled in a hypnotist training course with no real desire to learn how to hypnotize others, but to use it as a tool in my own self discovery journey. My class and my instructor didn’t disappoint. The instructor put the entire class into a light trance at the beginning of Day One and kept us there throughout the class. He would take off the spell at the end of the day and invoke it once again each morning. This proved to be just what I needed. I was so nervous and stressed out, that nothing else really would enable me to relax. The result of being in a hypnotic trance for five days was remarkable. My stiff neck disappeared the first night and my body continued to relax throughout the week.

The result for me of learning to meditate is that I eventually mastered this job situation and came out a winner. I was able to filter out the distractions and noise of those who wished me to fail and focus on making our sales goals. My group achieved all of their sales goals that first year and more--virtually every one of my people received a high achiever award that first year. We continued our success for many years after that. I found out that performing a difficult job becomes much easier when you are relaxed, calm and able to view situations from a higher perspective.

There are many methods of meditation that you can learn. If you are a hard core, uptight, nervous case like me and find that these methods don’t work, I would highly recommend learning self-hypnosis. It is a wonderful pathway to meditation. There are many, many advantages to integrating a meditation practice into your life. I am going to outline seven of them here that I have personally experienced.

Seven Reasons to Learn to Meditate

1. You can effectively release stress. This may seem obvious and has been written about a lot, but meditation can effectively release long term the stress you are feeling. This has obvious health benefits, but in addition it can improve your mood, make you happier and make you pleasant to be around. You might find your relationships improve—with your mate, your children and your co-workers. You will sleep better and deeper.

2. Meditation will improve your concentration and focus. You will find that you can focus on your work and/or studies much better. As a result, you can complete projects and tasks much faster. You will be able to increase the focus in your interactions with people—i.e. you will become a much better listener and be able to respond in personal and work situations more clearly and coherently.

3. You will gain a wider perspective on life situations. Due to the pressures that we experience in modern life, we all wander around viewing situations at about the 50-foot level. With meditation you can expand that to whatever level you choose. Imagine being in a forest and seeing a single tree. Now imagine that you are in a helicopter and you rise up to 500 feet and take a look at the forest—it looks entirely different. If you zoom up further to several thousand feet it looks different still. The higher you go, you can easily see the inter-connections that make up situations and you will be able to solve problems easier and better due to your newfound perspective.

4. You will gain a greater sense of control over your life. You will gain confidence because your concentration and focus improve and you are making better decisions. You will feel more in charge because the broader perspective increases your awareness of life situations. You will no longer be distracted by situations that pull away your focus. You will be able to recognize situations as major (needs to be dealt with right away) or minor (can be put off or disregarded).

5. It will expand your awareness. The longer and more often you meditate, the more aware you become of yourself and your place in the world. You will see how you fit in the grand scheme of things, rather than not fitting into the scheme. You will learn the true meaning of spirituality as you start to truly acknowledge other people and understand why they react the way they do. You will become more compassionate and understanding. You will find yourself “doing the right thing” because you want to, not out of a sense of duty. You will become less self-centered and more generous.

6. You will experience physical benefits. Many of our ailments are the result of blocked energy in the physical body and meditation can unblock that energy. I have experienced a virtual elimination of tension headaches, colds and flu. If I start to feel a cold or flu coming on, I have a specific meditation that will get rid of it. When I traveled extensively, I experienced no jet lag and was able to adjust to any time zone. When it was time for sleep, I would simply go into deep meditation and I was asleep in a matter of minutes. Others make claims for a lot of physical benefits that I have not personally experienced, but I will mention them here: lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, fights chronic diseases, helps with breathing problems, slows the nervous system and eliminates tension in muscles and joints.

7. You will gain enhanced learning and memory power. As your body relaxes and gets out of the way of the mind, you will find that your brain responds. You will find that forgetfulness leaves you and you will be able to grasp complex concepts more easily. This makes your mind more efficient and flexible. Creativity will flourish and you’ll wonder why you couldn’t think of these great ideas before!
Are there Disadvantages to Meditation?

As I was researching for this article, I ran across several articles about the disadvantages of meditation. It seems these disadvantages all boil down to one concept—that if you meditate “too much” you will become too disengaged from the real world and won’t be able to perform. The advice in these articles was to limit meditation to 15 minutes per day. I had to laugh as I recalled a meeting I once had with a headhunter.

I took a three-year hiatus from the business world after I left the position I described in the introduction to this article. During that time I explored every metaphysical concept I could find. It was the greatest three years of my life, as I discovered my true self. I had co-authored a training course, Breaking Through Barriers, with my two partners and had spent much of my time testing out the processes for the course that we had written. Needless to say, I was “blissed out” from a lot of meditation.

I decided to go back into the business world in my former profession as a sales manager. I met with a headhunter for lunch one day. We talked for awhile and I answered all the usual questions. In the middle of lunch he stopped and looked at me and said, “You don’t act like a sales manager. You’re much too calm. Sales managers are jittery, jumpy, impatient, and can’t wait to move on to the next thing. You’re not like that at all.” I was taken by surprise, but I told him that he should look at my accomplishments, not at my demeanor. I told him I had been meditating for years and that my skills as a sales manager and motivator of people really took off after I started meditating. I invited him to look at the sales numbers as proof. He decided that was acceptable to him and set up an interview for me with his client. I was actually offered the job, but turned it down.

It taught me something. The world is so frenetic that we expect others to act stressed out and nervous, especially those in certain professions. When we run across someone who is calm, collected and confident, we think it is strange. This is such a shock to some people that they write articles about the “disadvantages” of meditation. But those of us who practice meditation know that we have a competitive edge called meditation.

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