Today marks the 134th day of journaling, 197 consecutive days of meditation, 156 consecutive days without using marijuana, and my very first 25’er (25 straight alcohol free days). I owe much of my progress over the past six months to my daily meditation practice. I started with simple five minute meditations and my practice grew from there! So today I want to spend some time reviewing all the incredible ways meditation has changed my life forever, and for the better. And how it might help you!
Zero ; 25’er ; M: 197 ; C: 156 ; P/U: 120 ; W: 6 mi
Altogether, the idea of meditation is not to create states of ecstasy or absorbtion, but to experience being.
– Chogyam Trungpa
13 Ways Meditation Has Changed My Life
When I look back over the past 197 days, I am amazed at how truly transformative daily meditation has been in my life. At the beginning of this journey, I never could have anticipated all of the good meditation would create.
Sure, I had read articles about how meditation slowed brain aging, calmed anxiety, and helped those who practiced it to be more mindful, grateful, and present, but was it for me? Could it help me with my gray area drinking problem? That’s what I really wanted to know. If it could do that, anything else it provided would be a bonus.
I’m happy to share that not only has meditation helped me deal with my drinking problem, but the bonuses continue to pile on.
So far, and I say ‘so far’ because the benefits continue to accrue, meditation has changed my life in the following ways:
- I have been able to drastically reduce my alcohol consumption and may quit altogether.
- My daily marijuana habit is no more. I haven’t touched pot in over five months. I’m done.
- Both of these result from the creation of space between thought and action (RAIN)
- A total negation of negativity
- No more grappling with grudges
- Greater compassion, appreciation, and generosity for and to all things
- Presence of mind
- Increased focus that instantiates a highly productive ‘flow state’
- Understanding that nothing is inherently good or bad, but that perception is everything
- There is no I, me, or my; only us, we, and ours
- A daily routine that empowers productivity and positivity
- Clarity concerning goals, overcoming obstacles, and what is truly worthwhile
- Greatly increased self control not only concerning vices, but over emotions, assumptions, material desires, and reactions to external stimuli
The Incredible Power of Focus and Flow
Now let’s dive into this list of thirteen ways meditation has changed my life starting with focus. The ability to focus on not only the task at hand, but also your long term goals isn’t always easy in today’s 24/7 news cycle, social media driven society. But meditation’s gift of focus is the gift that keeps on giving.
Drastically improved focus has greatly improved my ability to prioritize my life. Better prioritization has resulted in better time management. And now that I am focused on what really matters, stuff that moves the needle, I am able to achieve a highly productive ‘flow state’.
The ability to prioritize your activities, then focus on each intently, drives you into flow. Once I’m in flow, my productivity goes into hyperdrive. I can knock out large volumes of work in a rapid clip. I’ve gotten so good at this following six months of daily meditation, that I’m virtually uninterruptible.
If anything, my problem now is that my focus can be so intense that I will flow right past calendared meetings, emails and other messages, phone calls, and other frequent interruptions. Often my wife will come barging into my office demanding, “Didn’t you see my text?!?!”
You know what? I’m perfectly content with this new problem and I have a solution. I simply set an alarm on my phone ten minutes before any calendared meetings. Additionally, I schedule checking my emails and texts. If it’s urgent? I instruct people to pick up the phone and call me.
A New Relationship With Alcohol and Marijuana
Once meditation gave me my ability to focus back, I was able to turn it on to the challenge of alcohol addiction. My gray area drinking pendulum had swung from occasional to social to frequent to constant. And I knew I had a problem.
I wouldn’t describe myself as an alcoholic in the clinical sense, but I’ll admit I’ve certainly been tiptoeing around it for the past several years. I started meditation largely to deal with alcohol. But what happened next was quite a surprise.
After a month or so of daily meditation, I just stopped smoking pot cold turkey and haven’t touched it since (despite ample opportunity to do so).
Freedom from my marijuana addiction is a meditation gift I was not expecting. And the way it went down is truly remarkable. One day, I just lost the desire to use pot. I like to tell folks that, strange as it sounds, I didn’t quit marijuana, marijuana quit me. And after it did, I just up and tossed my stash over my back fence and into the greenbelt one afternoon. I’ve never looked back. And I’ve not had a single moment of regret. Not one. That was over five months ago.
Alcohol has been a bit trickier and more pernicious. Yet today marks 25 consecutive days of alcohol freedom. Compared with pot, this streak is only a drop in the bucket. But when I look back through my journal, I can see that I only drank once in the past 45 days and twice in 60.
If you consider that, six months ago, when I began daily meditation practice I was drinking a six pack or more at least five nights a week. And I was smoking pot everyday. I’ve come a really long way. But I’m not done yet!
Space is Powerful
So much of my progress can be credited to learning how to create space between thought and action. In this blog I’ll often refer to this process as ‘RAINing on Addiction’.
So much of what you do, whether you believe it or not, is done on Autopilot. This is true for everyone. But when you are able to slow down and recognize a thought or emotion, label it, interact with it, and release it, everything in your life changes! Space is powerful!
And not just with addiction. You’ll experience positive changes in how you deal with stressful situations, highly charged emotional confrontations, demands on your time, and even that jerk who just cut you off in traffic.
With enough practice and time, you can become quite skilled at creating space. And as your proficiency increases, literally everything in your life gets easier. You’ll head off overreactions before they dig you into a deeper hole. You’ll gain necessary perspective to react in direct proportion to the challenges you face. You might even discover some mental jujitsu moves that blow your friends’ and coworkers’ minds.
Some people like to say “fight fire with fire”. But in almost every case when you follow this “match action with action” advice, you end up burning everything down! When you create space, you gain clarity. You can now see the fire for what it really is and pull out an extinguisher, or better yet, remove the source of fuel. With the fire out, you can plot your next move.
Meditation Inspires My Daily Routine
I believe strongly that the swiftness with which meditation changed my life can be attributed to making it the cornerstone of my daily routine.
My daily routine saw me do Yoga & 120 pushups this morning following my meditation and reading two chapters of Alcohol Lied to Me by Craig Beck. This before a six mile hike and some journaling. And all before 8am. Six months ago, I couldn’t do 10 pushups, was barely reading anything that wasn’t on my phone, did no yoga, and took leisurely walks a few days a week.
My daily meditation and routine are the reasons I started journaling (and this blog), now read 1-2 books a week, and hike up to 150 miles per month. I credit it (and The Plant Paradox) for my losing 30 pounds.
After a just few months of practice, I noticed I had lost my negative inclinations, stopped grappling with grudges of any kind, gained tremendous clarity, and gave my ego (I, me, mine) the boot. As this was happening, I was simultaneously gaining compassion and empathy. Then, all at once, around five months in, the pendulum swung from negative, past neutral, to squarely positive. All my negativity and grudges were gone.
I discovered this one morning while practicing a Compassion Meditation. During this particular practice, you have to pick four people in your life to focus on. The first person is you. The second is someone you care deeply about. The third is a neutral person. And the final person is someone who annoys you or you have an issue with. What I discovered recently is that I’ve run out of annoying people and I don’t seem to have a problem with anyone in my life. No more grudges. Not anymore. I’ve made peace with them all.
Similarly, I’ve managed to silence the critical voice in my head that used to constantly remind me of all the dumb things I’ve ever said or done, my selfish acts, and embarrassing moments. I managed this by using Space to make peace with each of these things in the order they presented themselves. I RAINed on them one at a time.
As I wrote above, Space is powerful.
Being Present
This brings me to presence of mind. Through contemplative meditation, I’ve learned that once you’ve accepted that the past is gone and the future is not guaranteed, you are left with only one thing: the present.
And the present is a very powerful place to suddenly discover (or in my case, rediscover) yourself. Space exists only in the present. It’s physically where we’ve spent our entire lives despite being mentally stuck in the past or projecting ourselves out into the future.
Think about it. How much of the present have you frittered away worrying about some past embarrassment or future plan? If you’re anything like me, sadly most of it. Probably more than you’d like to admit.
These days, when I find myself bothered by the past, I invite it in for a chat. Once we’ve talked it out, I let it go. There’s nothing more to do. Afterall, I can’t influence or change the outcome. It’s the past. It’s over and gone. Forever.
I can only change one thing about the past, and that is my perspective.
Being present is a superpower. It robs The Judge (that nagging negative voice) of its ability to hook your attention with constant reminders of your past transgressions. It also allows you to see the future for what it is: a mirage. Let’s face it, we’re all living on borrowed time.
And whatever your future holds is carved from the coursing waters of present action. Too many of us talk about what we’re fixin’ to do, but talking ain’t doing. Use the present to make your future present experience everything you wish it to be. Welcome to the Present! It’s the only place you’ve ever been and the only place you ever will be. Make it your own.
There Is Neither Good Nor Bad
So much of our mental energy is hijacked by this false premise of good and bad. Please do not confuse these with right and wrong, they are not the same thing.
Good and bad are just labels we ascribe to things and are nothing more than the product of our perspective. Perhaps this old Chinese story will help illustrate my point:
A farmer and his son had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbours exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well. The neighbours shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbours cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg. The neighbours shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
When you label something as good, it elicits a positive emotional reaction. Of course, the opposite is true of something you label bad. However you choose to label the people, places, and things in your life, the process of labeling ultimately influences how you interact with these things. Whether the interaction turns out to be good or bad is entirely up to you. Take responsibility for it.
And it’s worth noting, that what’s bad for you is often good for someone else. You lost the big game? The other team won! You lost $50 on the subway? Someone else found $50 on the subway! You had a horrible day waiting in endless lines at Disneyland? The kid in line behind you is having the best day of his life!
Perspective is everything. Nothing is good or bad. It just is. You bring the lens.
Meditation Has Changed My Life Through Oneness
The unmistakable feeling of Oneness comes only after meditation relieves you of the single thing holding you back the most: your ego.
When I finally let go of my ego and accepted oneness, I suddenly had the ability to deal with just about anything life threw at me with a coolness and level headedness I never knew before.
In our highly polarized, ego driven world where it seems everyone takes everything personally, coolness is exceedingly rare. My ego used to lash out at perceived insults and slights. I wore my grudges like some red badge of courage. I would drink the poison of resentment and wait for the other person to die. And when that didn’t work, I numbed my resentment with alcohol and marijuana. Meditation changed all that.
Meditation has changed my life because it allows me to find CLARITY in the SPACE it creates. And clarity allows me to FOCUS & FLOW on the things that matter most. Without NEGATIVITY and EGO weighing me down, I’m free to practice PRESENCE, COMPASSION, and SELF CONTROL.
The net result of this is that I have significantly MORE POSITIVE days than negative ones and whenever I’m in a funk, I can identify why, deal with it, and get back to the present. The more I practice, the easier this becomes. The holes never get so deep I can’t fill them in. And the mountains ahead invite me to climb them.
Six months ago, I was standing at the precipice, toes dangling over the edge. Today, II wonder where I’ll be six months from now.
I’ll get there. Presently.
