Who are you?

What do you stand for?

Meditation has often been praised for its positive effects on depression and anxiety, and while this may be true, the best benefits come from the focus and discipline the habit will cultivate.

It is important to understand that the benefits of meditation do not all come from the meditation session itself. To increase your focus and discipline, you must adopt the meditative state of mind into your daily life, allowing you to live in the present moment.

Firstly, you will obviously need to meditate regularly. I started meditating about 2 years ago and believe me, you will not start this ritual and continue to do it every day. At the beginning it can be tough to do and as you go deeper with introspection, even painful if you do not truly know yourself. Start with 10 minute sessions. These remained difficult to do for about 1 and a half years. Now 15 minute sessions are often too short.

It does not matter if you miss a session, we are not perfect. Especially if you are like me and trying to build discipline. However, it is important to experience a meditation session in ALL moods that come to you. Once you have had a meditation session during anger, next time you're angry, the chances of your subconscious reminding you of the reflections from the previous angry meditation is increased. And this effect is exponential. It will be extremely rare and difficult to capture, but the longer you try the more often you will succeed.

Once you have captured the moment, this is where the focus comes in. You are able to remember previous meditations involving the anger emotion and transfer the reflections you had previously onto the current situation. Once this has been achieved multiple times, you will begin to understand who you are and what it is you stand for.

To increase the chances of remembering your previous meditative reflections during the day, it is good to have various types of triggers that will bring you back to the present moment, allowing you to understand and be at peace with all emotions. A good way to implement these triggers is to consider them during meditation.

To start with, listen to philosophy books about living in the present or meditation and aim to be as present as possible during this time - Listen with your whole body. This is simply to build the habit of being present while you listen to books. When possible, transfer this new found skill into other genres of books and eventually to while you're reading. (Read with your whole body)

Another good trigger is to try be mindful every time you sit down or stand up. Consider this while meditating and notice as you stand up at the end. This change of posture is nearly impossible to notice throughout day to day life, but persevere and you will notice it more often. Eventually, your subconscious will automatically bring you into the present moment often when you sit or stand, creating focus through a lot of your day to day life.

Do not set daily alarms or reminders to be 'mindful'. This does not work and is just annoying, the queues need to come naturally from your subconscious for it to be highly effective and this takes time to build up.

Thanks for reading, please comment your thoughts on this topic!