This Week's Insight...

Stop Limping Through Life

Decades of psychological research prove that about 96% of people use only 1% of their mental energy to focus in the present moment.   Instead, the “normal” subconscious (the greater part of your mental energy) lives in your formative years, when you were so “sponge-like” and open-minded that you learned the subconscious programs that now create your reactive, habitual behaviour.

All these programs together make up your personality.   An acquaintance, Tom, recently told me “I love my personality!”   But your personality is not who you are – it’s who other people told you you should be.
As I said to Tom, personality is a stone in your shoe that you’ve become so used to that you don’t realise that you’re limping your way through life.

Life is meant to be lived to the full – not limped through – not  1% lived.   You’ve got to get to know the real you.   You’ll find the real you waiting for you within – that inward journey is the most exciting you’ll ever take.

All my clients meditate – some more than others – but all of them, at least some of the time.   What kind of people are they – these meditators?    Mainly business people – a lot of CEOs, Directors, General Managers – but a lot of ordinary, everyday people too – people just like you and I.    Some of them meditated long before they ever met me – but most of them admit that, whilst they felt good whilst meditating, it didn’t make a massive difference to the cut and thrust of their everyday lives. 

So – two questions:  What’s the point of meditating if it makes no difference to your everyday life?  And, if it makes no difference, why do my clients meditate?

Answering the first question’s easy.    There’s little point in meditating if it makes no difference to your everyday life.   Now, I’m sure that it does make some difference for even those who thought it made none – so there’s always a benefit in doing anything that’s better than living an automatic mindless life like so many people do (that’s not me being judgemental – that’s scientific fact – read the psychological proof!).     But meditation, if properly applied, should make an astounding difference to every aspect of your life – every day, if not every moment of every day.

Meditation is the most effective way to achieve everyday effortless happiness and success.   Meditation provides you with a means of taking control of your own mental capacity, of your own ability to give your undivided attention to the task in hand, whatever the task in hand might be.    Meditation provides you with the means of channelling your energy – physical, mental, spiritual, it’s all just energy – into the present moment where, quantum physics proves, the energy of the universe will respond to that input.

Over the next few paragraphs, I describe how meditation helps you achieve all this.
Meditation is a mirror image of the normal routine of the average everyday.    The meditator is plagued by distraction, frustration and useless thought.   The body tries to trip you up – whether it’s an itchy nose, back pain, one of your legs going to sleep.     These “obstacles” mirror the frustration we all feel when success appears to be elusive, the annoyance of negative people who are itching to get you embroiled in their dramas, the distractions of useless “what-if” worries and the debilitation of self-doubt.    When you meditate, you learn not to let the thoughts distract you, you learn how not to react to your leg going to sleep, you learn how to not scratch that itchy nose.   In other words, you learn how to simply let such distractions, frustrations and annoyances pass – as such frustrations, distractions and annoyances pass in our ordinary everyday life.    If you learn how to stay focused whilst meditating so that you don’t scratch that itch, you will become untroubled by distractions, annoyances and frustrations that can otherwise plague us during our ordinary everyday life.

The discipline of meditation teaches us to observe the present moment.   We experience the reality of the here and now.   As a result, we stop looking for something else, for more.   The constant struggle of the muddled, dissatisfied normal mind stops – we learn to stop searching because the present moment is complete.   We begin to realise that life’s struggles are only in the mind – fear, worry, doubt, lack of self-esteem are simply no more than useless thoughts – but thoughts that, nevertheless wreck people’s lives and people’s happiness.    Learn how to stop struggling through the discipline of meditation and the struggle of everyday life will simply stop.  Effortlessly.

Meditation is often misunderstood.    It may well lead you to an altered state of mind – indeed, that may be the ultimate objective.   But, today, the discipline of meditation will enable you truly live today to the very, very best of your ability – free from all the normal inner voices that tell us we can’t do our very, very best.   

An investment of five, ten or fifteen minutes each day will mean that the rest of the twenty four hours will be a completely different experience to anything the normal mind could imagine.   Sure, bad things will happen during the run of the day.  Sure, distractions and frustrations will abound.  But the difference will be that, unlike the normal person who reacts to such things and makes them worse, you will be able to act with a clear and present mind.  And just like the itchy nose, the distraction or frustration will pass.

But that is only the beginning.   Because with a clear and present mind you will enter flow – a scientific term coined by the University of Chicago.    In flow, you will hit your peak performance.  In flow, universal energy will respond to the simple fact that you’ve invested more of your energy in the present moment than all the normal people who half-live their lives in doubt and frustration.   You will become abnormally happy and successful.   All for a few minutes each morning.

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