Meditation For Beginners

Meditation is a powerful practice that can transform your life for the better but it can seem overwhelming at first. Meditation has had a profound effect on my life, so I wanted to share this powerful tool with you. First off, I will highlight some of the misconceptions that exist about meditation. Next, I will highlight the benefits of meditation. I will then show you how to meditate. Finally, I will share a few resources with you that were particularly helpful to me in my own meditation journey.

Common Misconceptions About Meditation

One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that you need to clear your mind of any thoughts to successfully meditate. It’s impossible to not have any thoughts. We all have thousands of thoughts that cross our mind everyday. The idea of meditation is actually to focus your thoughts on specific things, such as the rhythm of your breath, a mantra that you’re reciting in your mind or a body-scanning inventory, where you focus on each part of your body, moving from your head to your toes. When you notice that your mind has wandered elsewhere, gently bring your focus back onto the object of your meditation. Don’t judge yourself negatively for thinking about other things. It’s part of being human. 

Another big misconception about meditation is that you need to be seated cross legged, with your eyes closed and your hands open with your palms facing up. In reality, you can meditate while you’re sitting, standing, lying down or even walking. You can meditate with your eyes open or closed. There are several different ways to meditate. You should experiment until you find what works best for you.

Finally, I wanted to highlight a misconception about meditation that is particularly applicable to entrepreneurs. There is a misconception that meditation will make you more gentle and peaceful. This can be contradictory to the competitive and ambitious mindset that entrepreneurs need to have to be successful. I know I held this false belief in my mind, before I began meditating. In reality, meditation has empowered me to compete even harder, while also being in control of my emotions. 

The Benefits Of Meditation

Now that we’ve cleared up some of the misconceptions that people have about meditation, I wanted to show you some of the main benefits you will receive by maintaining a consistent meditation practice. 

Meditation will help you deal with your stress and anxiety. It forces you to face these emotions head on, rather than distracting or soothing yourself with something else. This will have a direct correlation to the way you handle the stresses of your career and life.

Meditation will also help you reduce other negative emotions like anger and sadness. When you force yourself to face difficult emotions head on, you’re able to process them in a healthy manner and move forward with your life. Meditation is a powerful way to lean into this process.

Meditation will help you be mindful and focus on living each moment to the fullest. There is a lot of beauty and wisdom in the world that you are probably oblivious to, because you’re too wrapped up in your own thoughts and feelings. Meditation is probably the most powerful and effective way to increase your mindfulness.

Meditation will also help you become more self aware. We are often not in touch with our own selves. This is because we’re so caught up in the people and situations around us that we end up getting distracted from ourselves. Meditation will help you focus on yourself again. You will learn to feel every part of your body and be in touch with all of the different physical sensations that are running through your body at any given moment. 

Meditation can be difficult, but if you persevere through it, you will become much more mentally strong. You will have a much higher degree of patience and tolerance for uncomfortable or negative situations and people. This can be helpful in the business world, as you are likely to come across people who will test your patience and leave you feeling frustrated.

Meditation is also a very powerful way to increase your imagination and creativity. You free your mind to focus on the object of your meditation, which will allow your subconscious mind to wander and come up with new ideas. Meditation can include visualization of your future self or the specific goals you want to accomplish. If you focus enough of your mindful energy on that visualization during meditation, you will be signaling to your subconscious mind that it should start working towards making this vision come to life in reality. 

How To Meditate For Beginners

1. Sit down somewhere comfortable. If you can sit without something supporting your back, you gain the most out of your meditation, as you’ll always need to focus some of your energy on keeping your back straight. That being said, you can sit with something supporting your back, if you need to. As a beginner, you should avoid meditating while lying down, as it might be difficult to stay awake.
2. Sit with your legs crossed, your back straight, your arms and hands in your lap and your head facing up with your eyes closed.
3. Try not to move your body, as much as possible. Instead, be mindful of the aches, pains, itches and other sensations you feel throughout your body. 
4. You should aim to meditate for 5-20 minutes but if that is too difficult for you, you can try to go for a minute or two. Just set a timer on your phone, so that you’ll know when your time is up.
5. Focus on your breath. Breathe in and out through your nose. You can think the word “breathe” every time you breathe or you can think the word “in” as you breathe in and “out” as you breathe out. Just focus on the natural rhythm of your breath. You can begin with some deep breaths but you should eventually be breathing the way you normally would.
6. Don’t think of meditation as a chore of some mundane part of your daily routine. You should approach every meditation session as if it’s a significant challenge for you to face and overcome. You will be facing yourself, your thoughts and your impulses. It’s not meant to be easy or boring. Each meditation session will offer you a unique experience and set of lessons to learn. Embrace each session with your full spirit and you will greatly benefit.

Useful Resources For Meditation 

Now that you understand more about meditation, it’s many benefits and how to practice it, I wanted to share with you a couple resources that have been beneficial to my own meditation journey. 

First off, I wanted to mention that there are a ton of guided meditations out there to help you get the most out of each session. It can seem daunting or overwhelming to begin meditating. Having a recording of someone to guide you through the process can be very powerful. There are great apps you can download like Headspace and Calm that have guided meditations available on them. You can also find countless guided meditations on YouTube. You can even find guided meditations that are specific to some obstacle you’re facing in life.

I’ve also gained a lot by reading books about meditation. There have been several that I’ve found value in but I wanted to highlight 5 books that had an especially significant impact on my meditation journey. I’ve reviewed most of these books on my YouTube page, so you can click on each title to watch them and learn more details about the books that you might be interested in reading. 

1. 10% Happier by Dan Harris – A great introduction to meditation.
2. The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle – A great book for intermediate level meditators.
3. Inner Engineering by Sadhguru –  A great book for more advanced meditators.
4. You Are The Placebo by Dr. Joe Dispenza – A great book about visualization and manifestation through the power of meditation. 
5. The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness by John Yates – A very thorough book about meditation for people of all levels.

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I hope that you’ve found value in this blog post! Feel free to share it with anyone that you think will benefit from it as well.

If you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on this subject, you can check out my video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoILy7h1ApI

If you’d like to be even more effective as an entrepreneur, check out my blog post on How Jay-Z Leveraged His Brand And Became A Billionaire Entrepreneur.