7 Ways in Which Meditation Changes Your Life

How could sitting still and doing nothing change your life?

We always attribute changes to action. Bigger the action, better the change. We also think that the change should be clearly visible and that it has to happen around us. But we are a part of what is around us and the change should be brought within us. Meditation is about bringing the change within us. The effect of meditation and benefits from it are manifold:

  1. Helps you stay in the present – Our minds are always oscillating between the past and the future. The present comes into focus very rarely whereby we do not fully enjoy the present moment. We aren’t mindful of the things happening to us which makes us lose out on a lot of our involvement. Meditation helps you in being mindful.
  2. Reduces stress – When problems keep piling up, one complains of having a bad time. No decisions can be consciously made when you are under stress. Meditating for just about five minutes gives you some alone time, takes your mind off all those other things and makes you aware of your true state. After these five minutes, you will be able to think better.
  3. Gives strength to manage stressful situations – This isn’t the same as the previous point, as this refers to the long run. When you meditate longer, with practice, you will understand the way your mind works. You will notice when the stress begins to get you and you will try to calm yourself down voluntarily. Instead of letting the stress get you, you’d avoid it from happening. The act of preventing rather than curing.
  4. Improves memory and self-awareness – Mind is like a room. It treats you the way you treat it. Throw piles of dirt, dust, leave it unclean, don’t let in air or light, and all of this in turn will affect you. Meditation is a cleansing ritual for the mind. It unknots the thoughts that have been piled up and lets them go one by one, helping you understand yourself clearly in the process. It is from here that self awareness sprouts. Living in the moment improves your memory because it is difficult to forget the moments you actually lived completely.
  5. Improves physical health – When you get stressed out, easily upset, depressed or anxious, it affects your breath, in turn your heart and your whole system gets messed up. If truth be told, your mental health is linked to your physical health. With meditation, we learn to get our minds and emotions in check thereby, avoiding them from affecting our physical health too.
  6. Improves mental health – Meditation is to mind, what food is to the body. While we meditate, we watch our thoughts and learn to accept them. We understand that most of the thoughts aren’t reality, that we mix them up and torture ourselves over nothing. We begin to separate ourselves from our thoughts, which is the answer to many of the mind related issues. A little clarity is all we need and meditation is the right medicine.
  7. Improves relationships – It is no rocket science that relationships involve people. Anything that goes wrong in a relationship is because of the people involved. Meditation helps bring clarity into your thoughts and gives you empathy. This helps you pick up cues on why people behave the way they do which improves your relationship with them.

Meditation has more power than seen on the surface of it. It is about knowing your deeper self. Though you’ll see no miracle overnight, with time and practice you will see that you have come a long way from where you began. Attend meditation classes and practice mindfulness. You will soon discover the happiness button in you.