I had a fascinating conversation with Marilyn Moore, a meditation teacher with LA Shambhala and former director of The Centre of Living Peace in Los Angeles. She told me that in the Shambhala approach, meditation simply means “to become familiar”. So doing 10 minutes of meditation means becoming familiar with something – in this case our own minds.
Whilst this might sound very simple, we actually spend so much of our time not being familiar. We flit, we crave, we distract. We keep our minds on everything but the present. We focus on the past, the future and even invented realities, just to avoid having to focus on the real and the present, just for a moment.
And so meditation is a powerful tool. It enables us to see our minds like a laboratory. We don’t need to react to each thought, or even agree with each thought. We simply acknowledge each thought exists and continue on our quest to become more familiar and understand our own minds.
In practising mediation this month, I have felt more of a sense of purpose and grounding in my work. On the days I have meditated – even for ten minutes – I have felt more purposeful and “solid” than on the days where I have been unable to commit to it.
You can use every trick in the book, every lifehack, every productivity technique, but underpinning all of this is how you view your own mind and how you view the narratives that play out in there.
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Read > Meditation Can Improve Your Memory, Focus, and Productivity at Work – Lifehacker