Meditation: An Update From a Busy Mind

A few months back, I wrote a #CoffeeThought on meditation and how I started to experience the results of letting my meditation practice end.

I mentioned how it took less to frustrate me, took more to make me happy and how a recent trip to a lovely seaside village ended in a day stuck in my own head, unable to fully connect with where my feet were.

So I wrote Meditation: A Reminder For The Busy-Minded, not only to teach myself and others the importance of meditating, but to start meditating again until I found the peace I fell in love with.

I promised to follow up on that blog with an update on my progress. Well, it’s been just over 3 months since that was published. That’s 14 weeks, or 101 days, and I’m only now feeling ready to provide said update.

That’s because I’m only now starting to really feel the positive benefits of meditating again, a full 3 months later…

In the previous blog, I mentioned how the positive benefits of meditation take weeks to months to kick in, just as they fade when you stop. But, honestly, not even I expected it to take this long, especially given my history of meditating.

I’m starting to feel more grounded, more patient, present and happier. But, I knew that I would. I've been here before, so I knew what to expect, and although it took longer than expected, I had an experience in mind, and the accountability of this blog to keep me going.

But what about the others? What about those of you who have never meditated before? Would you keep going?

Would a person who has never meditated before continue meditating daily for 3 months without actually experiencing the positive benefits of that meditation? I think they’d have to be crazy to do so.

But that’s what it took.

Now there is an argument to be made that my previous experience with it may have delayed the results, and that an untrained mind may not have the same problem.

However, it’s been 3 months… So even if my experience delays the results by 3 fold, the untrained mind still has to meditate for a month before they get any form of literal reason to continue doing so.

But I think there’s a bigger and wider lesson to be learned here, one that goes beyond me, my experience, and even meditation itself.

That lesson is that your work can go unnoticed and without payoff for a lot longer than you could possibly imagine, and still be working.

Exercise, diets, businesses, and all other goals.

Sometimes, it’s not the thing itself that’s the problem, but your inability to delay gratification that really stops you from getting what you want.

Yes, this blog is about meditation. I believe meditation is building a muscle in the mind, a muscle responsible for giving the experience we all desperately crave: peace, presence and happiness.

But this blog is also a reminder that if you’re currently working towards something with no form of reward in return, stick with it, keep going, and refuse to give up.

It is working, you just haven’t received any positive feedback…yet!

If there were a way to know for sure that your work would pay off, how long would you be willing to work without reward?