I started meditating circa 2010. Six months later I noticed fundamental changes in myself. My baseline anxiety went down by a very noticeable degree. Large crowds no longer freaked me out. I slept better. I quit smoking. And tests and exams became a breeze.
Before discovering meditation, tests were the bane of my existence. University level math is not a joke, and I’d had panic attacks in a bunch of tests. Always math. In one of those, I had to walk out after writing only my name and a scribble of a matrix. Not being able to breathe in a large lecture hall is horrible.
I never forgot that. And to this day, I make meditation a priority. My go-to advice for people, whatever they’re going through, is, Have you tried meditation? People that know me probably find it repetitive by now. Others might find it dumb, or simplistic—or maybe even too easy. And a few might argue that it doesn’t jive with their religious views.
Meditation doesn’t have to be rooted in any religion. It can simply be the practice of noticing narratives. It can simply mean cultivating more inner silence.
The truth is that six months of meditation changed the trajectory of my life in a very considerable way. I pointed out the things that changed during those first few months—less anxiety, better sleep, better health—but there were other fundamental shifts that took place over a longer period of time. Some of those shifts grew and only became more apparent after years of meditation. For instance, I became more intrinsically motivated and less bothered by other people’s opinions. I became more interested in doing meaningful work as opposed to work that gained approval. I also found that it was easier to implement good habits.
The irony is that because meditation is so powerful, it often evokes resistance from the ego mind. A comfort zone story that says something like, I don’t have time for change. I have other things to worry about. Or, Things really aren’t that bad.
For the most part, I was unaware of how crippling my anxiety was. It was only when I did not feel paralysed by situations like tests and crowds that I could feel how it felt to be ‘normal’. And if someone had suggested meditation, I might have found a hundred reasons not to do it. Indeed, I was resistant to the idea at first too. But I’d bought a diet book and that was part of the program. Yes, it was in fact a diet book that got me into meditation. Not a bad book. But the meditation part changed my life forever.
You can think about meditation and find some reason not to do it. You can worry about the origins of the practice and whether it aligns with your particular belief system. You can find an excuse not to set aside ten minutes a day.
Or, you can simply meditate for a few months and see what happens. You can choose to sit in silence, for a while, each day, and observe what fruits grow from that.