5 Awesome Benefits of Mindful Meditation for Personal Growth
For starters, mindful meditation has been a tremendous help to me along my personal growth journey. I’m sure most will ask, “What is mindful meditation?”
Mindful meditation is the act of focusing solely on whatever you are doing at any given point in time. When you study, play sports, do some gardening, write a song, read a book, or play an instrument. I could go on and on. But you catch my drift. Anything that requires you to focus on what you are doing at the present moment is considered mindful meditation.
I’ve noticed that when I practice meditation this way, I am not thinking of the past, or the future, I’m just being “in the NOW”. While doing so, it seems that any worries or feeling I have about anything else at the time seems to recess into the back of my mind.
For example, as I sat at my computer working on a coding assignment for longer than normal, I could hear my stomach-churning. However, I was feeling like a boss because I wasn’t getting any errors, you know when you just get into a good flow of something and it feels good. Like you are getting the job done better than ever before. I had some mojo going…LOL. I was aware of the “hunger noises” but I didn’t have the feeling of being hungry.
I was so immersed in writing code that I didn’t really care. Around 15 minutes later, my phone rang and snapped me out of my train of thought. What amazed me is that an immense feeling of hunger took over as soon as I answered the phone. I had to go straight to the kitchen and pour a glass of Almond milk to calm the churning of my empty stomach. It was then that I realized how mindful meditation can be used for personal growth.
Here are 5 Amazing Benefits of Mindful Meditation for Personal Growth….
1. Letting Go of Bad Habits
I had a bad habit of smoking cigarettes before I started working at home. I remember every day I couldn’t wait to get outside and smoke a cigarette on my lunch break. Somehow it provided a sense of relief. I knew it wasn’t good for me but unfortunately, it had become a part of my routine. Knowing I needed to quit I began to look into natural ways to stop and meditation came up in my research.
At first, I was like..whatever, but I didn’t write it off immediately. I put on my analytical hat and researched more.
I found that the act of deep respiration during smoking is similar to that of one’s breathing pattern while meditation. The deep inhalation and exhalation during meditation gave me the same feeling of relief I got from smoking a cigarette. With just 2 weeks of mindful meditation, I quit smoking COLD TURKEY. Not saying it will be easy for everyone, but it sure helped me.
When you let go of bad habits, you can spend that time doing something that will serve you better.
2. Be More Sensitive To Others
Meditation had an effect on me while I wasn’t even meditating. It helped me become a more compassionate person. Meditation gave me a sense of connectedness to everything around me. I began to open up to random people.
There is a homeless guy that sits outside the 7-11 close to my home. I’d just give him some change and be on my merry way, but that stopped. I actually felt bad and thought it was a bit inhumane to ignore someone I see all the time. I thought, why did I treat him differently from the store employees I engage with when I go there?
Instead of just giving him my change, I learned his name, spoke to him, bought him food, and gave him a warm smile. While most people just pass him or throw change in his cup like I used to, I connect with him. I realized that we are all human at the end of the day and we all need to feel connected to someone or something.
3. Become More Intuitive
Happy beautiful young black woman relaxed at home doing morning meditation in bed
Meditation has taught me to trust myself. I have lots more discernment than ever before. You know when you meet someone and they seem like a really nice person but something about them makes you cringe inside? When you don’t even really know the person but they give off a sense of something that just isn’t right. I’ve learned to trust those feelings. One day, trusting yourself could possibly save your life.
I have a perfect example of this. I live in Florida so this happens often. The weather forecast will say sunny with no chance of rain, but when you look outside you see heavy rain clouds everywhere. So if the weatherman says it’s gonna be sunny all day but it looks like it’s going to storm, are you going to leave without your umbrella just because he said it wasn’t going to rain? When you learn to trust your intuition you will be better off in life. You can’t always listen to the external noise, you need to make decisions based on what you feel and see instead of all the time what others opinions are.
4. Total Body Awareness
Total body awareness has to be one of the more exciting results of mindful meditation. It involves the ability to notice your internal body sensations. When you know your body and how it reacts to certain stimulation, you become more in charge of your life. Additionally, it can help with your health and relationships with others.
The more comfortable I become with my body and how it feels, the more in control of my life I became. I noticed that while I’m weeding in the garden, my right shoulder starts to ache very quickly. The awareness of the pain is important so that you don’t go past your limit. Instead of just quitting or working through the pain, I compromised with it. I didn’t let the sensation take over and quit.
I’ve learned to use my mind and body together to compromise. After all, our bodily functions rely on each other in one way or another. Instead of retreating, I started using my left hand just as much as my right to pull the weeds. That way, I get to stay out and finish the full job without being in pain. Even though using my left hand felt a bit uncoordinated at first, I got used to it. The more I practiced, the better I became, and the less pain I endured in right my shoulder. Consequently, keeping me a happier person overall.
5. Better Workout
Happy young women relaxing after training session. Two fitness females sitting on a box and smiling against pink background.Mindful meditation can improve the results of your workout. Working out can be very meditative by itself, especially when working on proprioception. It requires you to concentrate and be totally independent of your vision. It demands your body to feel and know where you are in space in order to stay balanced. Kind of like doing certain poses in Yoga that require your full attention in order to stay on your feet…or foot.
I’ve noticed that if I’m not exactly challenging myself when working out, I tend to space out or get lost in other thoughts. Not really paying attention to what I’m doing at the present time. On another note, if you are present and in the moment, in tune with your body, you can do more than what you think you can. You can push yourself to do that extra set or that additional 5 minutes on the mill. When you stay focused, you will do better. Consequently, you will get better results, or get over that plateau.
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