Does Meditation Really Help To Become a Happier Person?
I can speak from first hand experience here, YES…
Having spent a long, long time trying to be happy, faking it until you make it and all that jazz, I seemed to be closing in on a road that led to no where, a closed loop of futility.
And I might add, that I really had no reason not to be happy, a beautiful family, great lifestyle, good income and friends. But for whatever reason, deep down I just wasn’t.
Call it depression, call it a lack of zest for life, what ever it may be. I felt something was missing.
But the truth of the matter is I wasn’t winning my personal battles with this feeling that sat around my heart, just a heaviness. But again I would mask it and put on a great smile.
It can be incredibly frustrating for not only ourselves when we feel this way but also our family who sees the beyond the facade.
And I tried a lot of different avenues to overcome this sense of disquiet…
Spent loads and loads of money, saw the best coaches, healers, therapists, courses and for a bit I would fire up. Trying different routines, hoping that it would last.
But inevitably there was the same old feeling creeping back into my being along with “Is this what life is and all that I am to be”.
When I think about it, it was really a deep seated search, a wanting of more, a wanting of connection to something, but all the external searches left me back where I Began, still wanting more.
It’s an insatiable fire.
My searches eventually led me to meditation and in particular my first deep dive into meditation (other than guided meditation sessions etc) was with Vipassana – a beautiful practice derived from Buddha.
To learn Vipassana you have to do a 10 day silence retreat. Yeah I know heavy right.
So it is a huge deep dive, but you come out feeling amazing and with a great technique.
The problem I find however with this technique, is that you have to meditate for 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night.
I don’t know about you, but with work, kids and a life in general that’s pretty hard to keep up.
Plus the day you miss your sessions it is a habit that is way to easy to break.
Caveat. When I was disciplined I felt happier and more connected than I had for a long long time.
But alas, I just found I did not have the time to keep at it – or the discipline. If my life was different then sure, but for a busy lifestyle it didn’t suit.
So the benefits would wear off and I would find myself back to square one all over again. I did the above cycle 3 times, where I would head back to Vipasana to reboot me back into gear. But not a very sustainable practice!
Thankfully I found <a href=”https://themeditationspot.com.au/”>Vedic Meditation</a> after chatting with a friend about my love of meditation but frustration that I just could not keep it up.
He shared with me the benefits he had experienced and that is was only 20 minutes, twice a day, that I thought I could definitely do.
So I booked in to learn the technique with my teacher.
And the whole experience was so so easy (compared to Vipasana).
It was the perfect solution for me and it comes with so much SCIENTIFIC merits. So I dove in head first and years later it is still a daily practice that I absolutely adore, sure I’ve missed days here and there, but due it being just 20 minutes (not the hour) and so effortless I have never broken the habit.
The result?
Year by year I find my sense of self awareness & intuition deepening.
My sense of connection to myself and that beyond me so strong and getting stronger.
The colours of life seem so much more radiant (they were pretty grey there for a while).
My presence with family 10 fold on what it used to be.
My ability to not react to situations outside my control drastically improved – 11 fold.. (I used to be a bit of a hot head and feel noble about my ability to argue…)
And through all this my sense of happiness and laughter is now authentic. I feel joy and happiness where in the past there was always a shadow lurking by…
Now I could share all the scientific ways this works, but for today I will leave that as I believe that this is also beyond science, this ancient technique which is over 5,000 years old, has truly been the great gift of life to my life. And to measure it in metrics for this rant just does not feel adequate (if you want those just do a search for science case studies on meditation).
And get this, the greatest thing is, the results are compounding, so they keep getting stronger and stronger as I continue with this amazing tool.
So, if you learn this practice and make it part of your life, yes it certainly has the ability to make you a happier person.
Related Tag: Meditation Courses Gold Coast