Finding Wisdom in Stillness
How meditation was able to provide answers to some of my deepest questions
During my time in San Francisco, I became obsessive about optimizing my life for peak performance. I started tracking everything I did via a time tracking application (Toggl) and adjusted based on daily analytics to fit more activities into each day.
I was addicted to busyness.
In my hustle, I committed myself to more and more activities. I noticed my health slowly deteriorating, but I brushed it off and increased my workout durations. When I finally ended up in the hospital with irreparable digestive and autoimmune diagnosis, I saw the damage I had done to myself.
After a year of rehabilitation and healing, I decided to leave everything to meditate around the world — my eat, pray, love adventure. In my meditation retreats, I am still for more than eight hours each day. This could not have been more different than my previous lifestyle.
At first, it was extremely difficult to adjust to this slower pace. Not only was I not producing work every day, but I was instructed to also stop taking notes, reading, and thinking altogether in my meditation sessions.
Each retreat has provided me with insights to some of the biggest questions in life I have never been able to answer before. After three retreats, I have answers to my deepest aspirations, the future of my work, and the next steps in life.
With the stillness of meditation, my mind was able to incubate all of the thoughts that were floating around my head and process them organically. I was providing the space for my senses to connect disparate dots that would have otherwise stayed separate amidst the hustle.
The next time you are stuck, take a step away from hustling harder. Opt for stillness.
Pause and allow yourself to feel all of your six senses: seeing, feeling, touching, smelling, hearing, and thinking. Mindfulness is a practice of becoming present with all of these sensations.
By providing space to process these feelings, thoughts will emerge organically. Allow them to pass as they come. Often, wisdom comes from seeing the bigger picture. In this case, allowing thoughts to pass will help you see what thoughts are new, identify any repeat “visitors”, and assess the whole picture.
With stillness, there is often more than meets the eye.
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Have a fabulous day!
Metta (loving-kindness),
Steven
