7 reasons not to take up meditation Hi there. I think if you watched any of my videos before or you’ve read any of my book a daringadventure.com, I think you’ll know pretty much that I’m not a woo woo kind of a guy. I’m not your typical life coach. I admit that sometimes I have crap days and sometimes I’m a bit moody and my life isn’t perfect. I’ve got a dog behind me that pisses on the carpet, you know, it is what it is. So, when I say to you I wanted to talk to you about meditation, a lot of people still think of meditation as being a bit woo woo, a bit out there, which is absolute nonsense, it’s just a complete lack of understanding what it is really. So what I want to do today, when I talk to clients about this, you know, I get seven common excuse that I get why people don’t medicate. Medicate, why people don’t meditate, or medicate. They’d actually be more happy to medicate, give me the prozac or xanax, they will do that, rather than meditate. Even though the meditation may have a stop you needing the medication. Cool play on words there. Anyway, the first reason i can’t see the point. Yeah, people say this, I really can’t see the point, so it’s lik kay, what’s the point of doing it. Let me tell you this, it improves mental health, it improves depression, so if you are on medication you can remove the need, first of all don’t just stop taking medication, but you can remove the need for medication. It improves your physical health. This is all fact, this is all research you can see it if you want to, you know, whatever, it improves your physical health and not just partly because it lowers stress levels. Meditation removes, well reduces stress levels. It also improves or increases your ability to deal with stress when it does arrive. You know, stress happens, it’s a part of life, you know. Dogs do piss on carpet, you get stressed about it, whatever. It also improves cognitive function, and who doesn’t want to have more clarity, less brain fog more sense of retrieving information that’s what meditation can do for you. I’m gonna stick with the meditation, OK. It can improve the quality of your life, your satisfaction with your life, and thus your happiness levels. Regular meditators are happy. Happy, get it, happier than normal people. Again, that’s a fact. And here’s probably the most amazing fact is, meditation has been proven to lengthen life. Not just by dragging out those last few years when you’ve got Alzheimer’s and you’ve got your colostomy bag or whatever, but improving the quality of health and life. So, if those reasons are not good enough, stop watching now, but if they are, get yourself of, get some meditation. The second excuse that I get i h Tim, I don’t know how to do it. So I was like, you don’t know how to meditate, do you know how to breathe? You do, OK. We don’t have to meditate. Sit on your floor, close your eyes, concentrate on your breath, wonder where the hell those thoughts have come from, you didn’t know where they were before, reconnect with your breath, keep doing that for about the next forty years and you are good to go. Meditation has got a ridiculous amount of, sort of mystique around it, that it’s not warranted. Yes there are loads of different types of meditation, but basically, it’s taking your concentration inward and focusing on your breath and focusing on yourself rather than thoughts in your head. Just let the thoughts go. I’m not gonna give you a lesson on meditation now, go on and research it, cause it’s easy… Number three, I don’t have time. Bollocks you do have time. What you mean is you don’t want to make the time. If you sat down watching TV, you know, or if you are just dicking about on Twitter, or Facebook, or You Tube, or whatever, then you have time to meditate. Ten minutes a day is better than nothing. There’s plenty of CD’s there. There’s a guy called Bodhipaksa that does a CD called “Meditations for busy people”, I think. Every one of them is ten minutes long, so you do have time, it’s a no excuse, I think it’s pretty lame. Number fou h Tim, I’ve tried it once and nothing much happened. Oh really, so you tried it and nothing much happened. That’s a little bit like saying I went to the gym once and picked up my top and I haven’t got a six pack, gyms don’t work. Meditation is like the gym for your mind. It’s a practice, it’s called a practice because you do it again and again, and again and you get better, and better and better at it. So, nothing much happened, yeah, probably won’t for the first time, and maybe not the second time, but it will eventually if you stick with it. Number fiv feel silly. Oh, I wouldn’t know how many times I heard tha feel silly. Look, you don’t have to shave your head like I’ve done, put on a orange or sapphire robe and sit in front of your front yard and trying to do om meditation while people driving home from work. Not at all. You can go and do it in the quiet of your own house, in a room somewhere, if family members ridicule them, send them back to number one and tell them what the benefits are. If they still insist on ridiculing them, dump them and go and find yourself a new family cause they aren’t doing you any favors. Six what I get i always fall asleep. Okay, so you fall asleep. Have you ever seen pictures of people meditating. Have you noticed anything in common what they are doing. They normally set up right, and the reason they set up right is because if you lay down you’ll probably fall asleep. There are prone meditations, but if you are a beginner, I’d encourage you to sit all up, and then you won’t fall asleep. Or if you do you’ll just heel over side with some bang head on the wall or something like that. Again, not really an excuse. If that’s the case for you, do it when you first get up in the morning, after you’ve woken yourself up, go and have a ten minute meditation, fifteen minute meditation then you are less likely to fall back to sleep. Number seve t’s boring. Yeah, you know what, it can be a bit boring, but the more bored you are meditating, the more you need to meditate. Because the more you’ve trained your mind that it can’t accept being still, that it can’t accept things as they are. So always got to look for instinct gratification, instinct simulation. So if you get bored meditating, that means because you need to meditate. So I know that’s a little bit of an oxymoron, but it’s true, and there you have it. Seven excuses, they are all pathetic, all of them are nonsense, you know. If you can come up with a great one leave it in the comments and I’ll try to do my best to respond to it. I think meditation can help you, can help anybody, it can help the bloody world if they all do it, let’s be honest, it calms people down, quietens people down and makes them more contemplative. So go and get yourself a mat, cross your legs and say ommm, and you are good to go. Catch you next time.