Day 11 of 30 Day Meditation Challenge

Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine. — Jack Ma

Jack Ma: The Art Of Dreaming And Succeeding Extraordinary

It has been an interesting day at work. Even though I cannot attribute quality of all my interactions to meditation, I do see a noticeable difference in how people speak to me and how I respond. When you become really conscious through meditation, you can read between the lines or read through the intent in many conversations. People say certain things while they indirectly mean different things. For a clouded mind, it is very hard to decipher the motivations of others. However, with a trained mind, you get to separate the wheat from the chaff. It helps in greater bonding with others and empathy is always a prized skill.

I had a really busy day for a Thursday. Even before I started this challenge, I was going through a tremendous amount of personal change in a clear and intent way. I was trying to figure out who I am and why I veered off from who I want to be. Being content is good as long as you are not complacent. It may sound counter-intuitive to some but perfectly rational for others. You can become content by constantly exploring new realms both internally and externally whereas when you are complacent, you stop exploring new things. It is a fine line and I chose contentment over complacency.

I digress 🙂

Coming back to the practice today, I had a wonderful 30 minutes of practice. My focus is getting much better, I do not have as much restlessness as when I started and I am able to concentrate even in the midst of external noise (such as that of a dishwater, exhaust fan). It just shows that I am making progress , one breath at a time. I have been a compulsive eater my whole life and I think I am starting to understand some of my motivations behind that habit. I still need to go deeper into sessions to bare myself inside out. I am hoping to know at least a bit more about my self everyday.

Today’s tip : I didn’t have a good session yesterday. In the past, if I broke the cycle/challenge once, I would stop doing it and I was pretty much done. One major quality that I want to learn is persistence. Through digging into myself, I realized I leave things in the first instance of adversity most of the time. With this challenge, I want to break the back of that negative habit. So, my tip to myself is Don’t give up. Keep at it.