My Road to Meditation : And So It Begins

I have been told by a former boss who I (along with a lot of other people) think is quite intense ⚡️, to try meditation during one of our passing conversations. He said it has helped him ... manage his intensity (I guess). Being the CEO/Owner 👨🏻‍💻 of a company that has 100+ employees for about a decade or so, he must have a lot running through his head and stress is probably a norm. 😨 Aside from him, I have heard a lot of successful people like Oprah, Anthony Robbins, Richard Branson and a lot of Silicon Valley big wigs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are saying meditation has helped them big time too. Their success must have come with a lot more stress and brain noises than I can ever imagine. 🤯 So if meditation helped them, darn, it should work for me too!

Whenever I hear the word "meditation" 🧘🏻‍♀️ , it sounds so hippie-dippie with a lot of mysticism 🔮🧚🏼‍♀️ and so intimidating 😳 to me and I always scoff at it either verbally or just inwardly saying "Yeah, right. I don't think it's gonna work for me. I can't even keep myself awake doing yoga. Much less with meditation. I'm just going to end up falling asleep." 😴 But the irony of it is, I've been having trouble getting good sleep for years now because my brain just won't shut off. 😰 I've been sleeping with my TV 📺 on sleep timer for 1-1.5 hours with low volume just to drown out the noise 🗣 in my head 🧠 while trying to fall asleep. And I've been doing that for years now. I have tried taking melatonin pills 💊 in my desperation to have a good night's sleep. It worked but I stopped after a week because I don't want to be addicted to synthetic medicines. Three days ago, I started trying Mary Ruth Organics Liquid Nighttime Multi-mineral as a sleep aid. 💤 It comes with other vitamins and minerals like calcium, magnesium, vitamin C & D, etc. It's vegan and non-GMO and I'm desperate, so it sounds good enough to give it a try. It worked great on the first night because I had a pretty deep sleep. 😌 💤 The 2nd night and last night were just okay because my sleep was not as deep as the first night's.

So now I think it's time to ignore my preconceptions about meditation and give it a whirl. 🌪 The universe ✨ seemed to have it planned out for me too because I stumbled upon this book 📖 called "Unplug: A Simple Guide to Meditation for Busy Sceptics and Modern Soul Seekers" at the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale a week ago. I'm definitely a "busy skeptic". 🙋🏻‍♀️ A "modern soul seeker"? I can be that too, whatever that is. 🤷🏻‍♀️ So I was drawn to put it in my cart. 🛒 Plus, it's priced so attractively to me at P190.00 (US$3.50) only. Ran out of excuses not to buy it, so I bought it! 🛍 As of today, I'm still on page 70 and so far have read about the condensed version of the origin of meditation, what it is, scientific proof of the effects and what to expect from it. I'm yet to dive into the how-to from this book. 📗

But on one of the earlier chapters, the author mentioned an app called Headspace 💆🏻‍♀️ which my former boss has also mentioned. So I have already downloaded it. 📥 I tried my first meditation 🧘🏻‍♀️ using the app for 3 mins. It was quick and easy enough. Did I achieve anything from it? Maybe about 30 seconds of successfully focusing on just my breath. No thunderclap moment but felt good enough for me to keep trying. 👌🏼 

Since then, I have had 2 more meditation sessions using the app. 2nd time ✌🏼 was for 10 mins. 3rd time was this morning for another 10 mins. 👐🏼 My brother who lives with me was weirded out 🤨 seeing me with earphones on 🎧, sitting very still on the couch 🛋 with eyes closed 😑. He asked me what I was doing. If I wasn't meditating, I would have snapped 😠 at him coz he was making a lot of noise preparing his breakfast 🍳 and the smell is so distracting coz I haven’t had mine yet. But since I was in meditation, I had a few milliseconds of wanting to snap at him but I breathed deep and just ignored him 😑 and tried my best to bring my focus back into meditation. So that's another good thing about meditation. Oh yes, I do have a quick temper. 😠 And unfortunately, those people closest to me bear the brunt of being snapped at most times. 😬

I decided to blog my meditation journey to make me more aware of the changes I go through. Who knows, I might be able to help other people with this if I successfully unlock 🔐 this meditation thing as a life skill. What's my success metric? I can’t expect to become saintly coz who am I kidding. If I end up snapping a lot less than before, less of the instinctive negative reactions triggered by a situation, which hopefully means I'm going to be less stressed 😌 ... then I can consider my meditation practice a success. 🥳 As you can see, I'm setting my expectations quite low here. But every bit helps, for my loved ones' and my sanity's sake. 🤪

As the author Suze Yalof Schwartz said, meditation practice is called that because that's what it actually is ... a practice. She promised that the more I do it, the easier it gets. 💪🏼 I'm aiming for a non-sectarian kind of meditation that would help me become more mindful. 👁 Be more present instead of worrying about what might happen and risk assess everything. 😰 So, let's see. I'll blog about my progress as I go. Wish me luck! 🤞🏼