I know, I know. This is “supposed” to be a personal finance blog. But hear me out! I know there are TONS of thoughts out there about meditation. I don’t think I’ve ever met two people who feel the same way about meditation. Even I, as a neuroscientist who has read the research on meditation’s beneficial effects on the brain, was skeptical for the longest time. But after giving it a try in 2015 when I had nothing else to lose, I can honestly say it has done wonders of good in my life. If you’ve never given meditation a try (or you’ve only given it a little bit of a try and sworn it off), this post is for you.
My main goal here isn’t to try to convince you to meditate (although I still may try a little bit…I can’t help it). My plan is to tell you how meditation changed my life, to share my experience, and to let you decide the rest for yourself.
How I first started meditating
In 2015, I was still seriously stuck on the hamster wheel. I had just moved back to Vermont from Atlanta, GA, to take my first professor job. I thought I had it all. I finally had the job that was going to make me happy, I was living in the state I wanted to live in forever, and I was back in the same location as my boyfriend of 2 years after “making it” long distance for 7 months while I was in Atlanta.
Not surprisingly, it turned out I wasn’t all that happy after all. The job was making me miserable. I was more anxious than I had ever been. And, after 2 months of being back in Vermont, this boyfriend I mentioned, who of course I also thought was “the one,” ended things out of the blue.
I was miserable, and I didn’t know what to do.
I remember talking to my mom, the only person who I really felt like I could share my true feelings with at the time, and she suggested I try to list 5 things I was grateful for. I was so angry. I told her that was the worst idea I had ever heard, and I hung up the video call (not at all my best moment).
The only coping strategy I had at that time was to bury myself in work. What a joke of a coping strategy when the thing you are coping with also makes you miserable and anxious.
I was a mess.
I wanted to go back to therapy (I had been in and out of therapy since college), but the thought of trying to find a new therapist when I was already a mess felt daunting. I emailed my previous therapist from when I had been a graduate student (I was now a professor) and basically begged him to take me on as a client on the side, but he said he couldn’t because of the “university rules”.
He did, however, give me a recommendation.
The therapist he recommended wasn’t seeing new clients, but she did recommend someone else in her practice. I remember leaving what felt like a rambling and teary voicemail on this woman’s answering machine. Who knows what I even said. But she called me back within a day and set me up for an appointment immediately.
My first time in her office, she told me she could tell from my voicemail that I needed to be seen asap. That somehow made me feel better? I’ve decided one of the best feelings in the world is when someone else helps you see that you’re not crazy, when someone else believes what you tell them. How hard is that? I digress…
After the first few sessions, I was starting to really like her.
But then, she asked me if I’d ever tried meditating.
She was shocked when I rolled my eyes. “Aren’t you a neuroscientist?” she proclaimed. “You must know all of the benefits of meditation.” Sure, I told her, I had read the research. I just didn’t see how meditation was going to help with my problems. Plus, the idea of sitting quietly for 10 minutes by myself, alone with my thoughts, made my skin crawl.
“Well, do you want to try medication?” was her answer. No way. I really didn’t want to have to take medication.
“If that’s the case,” she said, “then I really think you should try meditation. It can do wonders for anxiety. There are even a few books I’d like to recommend, and one in particular.”
A book, I thought? I love books. A book, where I can learn and read about meditation and how it might help with my anxiety? Well, that didn’t sound too bad. At this point in my life, basically all I did was work, eat, sleep, and cry over my breakup, so I figured I could work in a little reading.
It was starting to get cold outside in Vermont, and I remember sitting in front of my little Rinnai gas heater on the first floor of my 2-story townhouse and reading The Wisdom of a Broken Heart. I loved this book. This book became my best friend. There were prompts and exercises, where I could fill out and write in the book, and it was the best feeling to get to do something that was NOT work, that did not cause me anxiety, and that didn’t make me think about my breakup.
The author, Susan Piver, even directed her readers to her website, where I could try some free guided meditations, which I ended up loving (it was a lot easier than trying to remember the instructions in the book while also trying to meditate).
Bit by bit, I started to put myself back together. Meditation changed me in ways I couldn’t image, in ways that I still find difficult to describe to others. Turns out, everything I thought about meditation was all wrong.
My biggest meditation myth: “To meditate, you have to stop thinking”
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Meditation is all about getting you to sit with your thoughts, not make them go away. In fact, the author of the book (who I now consider “my teacher”) assures me that the thoughts will NEVER go away. Instead, you’re just not paying attention to them.
What are you paying attention to instead? Your breath. Breathing, the thing you do all day, every day, without evening noticing it. Well, in meditation, all you’re supposed to do is notice that you’re breathing. You focus on your breath while your thoughts float through your brain like clouds in the sky, and as they float, you just sit there and pay attention not to them, but to your breath.
And if you do realize that you’re all of a sudden lost in a thought, to the point where you’ve forgotten that you were supposed to be paying attention to your breath? NO BIG DEAL. You just let the thought go, and go back to paying attention to your breath.
When they say that meditation is a practice…that is really what they mean! I couldn’t believe it. And as a former jock, boy could I practice! With meditation, you are simply practicing focusing on your breath instead of focusing on your thoughts. And when you “mess up” (meaning you realized you were focusing on your thoughts instead of on your breath), you just try again. Just like sports! Get back in the game, hold your chin up high, and try again.
The best part? YOU GET AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF TRIES. While you’re meditating, you get to mess up again and again. In fact, the whole point is to notice that you messed up and try again. How do I know this? Because I have been meditating for 7 years and I STILL can’t go the whole time without getting lost in my thoughts at least once.
And the second best part? That’s totally ok.
What meditation looks like for me in my life now
Now, in 2022, I can say that I have been meditating for 7 years. That seems crazy to me, based on where I started! No, I don’t meditate every day, but I go through periods where I do. Meditation has become one of my values, and it has been one of the subjects of many goal iterations over the years. Although I’m not Buddhist, I love learning about Buddhism, so that has also been a goal thanks to meditation. And, in case you can’t tell, I love talking to people about meditation. I love answering their questions about it. In fact, becoming a certified meditation instructor is one of the items on my Financial Freedom List (a list of activities and experiences I am interested in and want to try/explore further as I get closer and closer to financial independence).
Have I convinced you yet?
If none of this is resonating, first of all, I’m glad you’re still reading! But maybe some info from Pema Chodron, beloved Buddhist teacher and nun, will help. In addition to the book my therapist recommended, she also recommended listening to and reading Pema’s famous graduation speech, which was turned into a book. This speech changed a lot for me, and I highly recommend you listen to it, but today I want to tell you about her 5 reasons you should meditate.
5 reasons to meditate
In an article inspired by another of her books on meditation, Pema gives us 5 reasons to meditate.
- Steadfastness: When you sit down to meditate and allow yourself to experience whatever you’re feeling in a given moment, you cultivate a sense of steadfast loyalty with yourself. When I have negative thoughts now, it’s so much easier for me to comfort myself out of them, the way I would help a friend get out of their own head. And the best part? Once you master steadfastness with yourself, you’ll find that it spreads to others too.
- Clear seeing: Pretty straightforward, but meditation gives you the ability to stop the wheel when you are spinning out of control. It becomes easier and easier to get your mind off of the rumination wheel. The wheel doesn’t necessarily stop, but with meditation, you get better at jumping off of it rather than clinging to it for dear life. You get better at trusting your own inner voice and tuning out the voices of “others” (society, parents, coworkers, etc).
- Courage: Let’s be real – if you’ve never meditated before, sitting silent and staring your thoughts in the face is downright scary. But the more and more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the more courage you gain. How is sitting alone with your feelings not the most courageous thing in the universe?? It is for me at least.
- Attention: This was the one I experienced most intensely, especially early on – the ability to be present in each and every moment of life. All of a sudden I realized I was just noticing things more. I’m in nature a lot, and instead of being consumed by my thoughts and not looking around, I was noticing a butterfly land on a flower. I noticed how pretty the sky looked on my long car rides. I felt like I was noticing everything, and it was overwhelming. I distinctly remember telling my therapist about this and thinking I was crazy. She told me I wasn’t crazy at all – I was meditating and letting it change my life.
- No big deal: This one I have only been experiencing and noticing recently. “No big deal” is being able to be flexible in the present moment, to take whatever comes, to not cling to the past, to accept what happens. Good things can happen and they can change your life, but making them a big deal can lead to pride and ego and arrogance – entitlement. Just as easily, something bad can happen and take it all away. The sooner we are accepting that we have control of little, the more in control of ourselves we can be.
I typically hate when people say something (for example, meditation) is for everyone. Not many things in life are for everyone. But I believe meditation is for everyone, especially now when access is so easy. Want to meditate with an app? Go for it. Want to only do it for 5 minutes? Better than nothing. The benefits are there, the science is there, and I truly believe meditation can benefit everyone in some way, even if it’s not the same way.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself, and see what happens. If you do, let me know how it goes for you!
What do you think? If you meditate, what has your experience been? If you don’t, will you give it a try? I’d love to hear from you!