For years, I made excuses as to why I couldn't commit to meditating. One of my best excuses was, "I just don't have the time."
I'm one of those people who modern pop-culture would classify as a "hustler". By day, I'm a marketing director who leads multiple teams across 30+ clients. In the evenings, I teach marketing at a variety of universities here in the midwest. And my weekends consist of grading papers, tackling chores, and spending quality time with my wife and dogs.
Nevertheless, my daily hour-long commutes to and from work provide ample time listen to audiobooks about various aspects of spirituality. Many of these books have taught me much about the power of meditation. I've learned that meditation is the key to opening doors to finding harmony with oneself and to leave this dimension to connect with a higher spiritual vibration. The experiences the authors share were mind-bending and I wished that I had what it took to experience similar things. Nevertheless, I just didn't have time to meditate. That is until I made the time.
Source: https://goo.gl/JFgscx
A few days ago, I had a conversation with a colleague about meditation. I shared how much better I've felt since taking up the practice. And how in an ideal world, I'd spend much of the day in meditation. Her response to me was, "Adam, I wish I had the time to meditate. I always have the best intentions to meditate, but I'm simply too busy." I responded back, "Why do you want to meditate?"
I shared with my colleague what I learned about finding the time to meditate, and that is:
You'll find the time to meditate when you know what you want to achieve through meditation and those goals are more important than the other priorities keeping you from meditating.
We prioritize what's important to us. Think about how much time we spend:
- Taking on projects
- Scrolling through our social media feeds
- Playing video games
- Surfing dating sites
- Watching TV or online videos
- Working on that side-hustle
The reality is, we are in control of what we do with our time. We make time for what's important to us.
So, how do we find the time to meditate?
Here are a few ideas to consider:
- Find a meaningful reason for meditating. This philosophy should apply to everything we do, right?
- List out the activities that are keeping you from meditating and rank order them based on importance
- Move or replace an activity on your list that has a lower importance than meditation
- Start meditating for short periods of time (5-10 minutes) and expand as you feel led
- Find an accountability partner
That being said, best of wishes in your meditation journey.
Adam
