I want to tell you a story about how a guy who dropped out of college, had more than a dozen different careers by the age of 24, lost everything by the age of 25, and yet went on to create the life of his dreams by the time he was 30.
Who is this guy? This guy is me!
So what has this got to do with gratitude? Well, that’s where it gets interesting as it’s really about a simple daily habit I got into that changed everything… and that habit is meditation.
Now, this may sound a little weird at first that doing something as simple as meditation could completely transform someones life but if you stick with me here, I’ll do my best to explain.
The first ever meditation I learned was a guided one. It went for an hour and during that time I completely lost sense of myself.
It was like I had zoned out for an extended period and had no recollection of what had happened. I wasn’t exactly asleep as I was aware of images and sensations flashing through my mind but none of it made any sense.
This aroused my curiosity which then led me to travelling the world to study meditation techniques and tools from both eastern and western cultures and traditions.
By this stage I was meditating for at least an hour a day and I was loving it. I was experiencing such a deep sense of calmness and inner peace while simultaneously noticing that things in my outer world were also showing up in new and exciting ways.
It was like a light had been switched on and I was now attracting all sorts of people and opportunities that were more aligned to where I was now headed in my life.
Prior to learning to meditate I had been an introvert who found it hard to talk to more than one person at a time and had zero business or creative acumen. Suddenly, I was meeting new people with ease, was starting to teach seminars and workshops on how to meditate and had so many new horizons opening up in my life.
Best of all, I was opening up to my inner entrepreneur which I never even knew how to spell let alone imagine I had this inside me prior to meditating.
It was like a heaviness or shadow had been lifted from my mind and I was starting to see things clearly for the first time. I noticed I was becoming incredibly sensitive to taste, smell, texture, sound, noise and so many things I’d never noticed before.
I found myself being really passionate about things I’d never been interested in before like healing, coaching and understanding the layers of the human mind as it pertained to happiness and well being. I
Interestingly, I also started to become more sensitive to energy while feeling a deeper empathy towards all living things. This helped me to recognize that most of my life I’d desensitized myself to the world around me as at some level I never felt safe to let the world in.
Meditation also helped me to tap into the flow of my creativity and as I allowed channeled it into my business and life new and even more amazing adventures started to unfold. From writing a best-selling book to speaking on stage in front of two thousand people – I was in awe of my life.
Now, as I sit here writing this and reflecting on my journey of the past twenty years since I started meditating I am immensely grateful. Not only do I get to wake up each day living the life I love and getting paid for it but I’m also financially secure and have created companies that work without me.
For me, it is now all about lifestyle and giving back tenfold for what I have received. I still meditate an hour each day and work harder on myself than any of my businesses and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sure, it wasn’t just meditation that got me to where I am today. Of course it took focus, commitment, discipline, a willingness to learn and most of all patience. Yet, it’s these exact same qualities that get developed while getting into the habit of meditating on a daily basis.
The way I look at it is the meditation if the foundation of all that I am and do. There are so many layers and levels to meditation that I could speak for hours on it which I will leave for another time.
I am so grateful for the keepers of the secrets of meditation that have been handed down over the centuries from teacher to student. The source of true meditation is the same as the source of existence itself. We are simply tapping back into that source to help remember who we are at the core of our being.
That is why meditation is so powerful as it is more a state of being or pure consciousness than it is just a method of sitting and breathing in certain ways. Today’s modern meditation is really nothing more than a chill pill for over-stressed men and women to find some relief in their over-stimulated lives.
At it’s essence though – it is freedom, bliss and joy itself.
