The two minutes began, and it was not going well.
We decided to give meditation a try one evening as we were sitting in the living room. This was probably the fourth time in my life consciously attempting to meditate and I did not have high hopes starting out based on history. We decided to focus on one affirming statement for the two minute meditation period. It took more than two minutes for me to decide on my statement, but I finally reached one seemingly randomly. I didn’t think anything of it as we began.
Thoughts interrupted me, challenging my chosen statement. Well, are you really… what will your job performance review be this year? Does this person think you’re successful? What about this person who does this better than you? What about all those times when you could’ve tried harder? If you really were, wouldn’t you be promoted faster? I kept on going, but I could feel that my efforts were increasingly getting weaker. Further aggravating the situation, an email alert from one of our cell phones sounded in the middle of the two minutes, distracting me from what little momentum I had.
We each shared how well we thought the process went. The consensus was it could probably have gone better for both of us, especially given the distractions. I mentioned that while I intellectually knew each one of us defines our own success, I’ve had trouble with feeling confident in that since childhood. I felt ambivalent, confused… almost as if my inner being had stumbled onto something that was eye-opening but there wasn’t enough time to fully process it yet.
In deciding to repeat the exercise another time, a curious thing happened. At the moment when I closed my eyes again, I felt moisture begin building at the corner of my left eye. I initially shrugged it off, but the tension began building in the other eye as well. As I allowed myself to experience this all the way through, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It was as if the cells in my body, they were thanking me for not giving up and instead, repeating the exercise to cement the statement. I had no challenging thoughts come up during this time, but steady streams of silent tears, which represented the years of not feeling good enough, of self doubt, of being too self-critical, all being healed through the repeated statements of “I am successful.” They were not sad tears, or angry tears, or tears of pity; they were tears of joy, of acceptance, and of a newly attained peace with myself. When I opened my eyes, I felt a little more whole, more cleansed, and knew that I was further along in bettering (“meditating”) myself from the deeply rooted stuff that each one of us has within.
This personal experience clearly demonstrates the power of thought to impact change and growth within your life. Just with a mere 2 minutes, about the length of a commercial break. I wasn’t a believer before, but this experience gave me a glimpse of the positive impact of meditating yourself from any childhood conditioning or preconceived beliefs you may have. What are some changes in beliefs you could impact today with meditation?