How Meditation Changed My Life

The change I made to my life that had the most impact is learning to meditate. Five years ago I was extremely unhappy in a very stressful job. I was working long hours and struggling to cope with pressures from work. I ended up with the shingles and was very sick for a few weeks. It didn’t help that I tried to work from home while sick such were my feelings of guilt and stress. During my time off my brother suggested I learn meditation. A couple of months later after getting bells palsy I registered to learn TM Transcendental Meditation. I had to attend training for 3 evenings with the lovely John and Mary and then had as many check-ins as I wanted, for me it was just one. I was a bit apprehensive initially, would people think I was nuts, was it a money racket but it changed my life and I can only see that now. What it did for me is give me a sense of space between my thoughts and feelings, I felt I had a pause button where I could process things rationally for a few seconds before I reacted. Usually my emotions at that time were from fear, worry or doubt. This calmness over time gave me confidence to begin yoga. I had never done an exercise course of any description because my anxiety wouldn’t have allowed it. I was always caught up worrying about what people would think or would I be useless at it but it ended up loving it. This connection with my body led me to look at other ways of helping myself and I started attending reiki sessions every 8 weeks. The combination of the three slowly, very slowly helped me out of my nightmare. It gave me a grounding and sense of myself and a calmness of thought to take the blinkers off and look at my life in a kindly way. The reiki often brought up negative thoughts/feelings but I was determined to work through this, by journaling and reflecting. I completed a mentoring programme with my employer and was able to retract myself from my hellish job. While no job has been perfect nothing has ever been as bad. Over time I attending CBT for 8 sessions to get more help for my anxiety which again was another boost to me and my self-esteem, the following year I did a Life coaching course in Mental Health and Well-being. This course had a lot of role play and this did wonders for my self-esteem and values. The focus was so positive it propelled me on. I’m now quite content in a new job and have recently qualified as a reiki practitioner. None of this would have been possible without meditation. I practice it twice a day every day usually for 14 minutes and love it. It’s the nicest thing I do for me and I would never think of stopping. Its changed my life.