I love meditation. But I’m also time conscious. I meditate almost every day and see it as a crucial cog in the development of genuine self-confidence. Your state of mind and wellbeing will naturally fluctuate from day-to-day, and it’s normal to experience both positive and negative thoughts. One reason meditation is such an important tool is that it gives you the opportunity to integrate these different emotions and bring you back to centre.
One way to make the most of each meditation experience is to think about your intention before you begin. I like to keep things simple and approach meditation with one of two options:
- Reactive meditation.
- Proactive meditation.
Reactive meditation: If you have been struggling with the stresses of the week, you’re feeling a bit grumpy, or your mind keeps replaying past events, reactive meditation is your integrative tool of choice.
Reactive meditation is about releasing emotional charges from the past. It focuses on bringing you back to the present and transforming negative emotions. When we view events as bad or negative we store them in our subconscious mind. Over time this accumulated subconscious storage affects our mood and negatively impacts your confidence.
Reactive meditation allows you to release anything that is no longer serving you and dissolve stored up emotions, leaving you feeling balanced and centred.
Proactive meditation: If you have an inspired goal to work towards, a mission or objective you want to accomplish; proactive meditation can fuel you along the way.
Proactive meditation is future orientated. It assists you in creating visions of what you want you future to be like so you can create a crystal clear image of how you want your future to be. By utilising proactive meditation you can create a blueprint, a map for your nervous system so your body knows what it will feel like when you have achieved it. This serves to regularly reconnect you to your objective and creates focus and intention for your upcoming activities. The benefit of this is you are more efficient; you take more effective actions and stay connected to your objective. The net effect of this is a higher probability you will achieve your desired outcome.
Just like when you are feeling low your friends and family are there to lift you up, reactive meditation helps to clear the decks and boost your self-confidence.
Just like a coach who keeps you focused on your goals and asks quality questions to move you forward, proactive meditation fills you with inspiration and enhances your confidence you can achieve your target.
The purpose of both reactive and proactive meditation is integration. Integration allows you to be yourself, express yourself and have more fun. meditation helps to nurture self-confidence so you can continue to grow each day and become responsible for your own wellbeing.
There are many different types of meditation available, with many different names. I would encourage you next time you think about starting or choosing a new meditation, think about what purpose it serves and how it will help you to build true, genuine self-confidence.