Which is better - Red or Green? Which is the best destination for a vacation - Las Vegas or Dubai? What is the best way to propose someone? Was it right for Aditi to call Armaan at 3 in the morning because she was unable to sleep?
These are some of the questions that we face in our daily lives. For all such instances, we all have some or the other "opinion". This reminds me of a quote - "Opinions are like asshole; everybody has got one". Let us look at this thing called opinion in a bit more detail.
Any time an event happens in our lives, we form an opinion in our minds. If someone does not pick up our call, we make an opinion that the person doesn't value us. If someone shouts at you, you form an opinion that the person isn't kind. If you get ridiculed a few times for your weight, you form an opinion that you don't look good and hence won't ever succeed in life.
The thing about these opinions is that they are personal to us. They come from within us and that is why people LOVE their opinions. They believe that these opinions that they have created is valid and that is why they are so attached to them. Due to the attachment, these opinions are like small creatures that they have decided to adopt.
These opinions thus formed live and grow with them. With each similar events, these opinions grow bigger and bigger. As the opinions grow larger, so does the attachment to them. These opinions then start to feel more real with each passing day. Therefore, they become a part of the person's personality and a part of the lens that the person sees the world with.
As time passes by, there would definitely be people around them with a DIFFERENT opinion. Due to this difference in opinion, there is a clash between two people. Since both of them have nourished their opinion over long periods of time and believe firmly in them, they cannot co-exist together. Not only can two different opinions not exist together, one person cannot drop their opinion in favor of REASON because they have been with the opinion for so long. They have fed it and seen it grow over the years.
Since two people with different opinions will mostly clash, they would prefer to be around people with similar opinions. This is why there are different COMMUNITIES all over the world. People will always find the kind of community that have the same opinions as them and feel comfortable around them. Have you ever seen a theist and an atheist have a good conversation and living together with their opinions? Notice your friend circle. Aren't they the people who share similar opinions as you? Of course we can't choose family, so they might have totally different opinions than you. However, your friends would most likely be people who share the same common beliefs and opinions.
As years go by, no one even visits their opinion to check if they are real or not. They just assume that since they have been with them for years, it MUST BE real. So, they continue to feed their opinions. When the opinions are fed a little it is harmless, but if the opinion is fed a lot, it tends to get big, really fast. Sometimes, the opinions get so big and strong that people feel compelled to protect it no matter what. They fail to see that this is just an opinion and they might be wrong.
Instead, people will go to great lengths to protect their opinions. They would fight with their colleagues, friends, relatives, neighbors etc. if they go against their opinion. It's not uncommon to see two siblings fighting over who their parents love more or who owns the larger part of the property. We see lovers fighting over who has done more for the other person. We see colleagues fighting over one person being irresponsible and the other person defending it that they are not and so on.
Sometimes, people believe in their opinions so much that they end up destroying everything in their lives. They will go to any length to protect their opinion from harm or change and would constantly feed it instead. The worse part is that since these opinions are "ALWAYS RIGHT", nothing can be done. No one can help them because they are self destructing. The only right thing to do is to analyze these opinions, no matter how dear they are to them and let it go knowing that it was good while it lasted, but it doesn't help you anymore in life.
You might have noticed that people are sharing screenshots of Twitter posts on Instagram to share it with their network. Influencers, meme accounts, fan pages, etc. are sharing screenshots of Twitter posts they find funny/interesting on Instagram.
This act of taking screenshots of Twitter posts and sharing on Instagram is driving traffic and attention away from Twitter. On 9th August, the Twitter account by the name Miaa added a tweet to her profile which said the following: -
Twitter heard her prayer and they decided to join in on the movement. They changed their bio on Instagram to read - "Screenshots of Tweets." (SAVAGE!). Now, that is one way to use Moment Marketing to own's advantage.instagram is literally just screenshots of tweets and i think @Twitter should call them out— miaa🌻🦋 (@Miagrassia28) August 9, 2019
After doing so, Twitter has been actively sharing screenshots of Tweets from various accounts. Here are some more "Screenshots of Tweets" from the official Twitter page on Instagram.
Twitter is doing this in hopes of increase engagement on its own Instagram profile and probably spread awareness about the platform itself. Do you think this strategy would be beneficial for Twitter?
iMacros is one of the world's most popular web automation, data extraction, and web testing solution. Using iMacros, you can automate almost any task on the web including, but not limited to - Filling Forms, Extracting Data, Integrating with database, Automate Repetitive tasks, Regression Testing, Testing AJAX Websites, and so much more.
iMacros is now available as a platform to be used along with Internet Explore, Chrome, Firefox or any other web browser that you can think of. Using iMacros, you can easily and quickly create and run test cases for web automation on any website.
The syntax for creating scripts on iMacros is super simple. You don't need to have exceptional coding skills, although that really helps in making the process much more simplified. Using just a few lines, one can create an entire web automation process such as: -
Logging in and logging out of websites
Extracting useful information into a CSV file
Filling forms on a website based on logic, condition, or input from a CSV file.
Integrate with existing databases, CRM systems
Automate actions on any website
Automate Captcha Solving
The possibilities with iMacros are endless. If there is something that can can be done manually on a browser in a website, iMacros can almost definitely take care of that.
Instagram is one of the best platforms for businesses to grow their business. Those business which focus on the aesthetic aspect are the ones that benefit the most from Instagram.
There are many ways in which an account can grown on Instagram. There are a lot of companies that provide Instagram growth opportunities.
One of the fastest ways to get more views on Instagram is without a doubt "Hashtags". Hashtags became clickable and users could follow Hashtags on 2018. Ever since that has happened, users are able to see latest posts of a specific Hashtag, directly in their feed.
This has allowed greater opportunities for brands and businesses to appear directly in the feed of its target users outside their followers without spending any money on marketing. They can simply find the most relevant hashtags of their post and their post will reach their target audience.
The Obvious Technique
Once everyone understood that Hashtags fetch more eyeballs to their content, it was obvious that one should use all the important Hashtags on their posts.
Instagram allows you to add up to 30 Hashtags in one post. This would mean a lot of opportunity to show your content to the audience that matters the most. So, simply search for the most important Hashtags and add them to each post.
The Obvious Mistake
Adding as many Hashtags as you find is one of the most common mistake that new marketers make. You are correct when you say that adding more Hashtags gives more visibility. BUT, there is another side which you should keep in mind.
Instagram has an "algorithm" that ranks relevance of a piece of content based on a number of metrics. One of the metrics that should matter according to the algorithm is Engagement/Impressions. When I say SHOULD matter, I mean theoretically it makes sense. Since no one really knows how the algorithm works, there cannot be an "accurate" approach.
However, think of it in the following manner. If your post is shown to 1,000 people, but only 100 people like it. This would mean that your post has an impression/engagement ratio of 1,000/100 = 10%. So, this would give the "Instagram algorithm" a signal that only 10% of people like your content.
You are getting more impressions, but you are NOT getting similar engagement. This would mean that your post isn't very relevant to the end user and it might benefit them to see other content. So, in the future, you might end up not getting similar reach and similar engagement/impressions for your posts.
The Obvious Solution
Keeping in mind, the Instagram Algorithm, we quickly come to a realization that we should not use as many Hashtags as possible. We should only use those Hashtags that are the most relevant to our content.
The question still remains however, "How many Hashtags to use per post?". To answer that question, read on to the next section.
TrackMaven Report - THE BEST Hashtag Strategies for Social Media"
According to the research Methodology by TrackMaven, "We used the TrackMaven platform to analyze over 65,000 posts by brands on Twitter,
Instagram, and Facebook, published from July 9, 2016 to October 9, 2016. To find out the
best number of hashtags and the best hashtag length for each social media platform, we
examined engagement, or number of interactions per post."
You can find the report Here. Here is an interpretation of the report about Instagram Hashtags.
Instagram posts with nine hashtags perform best. While engagement starts to decrease after this peak, posts with more than nine hashtags still have
higher engagement than posts with fewer than eight hashtags. This suggests that on Instagram, it’s
always better to err on the side of more hashtags rather than fewer.
When it comes to the length of hashtags on Instagram, longer hashtags generally have higher
engagement. Specifically, hashtags that perform best are 21 characters in length, and 24 characters in length. However, Instagram hashtags that are 25 characters in length see a huge decrease in average
interactions per post, and engagement bottoms out for hashtags with 27 or more characters.
Key Takeaways
There are a few things to learn when it comes to Hashtag Strategy on Instagram.
1. Have at least 9 Hashtags on your post.
2. Try not to use the maximum limit of Hashtags possible
3. Use only relevant Hashtags. Focus on Engagement more than Impressions
4. Hashtag should have character length of less than 25 characters.
5. Keep experimenting with different sets of Hashtags for Max. Reach, Impressions, and Engagement.
I had stopped documenting my Meditation journey since a while now. Now only did I stop documenting, I had stopped meditation altogether for a while. In this time, the amount of awareness that I had of life went down south really fast. Now that I have started meditation again, I realize how important it truly is.
While meditating three days ago after a long time, I felt deeply connected to myself. This is a strange feeling that I believe most people are totally oblivious to. Our minds are constantly running and there is no break in between to even breathe for the mind. Meditation allows us to take a break in life and see things from a neutral viewing point.
Before I started meditating today, I was playing a game on my mobile phone. I know I am not supposed to play games early in the morning, but hey, I am not a perfect human being! So, after I played for a while, I began to meditate. What I noticed immediately was that there was an urge to immediately pick up my phone again. Not only that, my thoughts were totally occupied in the game and thinking about it.
I know how my mind works, so I tried to shift my focus from thinking about the game to not thinking about anything. I understand it is weird for people to NOT THINK about anything at all because they have absolutely no idea that something like that is even possible. Even people who meditate daily ask me, what are you talking about. You must either be focusing on your breath or somewhere else right? How is it possible to not think at all???
However, it is easily possible to not think about anything at all. If that is tough to understand, you can assume that instead of thinking about the game, I start paying attention to my breath. What I realized was that whatever the content of our conscious mind is, has the greatest pull for our minds. Whatever is the most recent thought going on in our mind, it has the tendency to draw our attention towards it.
At the moment that we have a particular thought, it seems as if that thought is really important. It feels as if we have to give our entire attention to that thought as it is really significant and meaningful to our lives. However, if we force ourselves to not think about that particular thing or divert our attention to another thought, something magical happens. Within a few seconds, we realize that it wasn't really as important as we earlier thought it was.
If we start shifting our focus or stop paying attention to a thought, its power slowly fades away. Our attachment to that thought slowly starts fading off and we no longer feel that strong sense of urgency and the desire to pay attention to it. Once we let go of this thought, we feel relaxed immediately without delay. Let me put what I mean by that in context.
Have you ever had an argument/disagreement with someone? Have you ever stopped talking to someone because of a fight? Who am I kidding, I am sure you must have. Everyone has been in contact with someone they don't agree with. Next, remember the time when you or the other person confronted the situation and sat down and talked about your views. Then, remember how you felt when the dispute was settled. How did you feel?
Didn't you feel a sense of relief and relaxation? Didn't you feel as if a weight has literally been lifted off your shoulders? Ever wondered why that happens?
The reason for this miracle is that the thought has been in your sub-conscious since a long time and you have been dragging this feeling/thought with you. The moment it was resolved, you had effectively LET GO of those thoughts and feelings and you immediately felt relaxed. Now imagine, there are hundreds and thoughts of thoughts that revolve around in your head each day. Imagine the amount of "WEIGHT" you have added to yourself.
When you "Detach" yourself from your thoughts, there is a sense of immediate relaxation. Your mind becomes centered and really focused. Once you detach yourself from a thought, you realize that the significance that you had earlier given to it is meaningless. The thought which you thought had such importance in your life suddenly no longer feels relevant.
I feel that people suffer so much in life because they haven't trained themselves to Detach. One really needs to understand to detach from their thoughts and emotions to feel relaxed, aware, and alive. So, I ask YOU (the reader) to provide your inputs as to what are some good ways in which we can learn to detach from our thoughts and let go of things which make us feel HEAVY in the head.
Today was a very deep Meditative session for me. Within a minute, my entire body started to relax very deeply. I immediately started to feel sore in some areas in my body. So, I started to move my body a little and adjust myself to relax. In just two minutes, my entire body was fully relaxed.
The trend that I am noticing is that with each session, I am able to relax deeply and quickly. Initially, it took a while to just make myself sit down, but now, I can relax my body instantly.
Within two minutes, I had started to lose awareness of the body and my surroundings. I was so much more aware of what is going on in my mind. Earlier, I might have been skipping what was I was thinking and feeling. But now, I was totally focused on what was going on in my mind. I could observe the thoughts that were coming and going and whether I entertained them or not.
I just focused on my mind and after a while, I realized that I had no awareness of the body. So, I forced my hands and feet to move a little to check how it affects my mental awareness. When I moved my body, I noticed that my mind got carried away with the movement and had started to focus on what was happening in that area of my body. I was now aware of the areas that moved, the feeling in those body parts as well as their current state. After a few seconds, I was back to the awareness in my mind.
When I think about what happened, I realized one thing about the mind. The mind always wants to rest, but things that happen in the outside world causes our bodies to believe they might be at danger. So, it forces the mind to analyze the external stimuli and decide if it is life threatening or not. Once the decision has been made that there is no danger, the body lets go of the mind to continue its process.
Therefore, the trick that I realized is to make yourself believe that you are not in danger and nothing in the outside world requires your attention. When we do that, we trick our mind and body to stay focused and not get distracted by other sounds or movements or changes in the environment. In essence, any changes around us is taken as physical danger by our body and mind. Hence, we should either Meditate in a place where we know we are safe or we train our minds to remember that we are safe so that it does not get affected by outside changes.
After practicing Meditation for so many days, one thing that is clearly evident is the amount of time taken for the body to relax. Earlier, it used to take about 5-10 minutes for the body to calm down when I sat for Meditation. But now, with each practice, the body has started to relax faster with each session. Now, it takes about a minute for my body to relax itself. This is really great.
During my day-to-day life, I feel really calm and focused on my life. Earlier, I felt as if I was drifting through life in zombie mode. I had no awareness of what I am doing and why I am doing. There wasn't clear vision and understanding of things. There was just so much noise going around that focusing on anything was really tough. Now, I have huge amounts of control over what I do, what I think, and what I feel. The level of consciousness and control over my life is increasing on a regular basis.
Today, something weird happened. After a few minutes of relaxing, I started to relax my mind as well. When I did that, I was just lost somewhere. I was physically in my room, but it was as if I don't exist anymore. Just like when we sleep, everything just vanishes and we wake up next day. Though I wasn't asleep, I wasn't awake either. I can't even recall those moments because I have no recollection of it. The Music was playing in the background, but I don't recall hearing it. I don't recall anything at all.
In my regular life, I have so much more awareness of my thoughts. I have started to realize that I get carried away in thought a lot of times during the day. However, there is a difference from earlier times. Now, as soon as a thought comes to my mind and I chase it, I become aware. Within a few seconds, I notice myself being carried away by the thought. Then, I ask myself to let go of that thought and just like that, I stop running after the thought and come back to the present moment. I don't allow my thoughts to change what I am feeling.
Not only am I aware of my thoughts, I am really more aware of my emotional states. I find myself automatically stopping what I am doing from time to time and just notice my surroundings. Not only do I notice my immediate environment, I also take note of my physical as well as emotional states. If there is something that is bothering me, I make sure to be aware of it.
My meditation session today was a very focused one. The greatest thing that happened to me today was that I noticed that I am an "observer". I was able to "SEE" somehow that something was going on in my mind. This made me realize that if something is going on in my mind, how can I see it? If I am able to notice what is going on in my mind, it must mean I am not the mind and the mind is something that I can control.
While I was meditating, I was also aware that I am not being distracted from the external sounds and disturbances. I had this urge to relax my body deeper and deeper. So, at that time, if I was getting any thoughts, I just removed myself from them and focused solely on relaxing the body. The most amount of relaxation starts from the core of my stomach. That is where I feel as if there is tremendous amounts of relaxation.
While trying to relax myself, a few thoughts were coming and going and I was getting carried away by a few of them. It was not that every thought was affecting me, the number of thoughts that were able to pull my concentration away were few. The thing that I noticed at that time is that every thought affects the heart first on a very minute level.
After every thought comes, the heart feels something and may be changes the pressure and intensity of the blood pumping. It also changes its rhythm sometimes for that matter. The change doesn't really have to be huge, it is a very minute change. We are just not aware of the heart and our bodies on subtle levels, that is why we can't really know the change. But, when the body is fully relaxed, the amount of awareness that is there of the body really increases.
During our daily lives, we just focus on the larger muscles of our bodies. We have trained ourselves to feel the large muscles such as the hands, the legs, the eyes, mouth etc. However, there are so many muscles, fibers, etc. in our body and yet we are unaware of them. By doing Meditation, we come to realize just how much there is inside our body. When the gross body settles down, we can feel the subtle aspects of our body such as the heart beat, the blood flow to various parts, the cycles of our breath, ht deeper muscles of our back and stomach and shoulders. We realize that we can control so much more than what we actually think.
This reminds me of the Quote that I absolutely love which I read on the "Kali Linux OS". The quote goes - "The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear". This is just so deep and so true for almost everything in life, and especially Meditation. In Meditation, we quiet so many things that allows us to be able to hear more of the body, mind, and ultimately ourselves.
Now that I have become habituated to Meditation, I have noticed that it allows the possibility of instant relaxation. As soon as I sit for Meditation, I notice my body being relaxed. This relaxation then starts to bleed over to the mind. Slowly, even my mind begins to feel calmer and more relaxed.
At this stage of Meditation, I have started to notice much more of my body. I am so much more aware of the different parts of my body that I was unaware of earlier. Now, I am able to feel more of my muscles relaxing.
During the initial stages of today's session, there were a lot of thoughts of the past coming into my mind. These thoughts were distracting me from the present moment and forcing me to give my attention to them. I was engaging in those thoughts, but at the same time, I knew that I have the ability to pull myself away from them.
Though I was remembering the memories of the past and trying to make sense of them, I knew I had the ability to disconnect from them any time that I wished. So, I tried doing just that. After being engaged with those thoughts, I shook them off my mind and switched my focus to the present moment.
I believe that thoughts will always be there no matter what. It is just our ability to train ourselves to disconnect from our thoughts that gives us power. In our daily lives, we don't really think before being lost in our thoughts. We feel as if they are natural and we are totally engaged in them until and unless someone or something shakes us off of it. We don't learn the skill of disengaging with a thought and that is how we are trained throughout our lives.
We are conditioned to believe that any external situation or someone else will shift our thoughts. This is the reason that you will see most people keeping themselves busy so that they are not affected by their thoughts. Since they will be busy keeping themselves distracted from their thoughts, they believe that they have effectively removed the thought from their awareness. However, this is clearly a false conditioning where we learn the wrong way to fix something.
The thing is that the problem isn't with the thought itself. The problem is that you are inadequately in the ability do disconnect from a thought. You have not been trained or taught to leave a connection with a thought on command. This is why if you get a thought in your mind, it keeps going on and on till it eats you up completely. By Meditation, you learn that no matter what the thought is, you can let it go on your command.
Coming back to the session today. After a few minutes, my phone had started to vibrate as someone was sending me messages on WhatsApp. When the phone started to vibrate, it induced an urge in me to put it up and check it. The more vibrations happened, the more I wanted to open it up. Lots of thoughts started to run through my mind. I started wondering who might have been sending those messages. What might they have sent? So many WHAT-IFs started coming to my mind. All of this was enticing me to just pick up the damn phone and see those notifications.
At this time, I remember a post that I had written on how to get rid of social media addiction. I talked about how you should wait 30 seconds before seeing any notification on your phone. More on that can be found in a post. The link to which I will be sharing some day. I don't know when and where :-p! Anyway, I thought to myself that I don't need to open up the messages RIGHT NOW! I can wait till the end of the session to see the messages and nothing is going to happen. If something was urgent, the person on the other end could have called but they didn't.
So, I thought to myself that I am not a victim to my phone. I am the person who controls how the phone reacts to me and not the other way around. So, I didn't open the phone at all. Though I was feeling the urge, I forced myself to stay calm and just let it go.
Today's session wasn't really a focused session. There were a lot of thoughts coming and going. I was carried about by thoughts and constantly distracted in them. However, I had this sense of control throughout that if I force myself, I can get out of this place and relax myself. I did that many times and many times, I was totally thought free. But almost 90% of the time, I was distracted.
However, I feel that it was still important to be with the practice. I still was able to push my boundaries and change my relationship with external distractions. The power of external stimuli has really reduced now and I am less likely to be distracted by them. Also, even if there were so many thoughts being triggered, I was able to have a sense of control over them. With some effort, I could disconnect from those thoughts. So, even when I was totally carried away in thoughts, I would say that the session was still very good.
It is not every day that a cricketer will score a 100. It is not every day that the best football player will score a goal. But just by practicing and playing every day, they are training themselves and learning. Here, LEARNING is the most important thing and that is what I did today!
Today, I woke up and started using my phone for a while. After about half an hour or so of that, I thought that I am awake enough and I should sit down for meditation. After I did that, one thing was really clear to me. I had A LOT of thoughts running in my head. As soon as I sat down for meditation, it was really evident to me that my mind was running around in all directions. Although I wasn't really thinking about anything in particular or analyzing anything at all, but it felt like there was a lot of thoughts going on.
So, I put on some "Meditation Music" from playlist and started to relax myself. After just a minute or two, I could feel my body feeling relaxed. I could feel that my body WANTED to relax. Not only did my body want to relax, even my mind wanted to relax. As more time passed, I could feel more of my mind and body being relaxed. I was having so many thoughts prior to meditating and after just a few minutes, I felt as if those thoughts are starting to fade away one at a time.
After what felt like a few minutes, my mind was at peace. Although there weren't any specific thoughts even prior to meditating, I somehow felt at ease. Earlier, if I wanted to, I could switch to another thought, but now, it felt like those thoughts were no longer in the vicinity for me to chase around. In fact, I felt so light in my mind that I literally felt lighter in the head. I felt as if a weight has been lifted off my head.
As for the body, I really felt that my body wanted to relax even more. It was not my mind that wanted it to relax, the body itself wanted to relax further and further. At the core of my body, I could feel the stomach becoming more relaxed. I could feel my guts feeling stable and relaxed. Slowly, my entire body was relaxing. However, after a point, it felt like my body couldn't relax any further. Then, I realized that my body isn't in its best posture.
My body was telling me (not literally) to move my neck a little to relax the muscles. So, although we are advised not to move our bodies during meditation, I rolled my neck from side to side to relax the muscles. Then, I felt as if my body wanted me to exhale fully. Hence, I took a deep breathe and forcefully let all the air out. Similarly, there were a lot of tiny movements and adjustments that I was feeling I need to make and hence I did those. After each tiny adjustment, I could literally feel those areas of my body relaxing even deeper.
At this point, I thought to myself that in meditation, we ARE allowed to move. There are no strict rules as to what needs to be done and what not. By forcing everyone to stay still and not move and not think, we are actually deviating away from the true meaning of meditation. In Meditation, we learn about ourselves. In Meditation, we quiet our thoughts and become more in sync with our body, our nature and everything around us. So, if I am moving during Meditation, I am not doing anything wrong - Given that I know what I am doing. Any movement that I made had a specific purpose, and that was to relax a certain area. I was more in sync with my body and I could feel what my body wanted me to do.
So, after making a few adjustments, I was relaxing even deeper, but I still was feeling that my back is not straight. Hence, I opened my eyes, adjusted my pillow and straightened my back. The music was still on, so I closed my eyes and went back to relaxing. After all the adjustments, I really felt SUPER relaxed. My entire being - Mind and Body was really relaxed and fully at ease in the moment.
After making all the adjustments, I realized that my thoughts were focused around moving my body to make it more relaxed. However, my mind was still in constant motion. My focus was pin point and I wasn't wandering from the focus on my body. This was a great thing that I was really focused on one thing only and not being distracted. However, I was thinking which meant that my mind was working and not really relaxing. So, I tried to relax the mind by giving myself permission to not think about anything else.
Since I was meditating with the music, I noticed that even music is a distraction. I was using Music to shun out the sounds from my immediate environment. But, when I Meditate, I realized that Music itself was a distraction that pulled my attention from myself to itself.. So, since I knew that there is distraction, I tried an experiment. I was training myself to shift my focus from the sound of the music to the ambient sounds to the sound of my breath and then to not focusing on absolutely anything. Instead of sticking to just the Music, I switched from focusing on the noises, then to my breath and kept switching till I learned that my awareness has increased and now, I have the ability to choose what I want to focus on.
During this time, the maid had entered the room and started cleaning. She was making a lot of movements and because of the activities involved in cleaning, there were a lot of noises. However, I found myself being aware of the noises, yet not being involved in them. It was as if I was aware of the immediate environment as well as myself at the same time. It is really hard to explain, but it was as if I could focus on multiple things at the same time without really being distracted by anything. I could hear the sounds, but at the same time, I was also being relaxed and I could feel both of those things.
Overall, I understood that it is alright to move during Meditation, provided you know why you are moving. During the initial stages of Meditation, the body really relaxes itself and we become more attuned to the body. We can feel deeply what the body wants us to do. The connection between the Body and the Mind increases and that I think is a wonderful thing!
It was around 10 in the evening just before bed when I had nothing to do. So, I decided I will sit for meditation. When I was sitting down for meditation, my sister had started watching "Koffee with Karan" on the Television with the volume loud enough that I can hear it till my room.
However, I took it as a challenge to meditate in such distraction. I wanted to see if it is possible to do so and if yes, how. So, as I sat for meditation, I realized that SOUND is one of the biggest source of distraction during meditation. If the scent is unpleasant, it is alright. Even if the lights are on, we can simply close our eyes and focus. If someone tries to shake us, we can still force ourselves to not be affected. However, when there is a lot of sound, they grab our attention.
Human beings are naturally born with just 2 fears - Fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Besides that, they don't have any other fear. Every other fear is learned during their lives. Since the fear of sound is a natural instinct of human beings, I believe that sounds will always be a major source of distraction during meditation. Loud noises trigger a fear response in us which force us to analyze the situation for any danger.
Although the TV was playing really loud, I forced myself to sit down for meditation regardless. I noticed that I was drawn to the actors words no matter how hard I try not to. However, there were instances when I had forced myself to stop focusing on the sounds and focus on either my breath or the area above my eyes. I had sat to meditate for about 15 minutes, but I could only force myself to focus around 15-20 seconds. Beyond that, I was just focusing too much on the noises.
I thought I should stick with the practice because Meditation is a conscious practice. While meditating, I am training my mind to not be distracted by the external conditions. So, it is important to have an external distraction so that I can train my mind to not be distracted. I waited till my sister closed the television. When she finally did, something really great happened.
After the sounds were removed, I noticed that my level of awareness was REALLY high. I had left the practice of meditation and was just sitting there. I noticed that I was so much more aware of the environment around me. I could sense the people around me. I could notice the sounds that they are making and the sounds that I was making. My movements became so slow as I was aware of every action that my body was taking.
During that time, I felt resistant to change. What I mean by that is that I did not want to change my body position, breathing pattern or my emotions. There was a great sense of stability in my mind. After meditation, I found myself not being moved much by the emotions of other people around me. I did not change whatever I was feeling.
What I feel is that it takes patience to meditate. I sat down to meditate for 15 minutes, but I could only control my mind for about 30 seconds. But it wasn't about how long you can control your mind. I have just started meditating recently and I don't have God level control over my mind. So, I am forcing myself to just sit down and meditate. It is about sticking to the practice. You can't expect to be a master of a skill in just a few days or weeks. The result of sticking to the practice no matter what has great results.
Today, as I was driving to office, I noticed that I was really aware of my surroundings a lot more. I was able to catch myself being lost in thoughts. I have marked traffic lights as my signals to be aware. So, every time I see a traffic light, I force myself to be aware. I notice the surroundings and I notice my thoughts. I ask myself if I am dreaming. How can I be sure that I am not dreaming? So, the results of meditation for a few minutes really carry forward throughout our day.
The awareness that I have in life is really increasing on a daily basis. I can actually find myself during the day just noticing things around me. During the day, I notice the posture of my body and realize that I have been sitting in an improper posture which is causing stress in certain areas of my body. So, I just readjust myself to fix this small issue.
Not only am I more aware of my body, I am much more aware of my thoughts and emotions. I notice how a certain thought or event during the morning is affecting me till now. So, I ask for forgiveness and let go of the negative emotion that has been weighing me down. I also just relax myself regularly during the day. The impact of so many days of meditation is really a positive one.
A great thing that has been happening with me is that I want to meditate more and more every day. Meditating is like an addiction that you just want to meditate more so that you feel super relaxed. I meditate so much that when traveling to office, I sit behind the bike with my dad and meditate. I don't let the traffic affect me or all the honking distract me from the Meditation experience. Though they do distract me, I am training myself to come back to my inner self after being distracted.
A key insight that I got today during my morning meditation is about the role of "CONTENT" in our lives. Our mind is under the slavery of so much content that is floating around in the world. By content, I don't just mean the posts on websites, I mean the news, videos, pictures, advertisements, things to do, people to talk to, and so on. There is just so much information to process, but our minds have not been designed to process all of that.
According to something that I read online, 90% of all the content available in the world has been created in the last 10 years. Just imagine the amount of text, pictures, memes, videos, Documents, Softwares, TV series, and so much more is available online. In fact, there is so much information available on a single topic that it is almost impossible to understand any single things in its entirety in one lifetime.
We are occupied in the content around us all the time via our smart phones and television sets. We read the Advertisements on the newspaper, on boards while we walk down the streets or in the cereal boxes while eating. All of the content around us, forces us to pay attention to them. They force us to leave everything else and give our ATTENTION to them. This, effectively reduces time from our life.
It might seem like a few seconds worth of time to read an Ad in the newspaper. But you forget that all the time adds up. Not only does all the time add up, you also waste your valuable mental energy in the content that you don't really need. By reading the content that you don't really want, you tire yourself for no reason and then get shocked when you feel tired by the end of the day.
The content around us has made our minds a slave to them. We rely so heavily on the things around us to comfort us that we ourselves have become lazy. Instead of us choosing the content that we want to engage in, the content chooses to engage our minds and we find ourselves powerless. Take the YouTube suggestion algorithm for example. If you watch one video, the suggestion gives you another one to watch and you go - "Hmm, this seems interesting, let's watch that one.". After an hour or so of doing this, you find yourself seeing videos of "A giraffe drinking coffee using a straw". We got so carried away in the content that we let it dictate what we want to feed our minds.
This is where the Meditation training helps us. When we Meditate, we are training ourselves to not get ourselves engaged in content around us. We train ourselves that even if there are noises around us, we don't really need to pay attention to those. We don't need to spend our energy on anything and everything around us.
Of course, during the initial stages, it is preferable that there be minimum noises, minimum light and minimum disturbance. This is done so because our minds are not trained and it will be distracted easily. As we advance forward, we train ourselves to be less affected by the external environment. In fact, I recommend always trying to meditate with some external stimuli. The reason is that during your daily life, there are always things that will try to disturb you. There will seldom be a time when you are free from distractions. So, it is best to train yourself in that environment.
While meditating today, I realized that we don't really have awareness in our lives. By awareness, I mean that there is so much happening in us and around us that we don't even have in our conscious mind. For example, at this very moment, there are so many noises around us, there are so many objects lying around us, there are so many thoughts going on inside us.
Despite all this information around us, we are so lost in either the task at hand, or in our minds that we lack awareness in our lives. Because we do not really have awareness in our lives, we are not aware of the vivid images that we have in our dreams.
The reason I found for this lack of awareness is that we don't really take breaks in our lives. We have learnt ever since our childhood that we need to constantly be doing something. We need to optimize our time that we have. We need to be productive all the time and either think something or do something that pushes us forward in life.
Our minds have become so adapted to be running all the time that we don't really take breaks to notice the things around us. Not only that, we don't even stop to notice what we are thinking. We don't stop to analyze how we are feeling during the day.
This lack of awareness in our lives is one of the most important reason that we should meditate. While meditating, we train our mind to stop doing anything and just notice things around us. We train our mind to notice the sounds, the smells, the sense of touch, our thoughts and so many things. By meditating, we can be sure that our awareness will also increase.
An effective way to ensure that we are aware in our life is what I call - "Awareness Breaks". At regular intervals in our day to day life, we can schedule what one or two minute breaks. By interrupting our regular patterns and introducing regular breaks every few hours, we train our mind to take breaks.
During this small one minute break, just sit back and DON'T do anything. Just relax, stretch your body, take a deep breath and notice the things around you. Realize what you are doing, notice what you are thinking, have a look around and notice your environment. See the colors of objects around you, look at the ceiling because you rarely do that. May be just close your eyes and listen to the sounds around you.
Doing just this simple exercise that literally takes one minute every few hours will boost your awareness in life. If you find it tough to have awareness breaks automatically at first, use your smartphone to set alarms for every one hour or two hours. When this alarm rings, try to stop whatever you are doing and just be aware.
One of the purposes of Meditation is to train your mind to not wander aimlessly. We can do that by stopping our minds when it wanders and training it to be aware. A great way to do that is "Awareness Breaks"!
The first thing that I noticed while meditating is that the general sense of awareness in my daily life is increasing. Instead of just going through the motions, I have started to take notice of my immediate environment. Earlier, I was so lost in doing whatever I am doing that I could not notice my thoughts, emotions or how I am feeling physically. But now, I am very much aware and I notice things at regular intervals.
I notice how I am feeling in my body as well as the thoughts that are going on in my mind. I automatically stop from time to time and realize what I am doing and what I am thinking and feeling. In fact, if I am having a negative thought, I find myself automatically catching myself in the process and analyzing that thought.
I am very less distracted by the external stimulus and I control where I give my attention. I am even mentally calm now as compared to earlier times. Earlier, I had 100 things running in my mind which would freeze me and not allow me to think or work. But now, I am fully concentrated on what I am doing. The task at hand is very nicely completed with my full attention and less distractions.
We all have wishes and desires that we want very dearly. My desires to achieve something or want something has started reducing. According to the insight that I received, this is one of the most crucial factor for having a calm mind. I don't feel as if I need to complete a task or achieve something immediately. This is what has helped me be extremely calm. Of course, my goals are there that I need to achieve and things that I need to do. However, those goals don't seem to take up my full attention and energy throughout the day. Instead, they are there motivating me when the time is right.
A major change that was subtle that has started to happen is my heart not changing its rhythm based on external stimuli. When a scary thought or an external event used to happen earlier, my heart would change its rhythm to give me a sinking feeling. Now, even when I have those thoughts or events from the outside world, my heart does not change its beating pattern. I am as calm as I was previous to that thought. This made me to think that whatever we feel, the heart is at the center of it. The speed at which our hearts beat determine what we feel.
While meditating, I was getting a thought over and over again - "WHAT you do during meditation is much more important than HOW you do it". I am assuming that it means that meditation has a goal, and that is to calm you down perhaps. There doesn't necessarily need to be one way to achieve a desired result. So, every person might have their own way to meditate. There isn't a silver bullet that is suited for everyone. HOW someone achieves inner peace is not as important as achieving inner peace.
One thing that makes my meditation different is the understanding of "STATES". States is a concept that I use for myself to describe a state of being - physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have found that to attract something in life, you need to put yourself in that state and that thing will automatically find its way in your life. One of the ways that I have found to do that is using "I AM" during meditation. I imagine myself having whatever I want and say something like "I AM rich" or "I AM successful in landing my new client", and so on. Then, I put myself in that state. I hold that state for a few seconds and then watch the magic unfold.
Meditation just after waking up seems to be a bad idea to me today. While meditating immediately after waking up, I felt as if I will sleep immediately. In fact, I realized I was dozing off a few minutes into meditation. I did not use any music to meditate.
I believe that it is better if you wake up and spend a few minutes to just freshen up to start meditating. This is because I feel that when you wake up, you are already sleepy. If you don't wake up properly, you are more likely to doze off.
Moreover, I believe that meditation is a conscious process where you train your mind to be active. If your mind is already in the sleep state, it isn't going to help you to meditate effectively. Of course, I might be wrong, but because of the experience, I believe it is better to be a little awake before starting meditation.
Today, I have decided that I will start documenting my entire meditation journey. The thing that I have noticed is that everyone just teaches you what to do and what not to do in meditation. But I find that it is still not the entire picture.
So, I am going to document my meditation journey and share how it feels and what I get as a result. Also, I will be sharing any insights that I get from my meditation experience. This will not only help me share what I learn from others, I will also be able to put everything in one place.
Okay, so the first thing insight that I got while meditating is this - "Meditation is an active process". Meditation is not a passive process where you just close your eyes, focus on your breath and hope everything comes to you. Just like an exercise, meditation is an active process where instead of training your muscles, you train the mind.
When you practice let's say Football, you do certain drills to train certain muscles in your body to fire instantly to achieve a result. You train the muscles in your body so that you can use them any way that you want when the time comes. Similarly, during meditation, you train your mind so that instead of the mind controlling your life, you train it so that you can have control over your mind and use it any way that you want.
Hence, just closing your eyes and sitting cross-legged and focusing on your breath isn't going to help you at all. Doing all this is just like wearing your football clothes, shoes, guards and getting ready for playing. The active part of meditation starts after you are ready to start meditating. Although I know that during later stages, it is not required to close your eyes or even sit to meditate, but during the initial stages, they can be seen as good guidelines.
What I learnt while meditating today is that the first aim of meditation isn't to have control over your mind. The first aim of meditation is to put you in a stable state - Physically, mentally and emotionally so that you are not stirred up by anything at all. When you are not stirred by any factor, you are at a very calm state. In this calm state, you have the ability to make better decisions.
I think the purpose of sitting quietly during meditation is to shut off any stimuli from the external world so that you are not occupied with anything. Once you have nothing to worry about, you can rest your mind to have clarity of thought and analyze things with a much different understanding.
When we just sit for meditation, we are essentially training our mind and the body to be absolutely calm. If there are thoughts, emotions and anything else popping up in our consciousness, we learn to be totally neutral to it. Instead of being a slave to our mind and the body, we learn that we have power of it. In the initial few days, it might just seem to be a one time thing during the day. But, as you keep meditating daily, you will see that it starts to become a part of you. You are much more stable in your daily life.