If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
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If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
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Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#2The misconception about meditation is that it requires one to give up everything and sit silently. This is not true in its entirety as it depends on how one interprets the word "meditation".
The meditation does not necessarily require you to give up one thing for the sake of another. The goal of the meditation is to "be in awareness" and you can achieve this same goal by being alert and aware with any activity your find yourself doing at any given moment. For example...
You are washing dishes but you are not really washing dishes because your mind is wandering with thoughts on what you need to do tonight at the place you need to visit. By the time your dishes are done, you have already planned for your future as your mind kept you busy with the thoughts of the future while you forgot what you were doing in the present (which is, washing dishes, which you really didn't).
The meditation is to be-in-present with whatever activity you do and love to do. If you had washed your dishes with full alertness and awareness, you would have achieved the same goal of meditation.
Let's go even further with another example.
You love to play music as your passion (or dance, or paint, or fill in the blank activity here) but you don't get enough opportunity in the day to do what you love to do more with passion. When you dance or sing or play music or run or exercise, you get the opportunity during that activity to forget yourself in the act (the subject merges into the object) and you become one with the reality, or you transcend that favorite activity by merging your self into it. That moment of transcendence is meditation, and you should find more opportunities to be in that meditation, in those moments.
Now, I am not suggesting that the type of meditation mentioned at the source is wrong or ineffective. What I am suggesting however is that people don't need to get stuck with one type of explanation of meditation because ultimately you can achieve the same goal by shifting the focus a bit.
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#3I took a mindfulness meditation class a year or two ago and I thought this was a pretty nice introduction to some of the ideas.
For anyone interested in the science, I have found lots of good articles by subscribing to this mailing list: http://www.mindfulexperience.org/newsletter.php
The ideas have been around forever, but scientists have really taken to testing them in recent decades.
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#4Focus on your breath going in and out. Every time you have a thought or an urge, notice it and bring yourself back to your breath.
From what I've heard so far, meditation is based on focusing on your body in order to quiet your mind. Are there other schools/techniques?
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#5I think the author has an excellent point about training one's ability to resist urges. Urges are spontaneous. They don't necessarily fit with our work flow. In fact, they interrupt it. Maybe a good analogy is the Time Management Matrix by Eisenhower (and popularized in Steven Covey's '7 Habits' book). Urges almost always present themselves as urgent tasks, but they aren't always important.
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion that meditation will make you more productive. The evidence presented reminds me of a scenario from The Office, where Michael defends Monday morning movies by claiming they are more productive the rest of the day. Of course the reason they are more productive is because they have to be in order to recover the time spent watching a movie!
Rather, I think people don't realize how much spare time there is that gets wasted. Tasks expand to fill the time allotted. It's possible that meditation can help you identify those wasteful activities (urges) and address them appropriately.
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#6The misconception about meditation is that it requires one to give up everything and sit silently. This is not true in its entirety as it depends on how one interprets the word "meditation". The meditation does not necessarily require you to give up one thing for the sake of another. The goal of the meditation is to "be in awareness" and you can achieve this same goal by being alert and aware with any activity your f…
I think you're making a good point. A lot of people reserve the word "mindfulness" for the sort of meditations you're describing here and use "meditation" for something more specific. But they're just names and I don't worry about them too much.
This all also reminds me that there are people who view "true yoga" as a sort of 24/7 meditation of movement, where the person strives to be aware of and deliberate about their movements all the time.
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#7The misconception about meditation is that it requires one to give up everything and sit silently. This is not true in its entirety as it depends on how one interprets the word "meditation". The meditation does not necessarily require you to give up one thing for the sake of another. The goal of the meditation is to "be in awareness" and you can achieve this same goal by being alert and aware with any activity your f…
Sorry, this is hard for me to understand. You seem to be saying--and I apologize if I misinterpret you--that it is better to focus on dishwashing than to use otherwise idle mental time to plan one's future.
Is that really the case? What gains could one expect from focusing on dishwashing, only to take time away from some other activity to plan one's future?
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#8Wait. Wait wait wait.
> Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance...
Great. Yes. Impulse control is key. Delayed gratification is part of how we define higher intelligence.
Meditation has what do with this, exactly?
> How [does meditation help]? By increasing your capacity to resist distracting urges.
This entire article is predicated by this leap of faith, which as far as I can see has little to no justification besides, "Of course it does!"
> Meditation teaches us to resist the urge of that counterproductive follow through.
One cannot just say things over and over to make them true.
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#9The misconception about meditation is that it requires one to give up everything and sit silently. This is not true in its entirety as it depends on how one interprets the word "meditation". The meditation does not necessarily require you to give up one thing for the sake of another. The goal of the meditation is to "be in awareness" and you can achieve this same goal by being alert and aware with any activity your f…
Sorry, this is hard for me to understand. You seem to be saying--and I apologize if I misinterpret you--that it is better to focus on dishwashing than to use otherwise idle mental time to plan one's future. Is that really the case? What gains could one expect from focusing on dishwashing, only to take time away from some other activity to plan one's future?
Happiness ?
Re: If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This
#10Wait. Wait wait wait. > Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance... Great. Yes. Impulse control is key. Delayed gratification is part of how we define higher intelligence. Meditation has what do with this, exactly? > How [does meditation help]? By increasing your capacity to resist distracting urges. This entire article is…
I don't know, I thought he explained it pretty well: during meditation, you practice resisting urges.
I'll admit that falls rather short of a doubleblindrandomlyassignedcontrolgrouplargesamplesizepeerreviewed study, but it does seem to be common sense that practicing something would make you better at it.