Today, I am going to share my true and honest thoughts on how meditation have changed my life. I am not going to exaggerate what has happened to me as I always think that meditation is a very good and useful tool but it is not some sort of magic.
Life Before I Start to Meditate
First of all, to let you know how meditation has changed me, I have to let you know how my current mind work and how my before-meditation mind works. I would described my current mind as a more relaxed and clear mind. It is still not as calm and clear as I want, especially at times when too many things happen at the same time. I still find moments of emotional break down though they don’t nearly happen as often. Back in the days when I haven’t started meditation, my mind is moving too fast, in a bad way, and moving in all directions at the same time. I could never get patient enough to achieve a long-term goal. I simply was still a boy trapped in an adult’s body.
Meditation Make Me Think Clear
There are more and more blog posts and magazines articles about meditation that somehow make it sound very magical. It almost sounds like that you are going to unlock the unused part of your brain and be head and shoulder above everyone else if you meditate. If you have that kind of fantasy, I am sorry that I have to tell you the truth. Meditation is just a simple tool to make your mind think clearly. You can pretty much achieve the same result by taking a 45 minute walk. But having a clear mind is very valuable. Think about it. If you can intentionally make your mind think clearly, that’s another way of saying that you can intentionally make your mind work operation under its best condition. That’s actually indirectly make you smarter. For example, you are probably only 50% of who you are when you can’t think clearing. If you meditate and can get back to 100% of your capability, you are working more efficiently.
The Reducing Ego
One way that meditation can make you think more clearly is that it can help me get rid of some of my ego. Very often, when we want to do a certain thing, it is actually something that we want to do completely out of ego. Usually, after having meditation, you can have a more clear picture of what you have in mind. It is much easier to spot your ego and it has saves me a lot of trouble and time. I am the typical type of person who want do this and do that because of ego. I wasn’t doing that consciously though, but I do that subconsciously. A good example is when I hear some cool startup idea, I want to do it. Without a clear mind, I thought I just wanted to do it because I want to achieve something big and meaning. With a clear mind, I can see that I just want to be famous and cool. That is not a path of success. Meditation allows me to see my edge of my circle of competence better.
Explore the Possibility of Clear Mind
Soon after I found that I can start my day everyday with a pretty clear mind after meditating, I was thinking about how a clear mind can help me besides reducing my ego. First, being able to have my ego reduced is more valuable that it may sound. Yet, I would still want to explore the possibilities. My answer is that now I have a clear mind to think, I should know what and how to think.
Knowledge with Clear Mind is Powerful
It’s about the time that I start to meditate that I begin to read more books. It’s not that I have never been a reader when I was younger. I used to pick up a few seemingly interesting books every year when I shop around in the bookstore near my home. But it’s after I have developed the habit of meditating everyday that I realize the importance of knowledge. With a clear mind after meditation, I would usually try to come up with solutions for my current issues. But most of times I can’t really find a solution within my mind. That’s because of my lack of knowledge. By reading more and more about philosophy and business, my problem solving skills have be really improved. These days, I can at least be able to see my problems in business and life more clearly and come up with some reasonable solutions.
Rationality is a Moral Duty
By having a clear mind and having more knowledge, I am able to think more and more rationally. The famous and wise investor, Charlie Munger, has once said that rationality is a moral duty. The importance of thinking rationally should not be underrated. By thinking rationally, it means that we are not going to do things to harm ourselves or harm others. By thinking rationally, it means that we are going to do things that are going to move us towards out goal. If you love to read self-help books, try to gather the 10 most commonly used tips. I bet that you can summarize all 10 tips into one single big theme, which is to think rationally. I will show you an example here. Let’s say the tip of the author is “to value second-order consequence as much as you value the first-order consequence”. “Think rationally” already includes that tip. You can try that yourself. 9 times out of 10 it works.
In conclusion, mediation has changed my life in a good and subtle way. It can make me think more clearly. It has also allowed me to realize the power of reading. I have realized the importance of thinking rationally. With the combination of meditation and knowledge, I feel that I am moving toward my goal in a slow but steady and consistent way.