The Path to Personal Growth » happiness

Five Reasons Meditation Should Be a Part of Your Daily Routine

Lena — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:09:13 +0000

One of the things I’d like to add into my daily routine is meditation. For me, it’s pretty much a hit or miss thing right now even though I know that it would do me so much good. And somehow I don’t think staring at the blank screen and wondering what to write qualifies.

Meditation has always been associated with feelings of peacefulness and well-being, and I don’t know about you but I can always use more of those feelings in my life. Experts say that taking even just ten or fifteen minutes a day to slow down and meditate can have great benefits. Here are a few ways that taking time to meditate can affect our lives:

1. Mediation makes a great stress reliever. If you can manage to relax and be peaceful for just fifteen minutes a day, the effects will be noticeable.

2. Meditation also can improve your physical health. Several studies have shown that meditation can improve overall health because lowering stress also helps to lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of heart disease.

3. Meditation helps you control your thoughts. A lot of stress comes from being unable to control our thoughts. Taking time to meditate helps to stop negative thoughts in their tracks.

4. Meditation also helps bring feeling of happiness and gratitude. By taking the time to reflect on all the good things in your life, you draw even more good things to you, which results in even more feelings of happiness and gratitude.

5. Meditation helps improve your concentration. When you can achieve peace of mind during meditation it will have an effect on how you live because when your mind is less stressed out, it is better able to concentrate on the important things in life.

These are just a few of the ways that meditating can help to reduce stress and improve your life. It may take some practice to develop the habit but allowing yourself fifteen minutes peace and relaxation is worth adding it to your daily routine.

More on Happiness

Lena — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:19:00 +0000

I’m seeing some really cool evidence of the Law of Attraction in action the past couple of days. Yesterday I wrote about happiness, and today it seems that everywhere I look people are writing about and talking about being happy. In my blog hopping this morning I landed at PluginID and read Glen’s post Instant Happiness: Living With Total Acceptance which kind of agrees with what I was saying last night about being content with where you are in your life right now.

Then, this afternoon I logged into my Twitter account and had a tweet from Carrie Wilkerson spreading the happy virus by asking people to tweet what makes them happy. You can see my what I posted here.

I’m really loving seeing all this focus on being happy. It’s so much nicer than watching everyone be stressed out and worrying about things that are so totally out of our control that it’s a waste of time and energy. It’s not only living proof that what you focus on appears in your life, it’s almost making me really happy to see so many other people too!

Smile, Be Happy

Lena — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 03:20:39 +0000

I was out shopping today and it really hit me how unhappy everyone in the store was. No one smiled, and every person that I saw was looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. I, of course, was acting like my usual childlike self smiling at the snow, singing along with the Christmas music, and smiling away. No one smiled back, and when I marvelled at that to my son, he said that Christmas is not a happy time, it’s a stressful time so no one’s happy about it.

It’s probably a sign of how far I’ve grown, but I just don’t get it. Either that or I’m extremely naive, and while I may act like a big kid, I’m pretty sure I’ve been around the block enough times to know what’s what. And I still don’t get it… How can you not be happy when everything’s covered in a fresh blanket of white, you’re out with your family, and you’ve got money to spend or at least enough of a balance on the ol’ plastic to give your kids a Christmas?

That trip really got me thinking about what it takes to be happy, and how do we go about finding happiness in our lives.

I think that too many people have forgotten that happiness has to come from within. It’s not about how much money we have or how many cars are in the driveway or whether you’ve got a 42 inch plasma screen on the wall. Sure those things are nice to have, but they can’t make you happy in and of themselves.

I read something the other day, and for the life of me I can’t remember where, but it was that maybe we should be searching for inner peace and a sense of contentment with life as it is now, instead of that all-to-elusive happiness. And that really resonated with me. (If anyone knows who wrote this, please leave a note in the comments with a link. I know it was on a blog but I can’t remember whose it was and I’m really sorry for that.)

So how do we find that sense of contentment?

Well, we can always start with decluttering. Give away the crap that we’ve bought to make us happy, that really doesn’t even come close. Or sell it on ebay and pay down the balance on the plastic with the extra cash.

Another thing that can make us happy is doing something nice for someone else. But think hard before you do a random act of kindness for a stranger. Gretchen over at The Happiness Project has a really good post on why you shouldn’t be doing random acts of kindness, and it’s generating a lot of discussion.

Finally, you can, and should, find something to do that you love and can totally throw your energy into. And if you need more ideas, Marelisa at the Abundance Blog has a great post on tips for being joyously happy.

Oh, one more thing… Go ahead and smile! Your face won’t break, and you might actually like it.

Your comments and feedback make me happy. Please leave one and tell me what makes you happy. Go on… I dare ya