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OM. OM. OM.
The first thing that probably comes to your mind when you hear the word “OM” is meditation. You are probably thinking of sitting in a dark room, crisscross, hands on your knees, back straight, eyes closed and focusing on repeating “OM” to find peace and meditate. Well, what if we told you that is not the only way to get your sh*t together and there are other ways of meditating?
In order to fully understand who you truly are; it is important to not only meditate to find peace, but also to reflect on yourself, your life, your relationship, and every single thing that is tied to you.
These following exercises are meant exactly for that, but just like start of any meditation a proper breathing technique is very important. In order to be successful, you have to make sure that you are focusing on your breathing as it will help increase the amount of oxygen going through your body, slows your respiratory rate, increases blood flow to the heart, lowers blood pressure, decreases stress, and places you in a deeper level of relaxation. Once you have your breathing down, try any of the following exercises but make sure to not do all of them at the same time. These exercises are designed to make you think about things you are not used to thinking about which can leave emotionally and mentally drained.
The first exercise is to truly understand who you are and how others view you. Write down 3 people who know you very well; who know you pretty good but not as much as your significant other; and someone who knows but not very well. Once you have identified these 3 people, imagine you are them and see yourself as they would, through your eyes. Imagine how you interact with them and how they would see you, think of you, and act toward you. The goal of the exercise is for you to see how other people view you, and then change what you don’t like.
The second exercise is to identify your stress. Identifying your stress is a key to identify who you truly are as you can be defined by your stress. It can also help you identify where you are with your life at this point and where you like would to be down the road. Grab a piece of paper and write down every single stress and project you currently have going. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is just written it down in no particular order. Also, write down all the tasks and to-do lists and again no matter how big or small it just write it down. From now on, this will be referred as Master List. Now, as you are going on your day to day and as you complete a task that is in your Master List, cross it off repeatedly, so that is no longer legible. This will give you a great sense of accomplishment and pride when you finish something and this will help you strive to cross more items off of your list.
Last by not least exercise is a personal reflection. We are always on the go go go and so busy that we often forget to take care of the most important person in our life, ourselves. For this exercise, ask yourself these questions:
- Do you make a special effort to thank someone who does you a favor? How do you feel when you aren’t sincerely thanked for going out of your way for someone?
- If 100 people your age were chosen at random, how many do you think would be living more satisfying lives than yours? Why?
- What is more important to you, the memory of an event or the experience?
- Do you let circumstances control your life instead of you? Why?
Try all these 3 exercises at different times and evaluate how it would affect your life. Listen to today’s podcast to hear how it affected the GYST group!
