I Meditate Because I Have A Temper

I don’t meditate because I’m a woo-woo spirit junkie, alright perhaps I am (a bit, maybe A LOT, who knows, it’s subjective). My point is that’s not why I meditate. I meditate because I worry too much, care too much and lose my temper too much.

I have a short fuss. I can’t tolerate BS and sometimes I need to drown out all the insecure thoughts that pop into my head. I’m not one of these people that can just get straight into it. Sometimes it takes weeks and weeks of daily practice to quiet my mind and relax into it. See meditation isn’t a one-trick pony.

(update April 2021: I now don’t meditate to quiet my mind or drown out the insecure thoughts, I don’t believe that’s the point of meditation or that it’s even healthy or compassionate to do so. The point is to observe and to create separation from you and your thoughts, not to control your thoughts or judge them. I feel very differently about meditation and mindfulness from when I wrote this post. I’m frankly in a very different place now, a much more grounded self-loving place, but I keep this post here as it was part of my journey and I still highly recommend both mindfulness and meditation, in fact, both have been crucial and amazing in my self-love, healing and wellness journey because the truth is I was angry a lot because I was unaware of just how much emotional pain I was in back in 2017 at the time this post was written).

I’d love to tell you that you’ll meditate once and bam you’ll have it. The truth is that’s very unlikely. It’s most likely you’ll feel you can’t-do it. Nearly everyone I speak to does.

You’re asking your thoughts to ssh for a moment, something very alien to us.
(update: I no longer believe you’re asking your thoughts to ssh).

Meditation takes dedication and hard work. People have been lead to believe meditation is easy, relaxing and sometimes boring.

It’s none of those things. For most people meditation is hard to master and generally it’s definitely not relaxing whilst you’re learning the technique.

Once you know what you’re doing and you aren’t afraid to be alone with your thoughts and no longer want to numb yourself, meditation will be anything but boring. It’s absolutely divine, utter bliss.

The 1st time I truly switched off, it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I thought I’d be completely zoned out, totally relaxed and in a dream-like state. I wasn’t, it was much more magical than that. I was by the river and decided to do a meditation after my run.

I’d been reading the Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle that week (which to be honest is a bit of a head f**k) and I swear that’s why it happened.

It was the most amazing meditation that I’ve had to date. I felt, only for a very short moment period of time, total awareness of everyone. Every sound around me. The rustling of leaves in the wind, the crickets, the fish and the dogs barking in the distance.

All my senses felt heightened, but I had no thoughts about any of it.

I didn’t think “gosh I hope that dog doesn’t come and lick me in the face” or “please don’t stig me bee”, basically those bizarre random thoughts that come up as soon as you tell your brain to silence itself were no longer an issue. Even the usual thoughts “my nose is itching or omg I can’t believe they did that drama” went.

I was just aware, but I have no opinions, no drama, nothing to add and no thoughts about any of it. I was no longer feeling angry, sad, annoyed, wrongly done by or irritated.

I felt for the 1st time in my life at complete peace, one with the world. Like a part of mother nature, for a brief moment, I didn’t feel separate from the world.  Simply that we were all in fact just intertwined.

I know as I say this I’m probably losing some of you, thinking gosh this girl is nuts. Truthfully I don’t mind. The moment was sacred that I expect it to sound out of the ordinary. It absolutely was.

I’ve only ever had that one time and I don’t meditate in the hopes to reignite that again because you can’t. What makes something so special is because it’s not the norm. That moment was beautiful because it just happened.  No planning, no expectation, simply just meditating for self-care. I meditate as an act of self-care, self-love and self-compassion. I meditate to say I make time to take care of you. I meditate because it makes me feel better. Pure and simple.

So if you ever find yourself anxious, sad, angry and struggling with your temper or simply just not experiencing true joy and that feeling of peace then meditate.

Meditation will make your life better. I have no doubt about that. x

This post is part of my Wellness Wednesday weekly feature, for more Wellness Wednesday posts click here. Every Wednesday there is a new wellness post at 7 pm. Update: this feature no longer runs but there are still loads of blog posts here.