Silent Meditation: Inbox Zero! Not Today Blog 15

I read “The 4-Hour Workweek” in 2015. Tim Ferriss was the first person who could make me believe that silent meditation is something normal, something that sane people do. It wasn’t until 2017 when I started a meditation practice. It changed everything.

I Messed Up My Project

July 2017. Our company had just taken over a project that our partner company wasn’t able to complete. A project where everything seemed to go wrong and I was now in charge.

Suppliers that didn’t keep their promises, delayed deliveries, no cash flow and a fuming client. My client refused due payments, to the point that I could not pay suppliers. I was about to face legal charges if I could not come up with a way to pay my suppliers.

Also, my client threatened me with legal action. I had no choice but to agree to the signing of an additional agreement. It set a new date by which the plant had to be operational and a penalty of around 700 Eur for each additional day of delay.

People with a strong physical constitution can tolerate extremes of hot and cold; people of strong mental health can handle anger, grief, joy and the other emotions.

Epictetus

The 4-Hour Sleepweek

I was stressed out.

If you run on 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night for long enough, your body gets used to it. It’s not your body but your mind that gets to you first.

I wasn’t tired. I was angry and nervous. And things were getting worse. Emails with all capital letters in bold red font were flying into my inbox. I have become an expert in suppressing feelings but even I was not able to hide my inner restlessness. I subconsciously projected my anger onto others who did nothing wrong. It was bad.

The Jump

It was my first Headspace^® session that made all the difference. Headspace is an app that teaches meditation and mindfulness skills for your everyday life.

Why did it take me years to try meditation? I think in the end it was a Tim Ferriss podcast where he explained the Basics Section on the Headspace^® App that made me have a go.

People do not know what impact 3 minutes in silence can have on your mental state. The app made it easy for me to make it a daily practice over the coming months.

It showed. My work did not get easier but answering angry emails and phone calls did. I started most mornings with 3 to 15 minutes of meditation. It made my landing on the war ground of daily chaos a lot softer and more determined. My random aggressions stopped.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

Anne Lamott

3 Years Of Meditation

I tried many meditation techniques from guided to unguided silent meditation. In June I had planned to attend my first 10-day introductory course to Vipassana Meditation. Covid-19 got in the way.

This message I sent my friend a few months ago describes my experience with meditation:

“For me it’s sitting on this yoga block, my legs looking like a pretzel, distracted by the pins and needles sensation in both of my legs, trying focus back on that little spot above my lip where I can feel my breath going in and out to and from my nose. Just me in full silence and darkness. Occasionally, I enjoy a silent meditation session so much, because of new sensations I haven’t felt before or just because I was able to sit in the same position for 30 minutes without having to move. Many sessions are terrible, I can’t sit still and I feel restless. But every time I finish a session, I have this feeling of a little fresh start.”

I have weeks and months where I keep a daily practice and there are days, weeks, and months where I don’t do any meditation. I know that the times where I do my practice, I am more focused and overall a cooler version of myself.

Let go or be dragged.

Zen Proverb

Guided Meditation

To friends that want to get into meditation, I usually recommend the free version of Headspace^® where you get access to, I believe 10 basics sessions. The sessions are 3 to 10 minutes and Headspace^® does a great job of explaining what it is all about. The subscription is also great, especially for me the Headspace for Sleep^® section, the guided runs and Basics 2 and 3.

Another great source for free guided meditations is Tara Brach’s YouTube channel. I love her “Opening and Calming” and her “Resting in a Sea of Presence” guided meditations.

Silent Meditation

The most intriguing inner experiences I have encountered have been in unguided meditation, also called silent meditation. I usually set my timer to 20, 30 or sometimes 45 minutes and start with Anapana Breathing, a technique I learned from an old The Yogi Lab free PDF. Then I move on and feel all sensations in my body while trying to not react to them. I sit and feel whatever comes up. There is some deep shit within you.

Anapana Breathing

Anapana is the first step in the practice of Vipassana meditation.

1) Focus your awareness on the triangular area from the top of your nose down to the corners of your mouth.

2) Feel the breath coming in and out of your nostrils. Breath naturally.

Once it is becoming easier for you to keep your focus on the breath inside the triangular area.

3) Narrow your focus down to the smaller triangle from the tips of your nostrils to the top of your upper lip.

4) Let the feeling of the breath enter your awareness. Neither pushing it away nor fixating on it. If your awareness moves away from the breath, acknowledge it, and move it back to your breath. Try to keep your focus for the duration of the practice.

Why Not Today

Naval Ravikant says in the Joe Rogan Experience “It think it was Pascal who said ‘all of man’s problems arise because he cannot sit by himself in a room for 30 minutes alone and it is very true I always needed to be stimulated. […] And now that I am older, I realize that you actually want to rest your mind.”

“Really all [meditation] is, is the art of doing nothing. And it is important because I think when we grow up it is all this stuff happening to you in your life. […] All these preferences and judgements and unresolved situations. It is like your email inbox; piling up email after email after email.”

“And when you sit down to meditate those emails start coming back to you ‘hey what about this issue, what about that issue, did you solve this, did you think about that, do you have regrets there, you have issues there?’ and that gets scary. People don’t want to do that.”

“You just have to sit there as those emails go through one by one. You work through each of them until you get to the magical inbox zero. […] Because you processed everything else. Not necessarily even resolved it but at least listened to yourself.”

Why not do that today? Sit down and listen to yourself. Maybe try a guided meditation, a silent meditation or maybe a breathwork session? These few minutes without distraction will feel great, I promise.

D

Thanks again Mon!!