What Two Years of Meditation Has Taught Me…

Brandon Bell

Apr 9, 2020·3 min read

How the Process Started

I was fresh out of high school; I didn’t have to worry about waking up at six in the morning every day. I was taking about two courses at my community college at the time and everything seemed easy. What was there to stress about? I was content with my part time job and I was enjoying the process of going into young adulthood. There was one thing though, I didn’t know how to enjoy all the free time that I had on my hands. This led to overthinking, stress, and you guessed it more anxiety than I can handle. It wasn’t until later that year that I discovered the art of meditation and the impact that it had on people. Although all the research I had done was mostly on YouTube videos and a few books, something about this practice spoke to me. It was then where I decided to take a seat on the floor and close my eyes for 10 minutes and let my mind do whatever it wanted, leading me into a deep place within myself that I have never experienced before, a place of acceptance.

The Changes That Only I Saw

I carried this new and exciting method with me into my first year on a university campus. It naturally became part of my daily routine. As soon as I woke up it was time to meditate, I now had something to look forward to in the morning. When going on with my day, I realized that I was remembering things that I never really used to think about. Those things included random conversations that I would have throughout the day, the faces of people who I would walk by in the library and motivating mantras that I would read about the day prior or weeks prior. Although I would like to say that my days were always bright and filled with spirit, that would simply be a lie. Yes I would still have days that felt like the worst and days where I didn’t even feel like getting out of bed, but meditation gave me the power to notice when I was feeling a certain emotion and the power to stay calm in those situations as well. From an outside perspective I probably seemed like a guy that was just going through life’s up and downs, but I can honestly say that I was going through a spiritual change in those moments.

Does It Really Work?

Meditation has received a lot of recognition in the past few years or so but has been practiced since 1500 BC. This alone gives the dedicated practice the acknowledgment it deserves. If meditation is something that seems too good to be true to you, then calmly put your pride aside and give it a try, what do you have to lose? Use that ten minutes that you spend on your phone in the morning to do something that has the potential to change your life. Everyone has questions about who they are as a person, I’ve found out many things about myself that I thought I would never know. Don’t let society’s preconceived notions stop you from enhancing your mental health.