Do you ever wake up and feel like your schedule is controlling you, rather than you being in control of your schedule?

I’d say you’re not alone if you wake up most mornings immediately thinking and tense about how you can possibly get on top of things in your day and your week ahead.

If you’re wanting to be at your best emotional spiritually and financially in your daily life, changing your state of mind is the key to getting your power back. Moving your body, doing yoga, drinking lots of water, learning something new and inspiring are all great daily wellbeing habits that can help us think more clearly and positively.

Also having a regular meditation practice has been proven as a very effective way to help us retrain our mind so that things don’t become so overwhelming. I think of my meditation practice as like cleansing or decluttering my mind so I can focus my attention on the things that truly matter to me. After all, its all the tiny habits, added up every day that make our life healthy. When you begin your day by cultivating inspiring thoughts, and you start casting votes for the type of person you want to become by aligning your actions with your thoughts, you will find the world around you responds in wonderful ways.

When you come from a place of positivity, people are drawn to you. You become a magnet for more opportunities in your life - Michael Beckwith

Three meditation practices for getting back control of your schedule

It is possible for you to be in control of your schedule rather than your schedule controlling you.

Here’s 3 of my favourite practices that have helped me feel centred and calm in my daily life, and to live with more direction and meaning:

1. Mindful Awareness

Learning to calm your own mind is a basic ability you can develop. It involves the skill of being able to bring the mind to a state that’s calm and clear on demand. The practice is simple – you bring your attention to the breath, and every time your attention wanders away (as most certainly will), bring it back. Just like going to the gym, we train our muscle of attention so over time it becomes stronger.

This practice grounds the mind, so it becomes less agitated. With practice you begin to experience the quality of happiness – that’s right, when the mind is calm and clear, happiness arises. Happiness is the default state of the mind – its already there, its something we discover, rather than strive for.

Benefits include:

Experience more joy - You may have experienced this in a yoga class before. It’s not an elated jumping for joy kind of happiness, but rather a subtle blissful joy. Therefore, it takes a quiet mind to access this.

With a calm and clear mind your perception changes. The colours and quality of your life experience enhances. You seem to notice the beauty and wonder of life.

Better focus - You are also able to more clearly focus at work and in your creative activities, and problem solve more effectively. Some workplaces are now engaging in this type of practice to enhance their leadership capabilities. The secret to better concentration is recovery of attention.

Regulate your emotions (mindfulness) - As well, your ability to perceive your own thoughts and emotions enhances. You develop your ability to become mindful of your emotions (mindfulness) so that you are control of your emotions rather than your emotions controlling you. You realise your emotions such as anxiety, anger, sadness, are just an experience, and you no longer identify so strongly with them. In this way you are able to change your experience of suffering. Having power and mastery over your emotions is a life changing skill you can develop.

Happiness is something we allow, rather than strive for. Its already there – Chade-Meng Tan, former engineer for Google, and now meditation teacher.

2. Self-Compassion

It’s easy to be kind to ourselves when things are good. The real challenge in life is to express compassion inwardly when things don’t go our way. For example, if we overeat, we can really beat ourselves up, which only sends us on a path of more self-loathing. Self-compassion helps us cultivate an ability to see all parts of ourselves with kindness and understanding– even our most undesirable parts.

Being self-critical is placing an impossible burden of perfection on ourselves. It’s like writing off parts of ourselves. For example, if we experience anxiety, the more we focus on it as a problem, the more it grows. As the saying goes – ‘what we resist persists’. Focussing on the problem only fuels the resistance. Self-compassion invites us to become friends with the anxious feelings we experience. How does this help us feel better? The anxious part of us feels seen, so it doesn’t have to clamber for attention. By accepting, rather than rejecting the anxious parts of us, it eventually fades.

Given our state of mind affects our physical health it’s nice to know that self-compassion actually boosts our physical health. When we are hard on ourselves tell ourselves its unacceptable to fail, it increases cortisol and inflammation in the body (and actually lowers our ability to perform). With a wise encouraging inner voice, we activate more positive emotions, which reduces the body’s the fight or flight response. We also make room for learning from our trials and errors which leads to healthy behaviour change and growth.

When we surrender to the messy chaotic parts of ourselves, we accept our full humanity, our wholeness – Shefali Tsabary, author A Radical Awakening

3. Visioning

When dreaming of our ideal life, often we only visualise from what we already believe. This is a very limited way of goal setting.

The key problem with goal setting in our modern world is that we set our goals based on outside influence, rather than what’s inside our true sense of self. Most people base their goals on that which is told to them, such as from the media, our society, religious beliefs, cultural expectations, friends and parents.

Maybe you have got to your 40’s or 50’s and you have woken up in what you believed would be your perfect job, which at one point you dreamed about, but you are actually quite miserable, your life feels quite unfulfilling and you have various health issues. If this feels familiar, you could be very gentle and kind to yourself because you are not alone. From an early age we are taught to copy, to follow goals that come from an outside influence, so we find ourselves living our life based on other people’s ideas of success. As a result, many of us feel a bit glum in our daily life because we do not have a future that sufficiently pulls us into action.

So, how do we begin VISIONING a better life for ourselves? What we can do is cultivate a more creative mindset (rather than a reactive mindset).

Rather than ask yourself, what is wrong with my life? Consider these questions….

(This works well both as a formal meditation practice or a journal writing activity, or you may just take time in a quiet moment to contemplate these questions)

How can I make my life a beautiful canvas of my own design?
What type of person must I become to bring my vision to reality?
What do I already have to serve my vision?
What are my key values?
What are my unique gifts and curiosities that could serve my vision?
What must I let go of? (Unhelpful beliefs and thoughts patterns)
How can I give meaningfully to others?
What does willingness look like?
What’s the first few steps I can take today towards pursuing a life that would feel more meaningful, purpose driven, and fulfilling?

It’s better to seek meaning than avoid discomfort. And trust yourself to deal with the stress that follows – Kelly McGonigal, phychologist and author.

Learn more at the upcoming Learn to Meditate workshop

Or jump into my 5-week Beginners Yoga Workshop

Jo Jarden is a certified personal trainer and yoga teacher in Christchurch New Zealand and the founder of Heart and Mind Yoga studio. She has 10 years experience in health promotion in New Zealand and Australia including management and promotion of national chronic disease prevention programs. She now helps people one on one with their wellbeing through yoga teaching, personal training, workplace yoga and wellbeing workshops.

Qualifications include:

Certified Yoga Teacher Santosha Yoga Institute, Registered Australian Yoga Alliance 2017
Certificate in Advanced Personal Training, Fit College New Zealand, 2016
Bachelor of Science with Honours Public Health. University of Canterbury, New Zealand 2006
Bachelor of Arts Mass Communication and Psychology. University of Canterbury, New Zealand 2005

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