Meditation Monday: Embracing Change

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Share with others who would like to explore or expand their meditation process:

"If you want something you've never had before, you've got to do something you've never done before."

Some ideas for adding a little variety to your life:

• If you come home and plop on the couch, shake it up. Do some stretches first thing after you get home for a few minutes. Or turn on the radio and sing while you change out of your work clothes. Singing and dancing are very effective ways to feel more open and free.

• Take a walk. Walking is a wonderful way to clear the mind, improve circulation and increase positive feelings. It will also help you to see things you normally wouldn't. If you usually speed up and down your street, seeing your neighbor's yards up close as you stroll by will really shift your perspective. (and if you do already walk, change your route. Be spontaneous!)

• E-mail or call someone you haven't talked to in a long time. Go with the first person that comes to mind.

• Wear something you usually keep tucked away in your closet, even if it's just in your living room. 

• Turn off the TV and spend an evening zoning out to the radio. I enjoy a lot of the talk programs on NPR, or just an hour of jazz. There are many ways to veg other than the TV, and if you try some new ways out you'll really get some new insight while still managing to relax.
  
• Sign up for a language course online. When you get the urge to procrastinate at work, rather than surfing gossip sites or staring at the wall play around with new words. Don't do it with the intention of pass or fail, but just to try something new and have some fun.
• Embrace those moments you feel the urge to be spontaneous. Stop into the new coffee shop. Take that alternate route home. Sign up for a gym class that catches your attention.
  

Sit somewhere you normally wouldn't!

Today's topic isn't so much a meditation, but something that will enhance your meditation process. One of the benefits of meditation is that it can rewire your brain, unlaying patterns of thought and belief tracks you no longer desire to follow. At the same time, it will help you to create new tracks for how you want to think, feel and interact with the world. With these inner changes will undoubtedly come outer changes in your life. 

Although meditation is a positive and powerful way to bring in the new, the new is unknown. The unknown can be scary, and a lot of people stop meditating, unsure why, they just start to blow it off and find excuses not to do it. A lot of this is because they're changing and it makes them uncomfortable. Don't give up on your growth! You can navigate your new life and new self with ease and grace:

All you must do is be open to a little change and variety in your life. These little changes will slowly become your new norm, opening you up to try more new things, and you'll start to see big changes happen in your life. They'll come so easy and naturally you won't even realize how far you've gone until you look back one day and think, "Holy shit! I'm in an entirely life!"

As you become more open and flexible in your outer world, you will become more open in your inner world. Your mind will soften and release the need to follow what it always has. It will open more during meditation, your ability to release the old will quicken, you will embrace new beliefs and habits faster, and you will find yourself traveling to inner-peace at lightening speed. This will thus lead to even more changes in your outer world, and this will help you grow internally, and on and on in an unending cycle of positive growth and expansion. Allowing one to support the other will create a chain of momentum that could lead to miraculous changes in your life. As with everything, balance is the key. Balance the outer and the inner and all will be well.

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