Meditation for Anger & Stress

What is Meditation ?

It is a practice for training the mind.

Through a very simple process a person trains his/her attention and awareness. Processes such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object or simply trying not to think of anything  for the sake of achieving a calm state of mind. This practice is called Meditation.

How Meditation Reduced My Anger & Stress

I was 28 years old; housewife and mother of two young kids. Busy. Stressed out. Torn between my deep desire to be a good mother, wife and daughter-in-law and at the same time wanting to do things for myself.

How do you do that without judging yourself as selfish?

There are innumerable people out there who have burning ambition in them, urging them to find time and energy for themselves everyday. At the same time, love drives them to apply themselves devotedly & selflessly to their chosen roles like mother, father, wife, husband, daughter-in-law, son etc. No one understands their angst. It’s like trying desperately every minute to keep parts of yourself glued as one and not shatter insanely into two halves.

I was experiencing so much stress! There had to be a fallout.

Small things began triggering me into angry outbursts. The guilt following my blowup would be massive. And I would slink over to the person with “sorry” on my lips and a ton of remorse in my heart. My self-image as a cool & collected person took a big hit.

It was bad.

And I knew I had to quickly do something about it before things went worse.

That was when I got introduced to the practice of Meditation.

I’ll be honest. When I began the practice, I had no faith in it. Zero. Nada. Zilch. On the contrary, I questioned my choice of spending time sitting with eyes closed doing nothing when in fact, I could invest the same time furthering my interests. Nonetheless, I carried on.

Initially, nothing happened. I saw no difference in my life.

But then, as time went by slowly and quite mysteriously, I began noticing a perceptible contrast in my life. Not in the outer circumstances; everything was the same – the same people, the same situations and the same triggers.

The difference was – in my own response to those triggers.

Those things that earlier had me all wound up, I was now simply brushing off my shoulder. Without much effort on my part!

My ‘engage’ button with my triggers had oddly been turned off. By an unknown inner power within me.

But how could that be?!! I had nothing except sitting daily for some time with my eyes closed. All I had done was try not to think about anything.

Everyone around me began noticing the apparent calm in my demeanor. As for myself, I felt exactly like that person who gets to dunk herself in a pool of cool refreshing water after trudging through miles and miles of unending scorching desert.

Did my angry outbursts disappear completely? Did I become the next Buddha?

No.

They did not. But their frequency reduced tremendously. Today even when I do get provoked, my response, on a scale of 1 to 10 (no matter how enraged I may feel within) never goes beyond 5. For a person who was branded by the entire family as ‘angry’, this is a huge shift.

And to think – it all happened in such a calm & effortless manner – is pure magic.

Final Word on Meditation

Ever since those years, I have become a huge fan of Meditation. And having experienced first hand, its force field, I urge everyone to turn to meditation for our seemingly simple problems – which are hugely bothersome actually.

What do we stand to lose anyway?

I would love to list here all the other benefits of meditation that I got in life, but that would not make this a blog post. Rather, a book! 🙂

Have you ever tried meditation? If yes, what benefits did you experience in your life? And if not, then what is stopping you from starting the practice today itself? I would love to read your comments.

Wishing you Peace and Love

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