Who has time for mindfulness anyways?

After a fourth failed audition due to shaky hands, 5 months of 4 hour nights, and gallons of coffee, I accidentally stumbled upon meditation. I couldn’t relax, I needed to ACHIEVE things every day.

My entire personal value was attached to the things I got done.

I thought meditation was for suckers, people that wanted to sit doing nothing instead of DOING. My mind was strong, they were confused. And yet my hands still shook in those auditions, and my thoughts never stopped racing.

Worry for the future. Preoccupation with the past.

Every action I took was dictated by an event that had already passed or by an event that had yet to even occur. The more I did, the more it gave me the illusion of control, but the truth was that I had no control whatsoever. I was not enjoying the present moments. As Brené Brown says, you can’t mute one emotion without muting all the others”

I decided to give meditation a shot, I didn’t see a point, but what was the worst that could happen? My best friend even described it as “just focusing on your breath for 10 minutes.” Not so bad…

If you’ve ever heard of “microwave minutes”, let me tell you, ten minutes of sitting and focusing and your breathe might as well be an hour.

I made it 3 minutes before I had to check my email. Yikes.

I thought that meditation was about having a completely quiet mind, becoming enlightened, and never thinking. It turns out that that is NOT what meditation is at ALL.

It is completely normal for your mind to wander while you meditate, it is completely normal to have more focused days and less focused days. It’s called a practice for a reason.

Focus is a skill. It works just like physical training. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

Our brains love attaching stories to everything.

The emotion: “I am worried.”

The story: “which means I am going to get nervous, which means I won’t have an appetite, which means I should not do it, which means….”

Meditation teaches you that you can feel worried, acknowledge that stress, and then stop there. You can sit in that stress for a few minutes without the extra story attached to it. You can be worried. It’s fine. It’s normal.

And often that emotion just fades away.

Emotions thrive off of our own energy, they get stronger the more you feed them, good or bad.

Taking time out of your day to take care of your mental strength is not selfish, it’s practical and necessary. We spend 30 minutes a day doing physical exercise, and getting that mental game stronger is just another piece of the puzzle. At the end of the day, we all have to live with our own thoughts and dreams, so we might as well proactively create space for ourselves to thrive in our own heads.

Master your mind, master your life.

Your thoughts become your reality.

I always felt I couldn’t afford to take the time to meditate. It turns out that I couldn’t afford NOT to.

Thoughts = Beliefs = Actions = Reality.

Here are some links to my favorite mindfulness apps:











Matt Richards