The term ‘what-if’ has been playing on my mind a lot recently. It first started when I was speaking to a friend over coffee when he was talking about getting married next year. They had a few problems with a caterer and had to change, and there was a problem with the church that was rectified, so everything looked on track to be a great day.

However, he couldn’t stop himself from saying things like ‘what if something else goes wrong?’, ‘What if the wedding because so expensive that I can’t afford it?’, ‘what if the day is ruined and everything goes down the pan?’

That got me thinking about the power of ‘what if’ and the control that it has over our lives.

What If

It’s easy to see that the phrase ‘what if’ is a verbal construct of anxiety and fear. It’s one way that the mind voices its concerns for the situations and events that it’s worrying about. But why do we think in such a negative connotation?

I said to my friend, but ‘what if your wedding is the best day in your life?’, ‘what if nothing goes wrong’, ‘what if you actually saved money?’ etc. These are much more positive ways to look at life, so why aren’t the majority of us thinking in this mindset?

Meditation for a Positive What If

Through meditation, you can achieve a much more present state of mind, whereas the entire concept of what if, both positive and negative, is set in the future. This is simply a form of anxiety and even saying the term ‘what if’ is feeding those feelings.

By becoming mindful and more grounded and present, you can rid your mind of these what if thoughts, therefore ridding yourself of these feelings of anxiousness. This will allow you to live a much happier, healthier and more appreciative life where nothing, not even the feelings of fear, can stand in your way.

When it comes to meditating, you don’t have to be a Buddha living in the mountains or some kind of spiritual individual, anybody can meditate, and everybody can benefit from it.

Even if you started by practising just five minutes every day, within a week, you’ll start to feel a lot more present and a lot more in touch with your mind a body.

Okay, so obviously success is the best thing that could ever happen to you, but failure is not far behind. Everywhere you look, and everywhere you go, you can see people that are scared to fail.

Some people may have just started a new job; some may have just started a new relationship or had a business idea that they’ve wanted to start. It could even be something as simple as starting a new hobby or diet.

However, I see so many people who won’t pursue these dreams simply because they’re scared that they are going to fail. But this is completely the wrong attitude to have and overcoming these mental obstacles can do wonders for your happiness and wellbeing.

The Blueprint for Success

One of my personal favourite sayings is that failure is the blueprint for success. When you fail something, it teaches you everything you need to know to succeed. I could talk for hours about how things work, but it’s genuinely as simple as that.

If you cook a pizza and it doesn’t work out, let’s say you’ve burned it, next time you know not to have the oven so hot, or to take it out earlier. Although you’ve failed this time, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to fail again.

Now you can apply this concept to every single aspect of your life. Maybe you’re going to start a new relationship with somebody? Maybe you’re going to try that new business idea you’ve had knocking around for a few months. Whatever is it you want to do, don’t be afraid of failing.

More and more people aren’t doing what they want to do in their lives because they are scared of it going wrong. They’re scared that they will let themselves down, or other people will say they told you so. But why listen to these remarks?

In short, if you don’t even attempt to live the life you want to live, you’ve already failed with 0% chance of success.

Hardwired from a Young Age

One of my favourite metaphors from failure is the child walking along the wall. I remember houses with low brick walls along the side of the street and how we used to play, balance and try to walk along them on the way home from school.

However, as soon as our parents saw us playing they would shout ‘don’t fall’ or ‘be safe’. Of course, parents only have our best interests at heart but saying things like this instantly make our minds focus on the concept of failing.

Imagine if you were walking across the wall and your parent shouted ‘keep going, you’re going to make it’, imagine how much more inspiring that would be? The longer you live, the more people you have telling you in different situations not to fall, engraining that image of failure into your mind.

Through meditation, this is a mindset you can alter and take control of. Through achieving mindfulness, you can rid yourself and train your brain to view the concept of failure positively.

And once you’re not scared of failure, but embrace it as a tool for success, you’ll be unstoppable.

Meditation has been a part of many cultures around the world for thousands and thousands of years, potentially more so today than ever before. The practice originated in India but has since spread all over the world, most dramatically in Western culture.

To some, meditation is a way of life. To others, it’s a mysterious and spiritualist thing that only a few people can master. Whichever bracket you fall under, here are seven secrets about meditation that you might find surprising.

You Only Have to Meditate for Minutes

Of course, if you’re practising to run a marathon and you train twice a week or five times a week, you’ll get better results training five times a week. However, you’ll still be able to run it just practising twice a week; it will just take longer.

This is the same principle as meditation. You’re more than welcome to meditate for eight hours a day if can and would like to but even meditating as little as five minutes a day can change your life for the better.

You Are Genuinely Focusing on Your Breath

There are many misconceptions out there that meditation is a crazy mindset game where you’ll clear your mind of all thoughts and feelings to be left with just inner peace. However, this is far from the truth.

Meditation is all about focusing on an anchor, most commonly the breath. This is so you can improve your level of focus while quieting the mind of thoughts from the past or future. All that matters is the present.

You’ll be Shocked at How Your Mind Wanders

Until you started meditation, it’s impossible to tell how often your mind wanders on a minute by minute basis. Especially when you’re first starting your practice, you’ll find that your mind quickly wanders onto thoughts of the day, memories and other random trains of thought.

That’s because our brains are hard-wired to do so. Even if your mind wanders three times during a five-minute meditation, apply that over the whole day, and it’s clear to see that many of us are not living with our minds in the present moment.

Meditation is Available for Everybody

When it comes to meditation, the practice isn’t just limited to spiritualists and Buddhist monks. Meditation costs nothing, and you can practice anytime, anywhere, and by anybody.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, any age, any race and it doesn’t matter whether you would consider yourself a spiritual person or not, you can meditate and benefit from it.

You Can Meditate How You Like

There’s a common misconception that everybody has to meditate in an upright and seated position to be meditating properly. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Meditating in an upright position may be uncomfortable and off-putting to some people, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Of course, you can meditate sitting down while being cross-legged, but you can also stand up, sit in a chair, lay on the floor, lay in your bed or even sitting in a car or on public transport. It’s completely up to you.

You’re Only Re-Learning What You Already Know

As a child, even as a baby, you won’t have stress, anxiety, depression and a mind that’s constantly thinking about the past or to the future. To a child, their mind is always focused on the present moment. That’s because they haven’t started school or started to become conditioned with thinking and planning for the future, as what happens to most people in this world.

This proves that we’re able to have present minds from a young age and so, through meditation, we’re only re-learning how to put our minds back into that mindset, not trying to learn something completely different.

Listening to Your Body

How often do you actually sit, take a step back and listen to your body?

Through meditation, you’re giving yourself the time of day to listen to your body, rather than focusing your mind on external things.

In short, this will allows you to proactively address the problems that your body and mind have so you can be happier, healthy and more present and aware.

Let’s say you’re walking home late at night on your own in your own hometown or city. Let’s say you’re about to take a shortcut through down an alleyway but, due to the early hours of the morning, it’s full of darkness and shadows.

As you go to take a step into this alleyway, what does your body do? Do you feel an impulse in your stomach? Maybe an itch on the back of your neck? Whatever you feel, there’s something in the back of your mind telling you it’s a bad idea.

This is known as your gut instinct.

What is Gut Instinct?

In short, your gut instinct is another way of saying ‘intuition’. When approached or when we encounter a situation, whatever that may be, our minds start to process what’s going on. Using a mixture of emotion, logic and past experiences, your body starts to come to a conclusion about what action to take next.

This could be applied to any kind of situation, positive or negative, and happens within our minds every second or every day. To a certain extent, the human ‘flight or fight’ defence system is a huge part of this intuition.

Whether we’re trying to process, make a difficult or easy decision or trying to save our own lives, our gut instinct is there to help us make the right decisions. So often do you listen to yours?

The Workings of Our Gut Instinct

So, let’s say that you’ve never done a skydive before. I remember vividly the first time I did one. I was travelling New Zealand, and we booked in to jump 15,000ft in the air out of a plane. As we were going up and my brain was processing what was about to happen, I could feel my gut instinct telling me it was a bad idea.

When we finally came to the jump, and my legs were hanging on the outside of the plane, every single cell in my body was telling me that it was a bad idea. However, we jumped, we free-fell for 2-minutes, the parachute was deployed, and we landed. Everything was fine.

However, the reason my gut instinct was freaking out was that this was an experience I have never had before. Next time I skydive, my gut instinct was a lot calmer about the jump.

Imagine you’ve just spend all your life living in one room. If you were to leave the room, everything around you, from trees and masses of people to skyscrapers and mountains would terrify you until you got used to what is and isn’t harmful and dangerous.

This is called training your gut instinct. In short, the more experiences you open your mind and body up to, the more accurate and effective your intuition will be.

Training Your Gut Instinct

Through meditation, you’re giving yourself a fantastic opportunity to train your gut instinct. We all go through difficult and challenging times in our lives. Maybe you’re having troubles in your relationship; maybe you’re trying to progress your career or perhaps you’re trying to figure out what to do with your life.

Whatever situation you’re currently living in, while meditating, be aware of the thoughts and feelings that pop into your head. Is your brain constantly drawn to the thought of breaking up with your partner or perhaps you need to work harder to make it work?

Maybe you’ve got a business idea in your head, and you’ve not got the courage to jump into achieving it, but your mind is telling you it’s a good idea? By practising the ability to focus and become present in your mind and body, you can then carry these abilities into your everyday life.

From personal experience and the word of thousands of bloggers across the internet, listening to your gut instinct can help you to achieve and succeed in everything you do. This allows you to live without fear of failing and living the happiest life possible.