We all wish we can get ahead in our careers. Whether you’ve been steaming ahead for a promotion for the last few months, looking for more responsibilities in your current position or, most importantly, been hammering at your boss for a pay rise, career progression is a great way to boost job satisfaction and for us to feel happy within ourselves.

However, progressing in such a way is easier said than done for most of us. Although meditation still, even today, has a rather spiritual atmosphere to it, this doesn’t have to be the case. Of course, that’s an element of it, but more and more people are starting the see the benefits that it has in everyday life. In fact, there are thousands of scientific studies that prove it.

But can meditation be used to boost and progress yourself in your chosen career path? If it can, how can you do it? Well, all will be explained as we explore four ways that meditation can help you move forward in your career.

Developing a Daily Practice

To be able to enjoy the full effects and benefits of meditation, you need to start practising every day. However, this isn’t as difficult as it sounds. You can start with just a simple five-minute session in the morning, whether by using or using meditation app.

In our fast-paced lives, it’s easy to think that we simply don’t have the time even to spare five minutes but once you start seeing the benefits, you’ll be able to edge that up to ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour and maybe even an hour.

This sort of willpower and habit-forming ability is a great mentality that will affect and run off into your work life. Think of all the little jobs that crowd your brain that would take five minutes to complete, but you never get around to doing. If you can find the time to meditate, you can find the time to file that paperwork, reply to that email, keeping your brain active and free from little jobs, allowing you to focus on more important aspects of your job that will progress your career.

Allowing Time to Work on Yourself

As much as we don’t like to admit it, we’re not perfect, and there’s always something we can change within ourselves. Whether it’s a personality trait, drinking more water, exercising more regularly, thinking of ourselves more positively or a practising a skill at work that we want to master.

Meditation allows us the time to sit and ponder these thoughts in the open, liberating and non-judgemental way. At work, it’s very common to feel guarded the majority of the time or even to feel like we can take everything on at once and handle it. More times than not, this doesn’t have to be the case.

Through meditation, give yourself a chance, and the permission to feel vulnerable and to learn and understand your physical and mental limits.

Be the Best Person You Can Be

Through meditating, you’ll be surprised, especially if it’s your first time, just how much better you feel towards life. You’ll feel at peace with yourself; you’ll feel confident, outgoing, positive, grateful and much more.

This will rub off on the people around you and, from personal experience, they’ll even mention how much happier you are and how much more productive and driven you are, without even mentioning that you meditate, which can sometimes invoke negative connotations. Trust in yourself and the self-development that you’re engaged in.

Learn to Connect with Life

At the end of the day, life isn’t all about work, it’s about fulfilling yourself with the things you care about, and it’s so easy to start focusing on just pushing yourself at work that you end up forgetting about all the things you care about the most.

Don’t let this be the case. Don’t forget to get up, take a walk, get outside, get some fresh air and meet new people. May eye contact with people on the subway, appreciate the clouds in the sky, stop and think about the things that are happening around you. Be engaged with the world that you live in.

Summary

You don’t need to be meditating to meditate. In theory, you can do it all day, every day; it’s just about the mindset that you have. Breath in and out, follow your breath, love life, and you’ll see the progression in career naturally forming each and every moment of the day.

Another year has been and nearly gone and, in most parts of the world, Winter is coming in thick and fast. This means snow, ice, cold winds, hats and scarfs and, of course, your favourite winter jacket.

However, for most people, winter is a time to escape into the house, load up the fire with wood and hide away from the elements. Hibernating almost. But, this shouldn’t be the case. Why don’t we appreciate the benefits of winter as much as we appreciate the glorious sunshine of the summer?

As an avid meditator, you’ll constantly be told in guided sessions and meditation blogs, such as this one, that you should always be present as well as being grateful for the world around us, whether it’s cold temperatures or not.

To help get you started on this journey of appreciation, here’s a meditation that is crafted to make you feel warm and to start fully appreciating this winter wonderland that will start surrounding us, helping us smile all the way through these darker months.

The Method

Firstly, find a comfortable position and sit yourself down, just like you would a normal session. This can be the first thing you do when you wake up after you’ve eaten a hearty dinner, enjoying a bowl of heart-warming soup or even after a nice winter walk through the woods.

Close your eyes and slow down your breathing for a few breaths. Inhale through your nose for four seconds, hold for two seconds and exhale through your mouth for four seconds.

Then, start to focus on the areas of your body that are cold. This could be your hands, your face, your feet or anything. Once you’ve realised these areas, then change your focus to the other areas of your body, the areas that feel nice and warm.

If you’re wearing any warm clothes while you do this, such as a big jumper, a hoodie, or your favourite pairs of socks, these are the best locations to go to.

Try and draw your attention to what this warm feeling feels like. Does it feel smooth and constant? Does it feel like it’s tingling or prickly? What sensations is your body feeling right now? Really zone in your focus on these areas for the rest of your mediation.

Take a moment to be aware of the heating in your house, or the warmth that your clothes are providing you.

Now open your eyes at the end of your meditation.

What colours do you see? Do you see the fiery reds and oranges of autumn? Maybe you can see Christmas decorations or architecture? Just pay attention to whatever is you can see and realise how it makes you feel, especially when it comes to colours. Also, pay attention to any smells you can smell.

Are there any smells that directly relate to winter, autumn or Christmas?

Go around all your senses and whatever feeling or feedback you get, be sure to make it come back to this time of year and only this time of year. Be grateful that you can experience it right now.

Conclusion

This is a great practice session because you can do it anytime, anywhere, whether you’re at home, in your garden, sitting on the bus, at work or simply going about your daily business. You can practice it for a minute, five minutes or hours, depending on how you feel.

Let us know how you get on by leaving a comment in the comment section below!

Meditation. We’ve all heard about the benefits and what it can do for us. I preach about them all the time on here. But, if you’re just starting out in meditation, it can be difficult to find your feet, just like it is with anything that you’re starting for the first time.

Are you doing it right? How are you supposed to sit? Am I thinking about the right things? I can’t clear my mind?! These are all things you might be asking yourself. However, no fret. Here to help you is a handful of tips you can remember to make sure that you’re doing okay!

Starting Small

You may have heard of the Buddhist monks that meditate for eight hours a day and it might leave you thinking, what’s the point? However, even meditating just two minutes a day can benefit you tenfold so start small and work your way up to wherever you feel comfortable.

Starting Your Day

You’ll feel the maximum amount of benefits if you meditate in the morning. Do it as the first thing you do when you wake up and you’ll be amazed at what it does to your day. Set a reminder on your phone, set it with your alarm, just try and make a habit out of it.

Just Do It

In the words of Nike trainers, just do it. Don’t sit thinking whether you’re doing it right or whatever you’re doing might be wrong, it’s not. Meditation is meditation. As long as you’re sitting calmly and comfortably with your eyes closed and focusing on your breathing, you’re doing it right, no matter what.

Ask Yourself How You’re Feeling

Of course, thoughts are going to come in and out of your head all the time, it just happens. However, you can take control of these thoughts and turn them into something beneficial. When meditating, ask yourself how you feel and how your body is.

Do you feel stressed, tired, happy, sad, excited? Take a note of how you feel so you can really tune into your body.

Return to Your Breathing

Especially when you’re starting out, a wandering mind is inevitable. However, don’t let this stress you out. It may take some time to get into the habit of returning to your breath but when you realise, simply do just that!

Learn to Love Yourself

One of the best benefits to come from meditation is learning to love yourself unconditionally. However, this won’t happen if you don’t let it happen. Enter your meditation session with an open mind and get ready to embrace the love you feel for yourself.

During your time researching and reading about meditation and mindfulness, you may have stumbled upon a term known as ‘affirmations’. You might have especially heard of these if you’ve been following guided meditations and will normally consist of someone saying a statement which you then think about in your head.

However, to my surprise, not many people know about affirmations and the power that they can have in your everyday life.

Setting the Scene

Consider how you are in your life. Do you think you’re a confident, healthy, happy, outgoing and charismatic person? Or is that the dream of someone that you want to be? Maybe you’ve thought about how you would like to change something in your life, something inside your mind, such as a personality trait.

Many of us have things that we’d like to change. We can eat healthier, exercise more, be more sociable or have less stress and anxieties. Thinking about these changes can also affect our mood and our confidence.

After all, if we’re constantly thinking about how we want to change for the better, but staying the same, we’re going to end up hating ourselves.

The thing is, these traits can be changed, it’s all about changing how we look at ourselves and train our minds to act and think. This is where affirmations come in.

What Are Affirmations?

In short, affirmations are short positive statements. During a mediation session or anytime through the day, you can repeat these affirmations to yourself, hardwiring them into your brain.

Usually, I’ll repeat them to myself during my morning meditation session. It’s like setting yourself goals for that day.

One study by the Northwestern State University even conducted a two-week study on affirmations and found that self-esteem was much much higher in the individuals since the beginning of the study.

You can also use this affirmation throughout the day. For example, you might be about to go and give a big presentation in front of your school or your co-workers. In movies, you might see people saying to themselves something like ‘I can do this’ or ‘this is going to be okay’.

In a very basic sense, this is an affirmation. You can use them for your confidence, your self-esteem, your productivity, basically any trait in your life that you want to improve.

Setting Yourself Affirmations

If you mediate already in the mornings, then great, try and put these affirmations into your session either throughout your session or at the end. However, as above, you can repeat them to yourself whenever you feel like it. When starting out, try and aim for at least five times a day. Or three and build it up if it feels more manageable.

Then, try and figure out what it is that you want to improve on.

I start my day with five to seven affirmations which you’re more than welcome to use.

• I will give my body love by exercising, drinking water and eating fruit and vegetables.
• I will love myself as I do not need the acceptance of others to feel complete
• I will only say positive things and statements.
• I will always give, even if it’s a compliment, a smile or my full attention
• I will be patient and therefore confident in myself

These affirmations stemmed from a guided meditation I was once following many months ago, but these have stuck with me, and I know practice them every single day.

See the Benefits

Personally, I started to see the benefits straight away, even the first time I started using affirmations. I had recently split up with my ex-partner and was falling into a bit of a trap of eating rubbish food since she always handled the cooking side of things.

However, by using affirmations, I was able to treat my body with love and respect it deserved, making sure that I was drinking water every day and eating the foods that fuel my body optimally.

Give it a go yourself and see how you feel! Try for ten days and then let me know what you think! I guarantee that you’ll feel amazing!

Imagine living the perfect lifestyle. You get eight hours sleep every night. You eat as much fruit and veg as you’re supposed to, and you exercise and meditate daily. Wow, imagine what we’d feel like if that was the case.

However easy it is to list out those things, in reality, it’s far harder to achieve that balance. Every day we’re constantly trying to manage the mountains of work that we have to complete, the deadlines we’re set. On top of that, there are the constant messages our family and friends are sending us and, of course, the constant distractions that our phones provide.

But, the first list of the utopian world we could live in does exist, or we can at least close to it. By far closer than we are right now. Many people don’t even meditate because they hate the idea of sitting in one spot for too long when we have a to-do list as long as our arms.

Below are some ‘micro-meditations’ that might help. These take up no time at all but still give you some of the benefits you can enjoy throughout the day.

Watching Your Thoughts

How often do you actually sit and think about what you’re thinking about? Do you actually stop and think to see if your mind is actually in the place you think it is? Or whether you’re 100% focused on what you’re doing?

Whatever you’re doing, even now, or any time of the day, shut your eyes, if only for a few seconds. Breath in deeply through your nose and exhale really slowly. Concentrate on your breath. What thoughts are going through your head?

When you open your eyes, act on them and address them.

Listening to Your Breath

If you find your productivity is slipping throughout the day, similar to the technique above, close your eyes.

Inhale through your nose till you can’t breathe in anymore. Hold your breath for two seconds and exhale through your mouth as slow as you can. Do this three times and monitor your breath from the beginning of your inhale to the end of the exhale.

This is a great way to clear your mind and to regain your focus, helping you to stay productive and on task.

Feel Your Body

How often do you actually listen to what your body is telling you? Do you sit in your office chair but ignore that ache in your back because it’s just there and you need to get things done? Your body is constantly telling you what it needs and how it feels, but you need to give it the time to listen to it.

For this, close your eyes and conduct a quick body scan. Start at the very tip of your toes and work your way up every section of your body, making a mental note of how you feel. Once you reach the top of your head, shake it all out and address any aches or pains you might have.

Conducting all of this ‘mini-meditations’ is a great way to get back in touch with your body. Do these every day and you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve and how great you feel!