I met my wonderful husband in 2001.
After only a few days I described him as "the nicest man I had ever met!" Sounds a little bit boring maybe? But "nice" was good, reliable, easy, trustworthy and just felt really wonderful.
There were no games being played for a change and this was a huge relief.
Like many 30 "somethings" I had previously gone through a messy break up from a long-term relationship.
Messy in terms of many a deep psychological scar left to rear its ugly head at any point.
I remember John Gray saying in the very well known book 'Men are from Mars Women are from Venus', that when we meet the person of our dreams we are far more likely to experience or suffer from emotional episodes.
All the anger, upset, fear and so on which we have been suppressing, decide to start a competition between themselves to see who can come up the quickest and have the deepest, traumatic impact.
Suddenly our emotions now have a safe haven to come up.
We feel subconsciously that it is okay for us to be vulnerable with this new person who makes us feel so safe.
However, we often are not prepared for the resulting onslaught of stressful and exhausting emotions.
This is exactly what happened to me! I couldn't sleep; I had digestive problems and food intolerances.
I became a highly strung, stress head who couldn't handle things going wrong and who exercised the maximum amount of impatience at those closest to her for almost no reason whatsoever.
Much of this stress and anxiety was no doubt due to the fact that I was scared out of my brains that this relationship was going to go wrong too! I am sure my future husband thought he had met and fallen in love with a basket case.
Why does that happen when you so want to be cool and clever and funny and relaxed? Especially when you have just met the most horizontal, calm and laid back person on the planet.
So what saved my life and my relationship? Absolutely & without a doubt, meditation.
I now realise why nearly every book I read on the theme of personal development shouts from the rooftops "Meditate, Meditate, Meditate".
I bought a book and taught myself.
Soon it became a regular practice.
So what is all the fuss about meditation? The new me, as a result of meditation, is so much calmer less stressed, positive, sleeps like a baby even with hubby snoring, and has a growing empathy with other people and their situations.
Above all I am so much more adept at keeping tabs on my internal chatterbox, which, if we are not careful can run away with itself and encourages "catastrophic thinking".
People often wonder what are best ways to reduce stress.
Meditation is a fantastic, amazing way of helping you reduce your stress levels and to become aware of and deal with negative emotions in a much more objective and altogether positive way.
It is not about suppressing and burying our emotions, but it allows us to get to a place where we can feel the emotion arising and then choose a more appropriate response.
This response will come from a place inside ourselves, from a place of peace.
Okay, so this does not necessarily happen every time but we get better and better at it the more we practice.
Like anything, it takes time and practice.
We are not going to improve our cardiovascular fitness and maintain it at a good level without regular training.
So unfortunately, for those people who have tried meditation once or twice and said to themselves, "it's no good I can't do it, I have too many thoughts going round in my head", then the lack of practice or desire to achieve maximum results in the minimum of time would be the reason why! If you knew though how much calmer, centred and better placed you would be to start your day as a result of meditation then maybe you could possibly find 10 or 15 minutes to sit down and have some blissful, peaceful and still time to yourself.
Peter McWilliams sums the benefits of the process up in the following quote; "some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment.
Taken to extremes of course that is true.
Most people, however find that meditation creates more time than it takes".
If you would like to meditate but would like some help please feel free to email me at: michele@stressednomore.
com
After only a few days I described him as "the nicest man I had ever met!" Sounds a little bit boring maybe? But "nice" was good, reliable, easy, trustworthy and just felt really wonderful.
There were no games being played for a change and this was a huge relief.
Like many 30 "somethings" I had previously gone through a messy break up from a long-term relationship.
Messy in terms of many a deep psychological scar left to rear its ugly head at any point.
I remember John Gray saying in the very well known book 'Men are from Mars Women are from Venus', that when we meet the person of our dreams we are far more likely to experience or suffer from emotional episodes.
All the anger, upset, fear and so on which we have been suppressing, decide to start a competition between themselves to see who can come up the quickest and have the deepest, traumatic impact.
Suddenly our emotions now have a safe haven to come up.
We feel subconsciously that it is okay for us to be vulnerable with this new person who makes us feel so safe.
However, we often are not prepared for the resulting onslaught of stressful and exhausting emotions.
This is exactly what happened to me! I couldn't sleep; I had digestive problems and food intolerances.
I became a highly strung, stress head who couldn't handle things going wrong and who exercised the maximum amount of impatience at those closest to her for almost no reason whatsoever.
Much of this stress and anxiety was no doubt due to the fact that I was scared out of my brains that this relationship was going to go wrong too! I am sure my future husband thought he had met and fallen in love with a basket case.
Why does that happen when you so want to be cool and clever and funny and relaxed? Especially when you have just met the most horizontal, calm and laid back person on the planet.
So what saved my life and my relationship? Absolutely & without a doubt, meditation.
I now realise why nearly every book I read on the theme of personal development shouts from the rooftops "Meditate, Meditate, Meditate".
I bought a book and taught myself.
Soon it became a regular practice.
So what is all the fuss about meditation? The new me, as a result of meditation, is so much calmer less stressed, positive, sleeps like a baby even with hubby snoring, and has a growing empathy with other people and their situations.
Above all I am so much more adept at keeping tabs on my internal chatterbox, which, if we are not careful can run away with itself and encourages "catastrophic thinking".
People often wonder what are best ways to reduce stress.
Meditation is a fantastic, amazing way of helping you reduce your stress levels and to become aware of and deal with negative emotions in a much more objective and altogether positive way.
It is not about suppressing and burying our emotions, but it allows us to get to a place where we can feel the emotion arising and then choose a more appropriate response.
This response will come from a place inside ourselves, from a place of peace.
Okay, so this does not necessarily happen every time but we get better and better at it the more we practice.
Like anything, it takes time and practice.
We are not going to improve our cardiovascular fitness and maintain it at a good level without regular training.
So unfortunately, for those people who have tried meditation once or twice and said to themselves, "it's no good I can't do it, I have too many thoughts going round in my head", then the lack of practice or desire to achieve maximum results in the minimum of time would be the reason why! If you knew though how much calmer, centred and better placed you would be to start your day as a result of meditation then maybe you could possibly find 10 or 15 minutes to sit down and have some blissful, peaceful and still time to yourself.
Peter McWilliams sums the benefits of the process up in the following quote; "some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment.
Taken to extremes of course that is true.
Most people, however find that meditation creates more time than it takes".
If you would like to meditate but would like some help please feel free to email me at: michele@stressednomore.
com
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