Nothing helped my stress levels until I meditated. With pressing deadlines on homework, projects and everything else I didn’t know any good outlets to deal with my frustration. That was until I heard about meditating from a friend. I was doubtful at first, because I didn’t think sitting in the quiet for 10 minutes would help anything. I decided to mediate for 30 days and this is what happened.
I started to notice that with having the pressures of deadlines, projects, and social life all hitting me at once I no longer had time for myself. Personal became optional as others asked for my time. There was a clear disconnect between me and my own inner world. I couldn’t think about anything other than getting in assignments and working hard on my relationships with other people.
I forgot that a relationship with myself was also important.
During the process I started to be honest about wants and desires that I held back on at first. No one likes being vulnerable. I felt wide open to the harshest of critics, myself. We are our own worst enemies, and when my head would start to get quiet a flood of negative thoughts would take root. For the first few days I didn’t give myself a chance, I said the things that had been building up for a number of years.
It was after the first two weeks when I started to experience small amounts of positive thoughts about dreams I had been to scared to even think about. I started to see that I was so tightly wrapped up in other peoples lives that I forgot how to live my own. Once I took time out and actually applied myself to doing meditation for 10 minutes a day that changed. I became more aware of my emotions and thoughts and aligned myself with them.
Like most college students the stresses of being at university can cause some serious breakouts to happen. I remember my skin would become inflamed whenever I would stress over a project, or get anxious about a big exam coming up. The worst spots they would appear on were my face chin, cheeks, and forehead. I would try everything from acne masks to serums and nothing seemed to work. Until, I started to meditate.
Breakouts that normally would be huge and horrible. Now were smaller and easily manageable.
Dealing with depression was really hard throughout this process. Before, I would have just cut myself off from feeling those negative emotions. Shoving them into a corner until I could deal with them later, or sometimes never in my case. The thing about that is when you do that you never understand that you are going to have to deal with it sometime. All those negative emotions can build and build until something really small can trigger you causing you to explode.
When I meditated I had to deal with those anxious thoughts that I had been shoving away. I had to listen to them, and figure out exactly why it was that I was feeling that way toward myself. I had to get uncomfortable to get to the root of the issue. When I tell you that after I did that repetitively for thirty days, just taking time to get to know myself through the process I felt so much better.
Even if you meditated and it isn’t your calling I suggest looking into other works like yoga, or other activities that open you up to clearing your mind. Its not only beneficial physically, but your mental mind state will thank you.
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