Stacy Klein: Meditation Makes You More Resilient. Here’s Why:

Imagine if you could always be happy. Imagine knowing no matter what happens—no matter how bad life gets, no matter how much pain and stress you go through—you could always come home at the end of the day and tap into a never-ending source of fulfillment, gratitude, creativity, and resilience.

That’s exactly what meditation is, what it does, and what it can feel like if you practice it on a daily basis. There are plenty of types of meditation out there. Mantra meditation involves repeating a certain word or phrase. Breathing meditation involves focusing on your breath. In guided meditation, an instructor guides you into a state of stillness.

No matter which type or style you choose to participate in, the purpose of all meditation is to free your mind—to free yourself from non stop thinking, anxiety, stress, and frustration percolating in through your brain. Meditation is a vehicle allowing you to pull yourself back from negative thoughts and negative feelings to reconnect with a beautiful and unbreakable state of joy that is your true nature.

As someone who has been a practitioner since 2013, I’ve been able to use meditation to bounce back from all sorts of setbacks, problems or tragedies over the past 4 years. No matter how negative or bleak the situation was, my response was always to pull myself aside for 20 minutes of stillness. Choosing to meditate not only evaporated the stress on my mind, but also gave me the clarity and creativity to figure out the best solution.

The beauty of it is it works consistently. There has not been a situation over the past 4 years that I have not been able to bounce back from or look back at as a blessing in disguise. It has brought me to a place in my life where nothing can faze me.

“Meditation is a way for nourishing and blossoming the divine within you.” – Amit Ray

Becoming unbreakable and unfazed by the struggles of life sounds weird, yet it makes perfect sense when you realize tenacity is our default state of mind. As humans, we are naturally joyful, peaceful and creative. Meditation is a vehicle for reconnecting you with that default state of mind you got disconnected with as a kid.

If you look out at any playground or schoolyard in the world, you’ll see that children are full of limitless joy, smiles, happiness, creativity, energy, love, and confidence. But as we grow older, most people slowly get more and more disconnected from their true nature.

The reason meditation works is it reconnects us with who we really are. It provides a vehicle that allows us to tap back into our highest and best qualities.

When you look out at the vast numbers of people across the country and across the world that are struggling with anxiety, stress, depression, and unfulfilled lives, this can be a very hard concept to wrap your head around. Nonetheless, it becomes very real when you look out at all of the results that millions of people across the globe have achieved through this beautiful practice. The proof lies in the results.

I myself have been able to remain sober from both drugs and alcohol for over 3 years and counting, wrote more than one book, started a blog, and found true fulfillment through doing this practice twice a day since 2013. And there are TONS of incredibly successful and high-achieving people out there who practice meditation—including Ray Dalio, Russell Simmons, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld, Arianna Huffington, and many more!

These people are all proof that there is a wellspring of pure bliss, tenacity, strength, and resilience that resides within all of us. It’s not just within some people. It’s within everybody.

“Enjoy the time off from doing. Just be with yourself.” – Oprah Winfrey

Once you pick up the practice, you too will get to a place in your life where you feel like nothing can faze you. This is something that you can start doing right now. I want to end this blog post with some simple instructions from Russell Simmons’ Super Rich, the book that helped me get started:

“After sitting down and getting comfortable, the next step is to simply begin repeating your mantra. Since most of you reading this probably don’t have one yet, let me share a mantra that I’ve been taught and have found works well for novices: Rum.

Try not to think of it as a word, but rather as a vibration. ‘Ruuuuuuuuuuum.’ Say it loudly in your mind. Say it softly. Say it fast. Say it slow. Whisper it. Scream it. Fixate your mind on ‘Rum’ until that vibration fills up your being.

If you keep repeating ‘Rum’ for even just five minutes, you’ll feel yourself beginning to transcend the hundreds of frivolous thoughts that are cluttering your mind. Again, think of all those thoughts as waves on a stormy ocean. As the vibration of ‘Rum’ becomes stronger and stronger, soon the fluctuations of those waves will become smaller and smaller until your mind will be a calm, glassy sea. When those waves are gone, you’ll be entering a state of real stillness.”

Just a couple words of advice, if the above meditation exercise does not provide any results for you the first time around or if you don’t feel like it’s working for you, be patient. I didn’t get results the first time I tried it. And there are plenty of people around the world who don’t either. It takes patience and consistency.