By Manoj Gupta, Founder

Fitness seems to be the new mantra these days. Do the words six pack, cardio, HIIT, Keto and intermittent fasting have something in common? Yes, they are all about improving your physical fitness, but what about the fitness of the mind. When you want to have bigger arms, you pick up the dumbbells. When you want to lose weight, you hit the cardio section. What happens when you want a mental workout? The answer — meditation. Yes, meditation is the mind exercise which you need in your daily life to fight those toxic thoughts and enhance your mindfulness.

Here is why you need to start exercising your mind with it

THE ULTIMATE STRESS BUSTER

There’s so much happening every second in our fast paced lives. Back to back meetings, client calls, boss tantrums, household chores and spouse issues. All these can take a heavy toll on your mind. With practice and patience meditation can program our mind to a new reality, which alerts and allows us to recognize our mental threshold.

Meditation takes you to a zone far beyond selfishness, comfort levels, prejudices or the need to control. It helps you to recognize the problem and then induce self-control rather than waiting for an external factor to do so. what action if any needs to be taken and how to ‘keep your cool’ with decisions that keep the control in your hands, not in someone else’s.

HELPS YOU CONNECT TO YOURSELF

Meditation helps you realize your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as it is introspective. It helps you become you and not put undue pressure on yourself due to the external forces. This can be scoring 90%+ in an examination or getting into that elusive MBA school or getting a promotion at work.

Meditation has changed my life It has given me a feeling of self-fulfilment and to enjoy the journey called life with you being you.

MAKES YOU HANDLE SITUATIONS WITH CARE

You won’t lose oodles of weight in one day at the gym. It takes time and effort. Similarly, meditation helps you to become content over a period of time. Over a period of time you’ll start noticing visible changes in your thought processes.

You can’t stop problems in life but you can surely know how to handle them. Meditation is one great tool to help you focus your energies in the right spirit and manner. Ever since I have started practicing yoga and meditation, I have become positive, calm and confident while always improving as my practice progresses.

We run to the doctor when there is a physical ailment but why do we just sit there when there is a mental problem. Why do we say this too shall pass? Why not work on it and change our approach towards life? Meditation is like an internal doctor, which helps you recognize, analyse and then treat your thoughts.

When you meditate you learn let go of fixed beliefs, concepts and expectations. Instead of reacting we maintain a more open and insightful ability to look a little deeper, to feel into the situation a little more and to be open to a broader or wiser perspective.

GAIN CLARITY

Every few seconds we have an alert on our phone. Either it’s a mailfrom a colleague, a like from a friend or a notification from those endless apps on your phone. Our world is filled with distractions these days.

Think of mediation as a 100m race. When Usain Bolt runs on that track, he has his focus on the finish line. There are thousands of fans, cameras and eyes on him. But he never lost his focus. He concentrated always on the task in hand. Meditation is the perfect tool, which helps you create an internal checklist of what’s important and what’s not. And helps you clear it by putting those thoughts in the bin.