In order to truly find your Zen, I think it is pretty important to first understand what it is exactly. Now, I am in no way an expert on this topic and honestly have no credentials other than my first person experience. So be sure to take each post with a grain of salt and apply it to your own personal experience.
Zen can mean a number of things depending on who you ask. The word is normally associated with Buddhism and holds roots in wisdom and peace. This perspective can be further digested on this article by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, but I plan on using the word Zen in it’s more modern attire.
This more broad usage of the word being defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary itself as “a state of calm attentiveness in which one’s actions are guided by intuition rather than by conscious effort.” Although I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with this statement, to me the word implies much more. I view Zen as a practice, open mindfulness, and a means of escape from life’s busy everyday tasks. An opportunity to clear my brain and find peace that doesn’t always seem reachable when surrounded by the countless stimuli that clutters and bog down our deepest thoughts. So as we go on I will be using the word to refer as a spectrum of practices.
Further than an escape, I believe taking time to clear out your brain allows for your more deeper thoughts to emerge. Maybe this means exposing an emotion you didn’t know you were feeling or maybe it’s just realizing your life is somewhat more put together than you allow yourself to believe.
There are countless benefits of Zen and mindfulness alike such as a clearer thought process, better stress management, better physical health, and just an overall more satisfying life. The American Psychological Association dives into these benefits deeper as they have a more direct focus on mindfulness and the reduction of anxiety and stress.
To get a little more personal, I would say I started my Zen, or better defined as mindfulness journey, about a year ago. So as I had mentioned before, I am far from an expert. My journey was sparked by an abundance of stress as Senior year of high school, college decisions, and everyday life struggles don’t make the best meditation medium. I would even say my ‘meditation’ began as daily trips to the gym. And then it morphed into journaling and short periods of genuine meditation. And THEN an appreciation for time alone and a new found selflove and dignity.
So although my journey is not finished, and some may say it is merely even starting, I have high hopes in sharing my tactics and experiences to hopefully encourage others to take a mindfulness journey of their own. Not only will I talk about the past and mistakes I’ve made along the way but I will also try to keep you up to date on my current practices to make my life a little more satisfying and hopefully a lot more peaceful.
If you are eager to start your journey today, I suggest just taking a few minutes to start a journal of your own . I’ll list a few of my favorite prompts below 🙂
Where do you want to see yourself in the future? And what can you do now to help future you reach those goals?
What are your more important values in life and how can you better live by them?
Make a list of ‘absolutes’ that you require of yourself and the people you surround yourself with.
I like how you described Zen as a journey rather than just a state of being; that’s a nice way to see it. Especially because I struggle to find zen myself, I think describing it as a journey rather than something you can easily achieve makes it more realistic and achievable.
This was a cool post to read. I had a super stressful senior year of high school as well, and I am sure if I did anything that you wrote about I would have had a much better time about it. I also really like how you have a journal that you write in every day. I can’t wait to read more from this blog.
Firstly I find the use of a call to action at the end to be very unique and I believe is used in a way that makes the post more memorable. This also makes the post bigger than itself. Regarding the rest of the post, the topics of mental health and mindfulness are definitely important to our society now for all the same reasons that you list.
It is crucial to understand the role that meditation plays in our daily lives, particularly when there are so many things on our plates that we don’t have time to reflect on our past. In my opinion, when individuals are overburdened with tasks, they are being put to the test in terms of their ability to break free from this fast-paced, competitive lifestyle and see what the real truth is. Mediation can help with this. The sensation of quiet, peace, and balance that meditation can bring you can help your physical and emotional health. There is more to meditation than just relaxing the mind so you may take some time to rest and recover. You can learn powerful resilience to unfavorable thoughts and feelings through meditation.