The Most Powerful Habit No One Is Doing

The Pivotal Realization

Up until I was 22 years old, life always seemed to be a struggle for me.

I was always an “overthinker”.

As I went through my teens and early adolescence, my overthinking didn't help with things like heartbreak, trying to fit in, and try to find my own identity in the world.

This frequently led to frustration, aggression, lack of emotional control or emotional intelligence.

I used to be stressed out all of the time.

Constantly stuck in my own head.

Many times I would simply feel unwell.

I even just felt ”sick in the head”.

My parents, saddened by my constant state of instability, took me to a psychologist.

I was “diagnosed” with clinical depression at just 16 years old.

I was then later "diagnosed" with clinical anxiety a few years later.

I was prescribed drugs by my doctor shortly after to help "deal with" the issues.

I remember sitting in the car as my parents drove to the pharmacy.

Luckily for me, this was the age of the "blackberry" and so I had access to the internet on the way, and decided to look up the drug I was prescribed.

I scrolled to the bottom to "side effects".

"... may prompt suicidal thoughts..."

I immediately told my parents I was not going to take this drug, and to just take me home.

It became obvious to me that mental problems are not surface level wounds to be treated with drugs.

They are a consequences of deep-rooted thinking patterns and overthinking in general.

That night I had an epiphany that felt like it had instantly shattered my fragile and erratic state of mind.

And all that was left... was me.

Thought-free.

My head was quiet.

Thoughts weren't flooding my brain.

No worry about the future, no stress about the past.

It was just me, there and now. I felt alive. I felt calm. At peace. Blissful.

Have you ever felt this way?

Would you like to?

The next time I went back to the psychologist, a week later, I was fine.

The psychologist was skeptical of course and proceeded to ask me specific questions to understand if I was actually thinking rationally and was indeed okay.

I calmly responded to them all. I was even smiling as to sort of convey "I don't know why but I'm at peace now... crazy right?!".

She was truly stunned.

"This is incredible, Jonathan. You have made equivalent to the average person's progress over 9 months of weekly therapy, in less than 7 days. Do you have any idea why this happened? What changed?"

I had no idea what to tell her.

"I'm not sure, I just kind of realized that all of this is just made up thoughts in my head and I can just let them go. It feels like the voice in my head just left suddenly. Like I see thoughts for what they are. Compulsive and not reality".

She told me I would not need to revisit her anymore as she said there seems to be absolutely nothing left for me to talk about.

I had no more "problems".

While I would love to say that was the end of it all, it wasn't.

That was at around 19 years old. For the next couple of years I still would have anxiety come up every now and then, and wasn't able to stay in that peaceful, stress-free state all of the time.

But at 22 years old, I found the simple practise that allowed me to achieve and stay in such a state nearly at all times.

Not A Silver Bullet.

Before we dive in to the practise that has the power to reduce (even completely eliminate) anxious thoughts or depressing thoughts, constant stress and things like this...

There is a very important disclaimer here:

From 14-22 years old, I had absolutely TERRIBLE health habits.

I would exercise all of the time.

But as we hopefully all know by now, if you eat like shit, drink alcohol, smoke, don't care about sleep at all, never drink water, and play video games or watch TV often…then there is no silver bullet.

You have to fix those basic things as well.

While the practise I will teach you about will still have a great benefit mentally despite having other terrible habits, it will be a fraction of how effective it could be if you got those in order as well.

Now, onto the habit & the practise.

People Don’t Like To Hear This Part.

The practise I am speaking about today is Meditation.

Many people hear meditation and tune out because they think it's some "woo-woo", cross your legs, sing "ommmm" type of thing reserved only for Tibetan monks living in the himalayas.

I understand because I thought that too.

What made me decide to actually do it?

It was simply undeniable.

Nearly every person I looked up to, in business, in personal development, in fitness, every book, article, video mentioned some form of it.

I decided I had to give it a try…

And as it turns out, out of everything I’ve done and tried over the years…

I believe meditation is by far the number 1 most important and powerful habit any human being could possibly practice.

Even above physical exercise, nutrition, sleep, water and everything else.

And that is saying quite a bit.

One of my favourite quotes that truly depicts the importance of meditation above anything else.

Now, just like anything else worth doing in life, meditation is not a quick-fix thing with quick results.

When you first start meditation, like I did, you probably won’t “notice” any profound benefits for up to 90 days.

But you will have to stick to it for at least 90 days straight.

Almost every single person that I recommend meditation to either straight up doesn’t want to try it (we’ll discuss why shortly) or they start it for 2-3 days and stop because of 2 reasons:

1. They struggle to stay still and keep their thoughts quiet for more than a few seconds (this is the primary cause of stress).

2. They don’t notice any difference after a few days and it feels like a waste of time.
   

The good news is the benefits are actually proven to be true by several recent studies.

Many show a grey-matter increase in the brain of subjects over an 8-week period of meditation which means an improvement in learning and memory processes, emotional regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.

In general, Meditation continues to become a more widely accepted or at least tested as a form of therapeutic interventions for many mental disorders and struggles in the west.

The even better news? The fact that I didn’t have to sit cross legged and do all the stereotypical meditation stuff.

Instead, I learned you could simply sit normally and all you needed was to be still and focus on your breath.

In fact, meditation is the practise of doing NOTHING.

So, many people jump into all of these apps and get headsets and pillows… it’s like… you’re kind of missing the point.

In a world where our mind is consumed by overthinking and overstimulation, the art & practise of doing nothing has been lost.

How It Changed Me.

So how did mediation change me?

Well, for one, my emotional intelligence become a STRONG SUIT of mine.

I am someone who can be considered to have abnormally high amounts of testosterone.

I’m not trying to boast or anything like this, it’s just the truth. Every indication of extremely high testosterone is ticked.

One of the downsides of it? High levels of aggression.

This doesn’t always manifest in physical outburst, though at some points it could and did, but it would also manifest in overwhelming frustration & aggression mentally that created destructive thoughts.

After the first few months of meditation, it was a noticeable calmness.

A noticeable detachment from whatever happened. A noticeable decrease in frustration.

A few months after that, continuing the practise, it was absolutely mind blowing how I felt.

It was almost as if when a highly emotionally-triggering event or thought would occur, I could step back from it and observe it right in front of me - logically, soundly, and calmly put the thought to the side.

Permanent peace.

A permanent feeling of being in control.

What else did such a power do for me?

It elevated my confidence.

Because I suddenly could not be affected by circumstances internally, I cared less about the opinions of others or even my own opinions and narratives as I saw them all for what they were; thoughts that come and go in a noisy brain.

I learned to handle situations with ease and grace.

Difficult situations and conversations felt as nerve-racking as walking through nature, observing the ducks floating around on the water.

Does this sound crazy? Well, for me, that’s how it felt and that’s how crazy it felt (and still feels).

I became an entirely different person. Not to get too “woo-woo” on you, but I also started to almost feel more connected to the world to the point where I would visualize certain events - desires or outcomes - let them go, and a few days later that very event would occur.

Some call this manifestation.

Whether you believe in it or not, the point I’m getting at is that because the mind quieted down so much, I felt more in-tune with reality.

I felt more connected to everything.

Even in trivial things like traffic jams, there was no more frustration.

In summary, confidence levels went through the roof, peace and calmness flooded in, and my ability to process emotions increased tremendously.

Also, my ability to focus increased massively as well since your hyper-sensitivity to distraction drops.

If you don’t use it, lose it.

Why am I stating a lot of these benefits in past-tense?

Because just like anything else, these benefits will only be noticeable and maximized when you stick with the practise for long periods of time.

Over the years, there were some months I stopped doing it because I was “too excited” to get a project done, and so I would work on it and skip the practise sometimes.

But after a few weeks or months, I would notice emotional control started to decrease and stress started to come back in.

Training the mind is just like training a muscle; the more consistent & longer you go, the stronger and more powerful it gets.

How To Start.

My best recommendation for getting started is the following:

Try starting up a meditation practise with 2 minutes at first.

No app.

Set a timer on your phone, and make sure you do it sitting upright (so as to stay alert and awake).

Your goal will be to count your breaths. How I do it is by counting 1 on the inhale and 2 on the exhale. Breathe naturally and deeply.

This deep breathing alone is healing & changing the hormone profile in your body drastically on it’s own.

Now, get ready because at the start of your practise thoughts will FLOOD into your mind.

That’s because your mind is highly untrained and out of its own control.

Just like a complete beginner at the gym, you have to become more skillful, build the strength over time and through deliberate practise.

So what you do, when you recognize thoughts, is to simply acknowledge the thought for what it is and gently let it go and restart the count from 1.

Over time, you’ll be able to go counting the breaths consecutively without much or any distraction. That is when you know the mind is getting trained.

If you absolutely NEED an app to start, I personally would recommend the app “waking up” by Sam Harris. I actually started with the Headspace app, which is better than nothing if you feel you need something to jumpstart, but I do think Waking Up is better.

However, if you simply follow the technique I just told you, there really is no need for paying for an app to do this.

Follow this extremely simple, but extremely profound practise for the next 30, 60, 90 days and you will perceive the world in a completely different way

Many people try to start new habits and fall back to their old ways after a few days or a few weeks.

The reason for that is because they are fundamentally the same person, with the same beliefs, the same identity and the same perception of the world.

Meditation will fundamentally change your world-view in such a way that you will be able to achieve and become the person you want to become with far less resistance.

If you begin practising meditation or have been trying to, feel free to send me a message on any social media platform (linked below) and I’d be happy to help you out with your practise any way that I can or I’d just love to hear any feedback as to how it’s been going for you.

Permanent peace and absolute control over your mind awaits if your experience is anything like mine.

I do sure hope it is.

Thank you for reading.

Let’s level up.

Jon.