Martijn van Osch of the excellent blog Fresh Creation has written a nice article on 10 things he learned in his first five months of meditation.
1. Thoughts are not reality
I put this as the number 1 item on the list cause it had such a big impact on me. By doing meditation on a daily basis I learned to recognize thoughts for what they are: thoughts. Nothing more.
Looking back now, I spent an awful lot of time thinking about stuff that had happened in the past or about stuff that still had to happen. In the meantime I forgot to see the things that were happening now. Constantly I would be judging people, worrying about money, thinking about what others might be thinking… As a test: close your eyes and start counting your breaths from 1 to 10. Do this over and over and experience how many times you get ‘distracted’ by thoughts. That’s exactly what I mean.
Now, I’m not saying thoughts are a bad thing. I’m just saying that it’s a good thing to recognize which thoughts you need to be thinking about and which thoughts you don’t need to be thinking about. That alone makes your life a lot more pleasant.