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TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-08-04
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snkr-1C2e7U
meditation has been a part of my life ever since I can remember I personally have been practicing meditation for the last five and a half years and I've been a trainer for the last eight months but I'll get into that a little bit later my college career has been I'm conventional to say the least I started out as pre med and got half way through my
freshman year college before realizing that really wasn't for me and I switched my major about four times before finally landing on International Studies eventually choosing public health and I think it took me a really long time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life for a few reasons one I'd always struggled with self confidence and would set my standards for myself so high
that anytime I failed to reach them I felt like I wasn't doing what I was supposed be doing instead of fighting strength from that situation I would beat myself up and falter and to my idea of success and happiness and satisfaction up until recently were completely misguided we live in a world that encourages that this idea that in order to be internally satisfied we have to
rely on external circumstances and this is an idea that's been hammered into our heads probably since we can understand what happiness and success and satisfaction or an obviously these are concepts that are different for different people at different times so could be the little things like spending time with friends and family or curling up with a good book or it could be getting good grades getting
the job you want finding the person you're meant to spend the rest of your life with well all these things are great things were still relying on things outside of ourselves to make us happy and this idea of external substantiation has been magnified with the increases in technology and the advent of social media we can't really exist without our devices anymore it's almost like our phones
have become other body organs that we can't live without and with no offense to anybody in this room but I can guarantee that the second I'm done talking the majority view will probably sub consciously reached for your phone to check your texts and social media social media has created this idea of false happiness and satisfaction nobody wants to share bad moments of their life no lights
no one wants to share their mistakes or their failures so social media has made it seem that everyone is always successful and happy and satisfied all the time but what if things don't go away what if we don't get the grade we want we the other person we thought we were going to spend the rest by lies with breaks up with us or we do get
the job we want but there's some sort of negative aspect to it like our boss sucks so we have a horrible co worker suddenly the concept that was providing us with an internal satisfaction externally is now negative so what I'm realizing more and more is that not only is our success temporary but our happiness is conditional were only happy or satisfied because something outside of ourselves
is making us happy and satisfied were never truly satisfied for the sake of being satisfied and that's where I realized I was going wrong saw me back up a little bit anybody who knows me knows that my entire life I've been on a one way path to becoming a doctor my full family still with medical professionals and at the age of five I declared that I
was gonna be just like them and of course my incredible Indian parents let out a huge sigh of relief because they have to convince me to go into medicine and for a long time that's what I wanted to do until I started learning more about myself and my passions and interests and suddenly becoming a doctor was less of what I wanted to do and more of
what I felt obligated to do you because my entire life I've been taught that in order to be successful you have to be a doctor and I was always a weirdly complain Kate I always knew my parents knew what was best for me so instead of finding the confidence in myself to stand up for myself I went along with it last words my freshman year of
college and I was miserable I was taking classes that I hated it I was doing poorly in them the person that I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with broke up with me the second he went to college and I was still living at home so I felt like I wasn't having the normal college experience and after years of having a plan
in a direction for my life all of a sudden I was lost and when you go there are times when you go through a break up or whatever everybody tells you to get on the house do things for yourself and I did I wouldn't hang out with friends I would go curl up with the book in a bookstore and joined our Bollywood fusion dance team at
school I again I would get a massage but those were temporary satisfactions I would still come home and still feel internally dissatisfied with myself and social media became the bane of my existence I receive my friends and my accent all my classmates posting pictures of their new college adventures their dorm rooms their new friends all these new things I felt like a failure for a couple
of reasons one I don't have anything to share of social media I was still living at home I didn't feel like I was having the conventional college experience and two as an Indian I wasn't meeting the standard of success that had been dictated for me I wasn't doing well it's become a doctor but because it was all in you as success I stuck with it and
my GPA and my self esteem failed as a reason so how do I change that's how did I turn my life around like I said meditation is that a part of my life ever since I can remember my dad has been practicing a form of meditation called Raja yoga or yoga of the mines for over thirty five years and my mom started shortly after they got
married so just like people go to church or temple or synagogue meditation is my way of life it's all I've ever known and I always knew that I was gonna start practicing meditation at some point I tried it a couple times my freshman year college but anything at that point the my parents that would be good for me or it would help me get out of
the rut that I was and I was completely rebellious against thankfully for me and very likely I have incredible friends and I have to show off pictures of these guys because they are my whole world I was very lucky to have friends who were not only starting their college careers or they were halfway through their college careers but they were going through similar things that I
was and the handles of the resistance to meditation that I had and one of my friends convinced me to go to a meditation retreat one weekend at first I craved and I fuss and I wanted to stay in my own little bubble of self pity misery but in the and I'm so glad I went because it was probably the best thing that could happen to me
so what is meditation I'm sure everybody here has a general idea and the head of what it is but just to give a few more definitions meditation is an exercise that trains your mind to regulate itself it's the ability to focus on one thing continuously without break and if practice properly and it diligently it's a consistent reconnection with your true inner self and a lot of
people brushed the concept of meditation aside because we think how we function without our thoughts how do we get through a day without thinking and another thing that people don't realize is just like our bodies require physical activity to keep it strong and healthy and active our minds our muscles that also require exercise in regulation to keep it strong and happy and healthy and active and
a lot of times people neglect their minds because they forget this point if you think meditation is hard you are absolutely right it's very difficult to get your brain to shut up for longer than five seconds and not think about something else and that's another peak reason why people don't try it out the first time I sat down to meditate it felt like every single thought
I'd ever had in my den eighteen years of experience distance decided to come into my head at that exact moment and no matter how many times I try to push them away or ignore my thoughts or try to get into a state of thoughtlessness they kept coming back and I remember thinking why am I doing this here's yet another thing in life that I'm failing at
why am I even trying the second time I sat down to meditate during that retreat like thoughts decreased by a quarter the third time I sat down to meditate during that retreat three decreased by half and gradually it was as though I was starting to see the world in high definition not only could I see my external circumstances very clearly but it was finally starting to
see my true inner self with the objectivity in clarity that I'd not had ever before and the practice of meditation that I am a part of prescribes meditating twice a day for one hour each time so once in the morning for an hour once in the evening for an hour I'll be totally honest with you guys it took me a very long time to get to
a point where I was consistent with this some days I was doing a really great job and get up in the morning and meditate I go to bed and I meditate before before I went to that I would meditate I'd be fine the other days more bad days and good days I would just be downright lazy head I would choose to stay up all night watching
Alan videos and that means you know senator wake up late the next morning instead meditating and my rationale for this was like yeah I'm young think interest in my life to work I'm a meditation practice and I'll have more time to watch Ellen videos but I think it took me a long time to reach a connects with my meditation practice because I wasn't accustomed to the
silence that came with meditation I think as humans we thrive on noise because it makes us feel as though we're doing something and so I said to meditate and about five to ten minutes and I would realize I was creating noise I needed some sort of distraction so I give up I'm meditating and immediately reach for my folder for my laptop and what this tightly was
I come to a point where he did silence and this also taught me how loud my world was and noise is not just sour door cacophony noise is the frustration you feel with a family member or friend it's writer's block it's not understanding a concept at school anything is noise if it's loud enough to distract us one so I realized that I'd come to hate silence
it made me examine my routine and I realized I couldn't get it through a day without sound or noise are distractions of some sort I would wake up in the morning and it wouldn minutes he half heartedly you before giving up because I got too hard and it immediately reach for my folder for my laptop they would play music and videos while is getting ready for
school or while is eating breakfast I would drive to school with music on I will get to class and be fine and then about halfway through class and so without thinking about the video I watched that morning and there'll be so much chaos coming around me and in me because my thoughts at all these distractions that I come home and feel frustrated and let out that
frustration of my family members because I didn't know what to do with it and I start my homework until frustrated because I wasn't understanding the concepts that that's because I music on the background and then I try to sit down and meditate at the end of the day and I'd give up again because there's so much going on my head and I get annoyed when I
could fall asleep and then I get frustrated because I felt like I wasn't progressing in my meditation practice so what this taught me was that in order to create a true connection with my inner self have to learn how to love silence and in order to learn how to love silence I had to really use my will power if you mix my meditation practice and in
order to sustain the lumber silence in a cultivated internally might internal environment how to interact with my external environment and so the more and more I meditated the more I started to learn how to love silence internally the more my internal environment began to reflect my external environment and that's when I started to see the changes in myself that I wanted to see so here if
you how meditation creates interaction with the internal the internal with the external confidence like I said earlier I'm always lacked and self confident the creating a consistent reconnection with my inner self drove that fear of confidence when I suddenly was able to stand up for myself I was feeling more confident with in myself and he gave me the courage to actually switch my major to International
Studies and eventually get rid of this idea that in order to be successful I had to do something big replacing the positive with the negative like I said before you we may get the job that we want but there's always gonna be some sort of aspect about it that ends up becoming negative or something that we don't want to deal with and all of a sudden
the entire environment becomes negative cultivating a connection with my internal self through meditation has allowed me to see that the positive and any situation regardless of what it is exercise not just exercise of the mind but exercise the body when you're taking care of yourself internally you're given the ability to take care yourself externally as well Q. indication I mean seem like we talk a lot
of here but I'm actually pretty not assertive most of the time and so by creating a connection with myself through meditation constantly I was able to say the things I needed to say speak up for myself when I need it to you minimising stress and anxiety being able to create confidence myself maybe take on challenges without any worry or fear and staying in the present moment
it's easier to live in the past it's more fun to live in the future but it's better to stay in the moment and that's what meditation does for you compassion tolerance acceptance being able to see everyone with as their true selves because of reconnecting with myself and will power meditation is hard but if you can create them willpower to stop your brain from thinking long enough
you can pretty much create the will power to do just about anything and the capacity to love as corny as it sounds the more and more I was able to love myself the more I was able to let everything around me there is only one time in my life that I really straight away from my meditation practice and that was when I was working on president
Obama's reelection campaign %HESITATION this is the day my dad and president Obama went public with their bromance aha anybody knows anything about a campaign knows that the energy there so strong that you really don't need much of anything else to call out to sustain you and I realize that I was trying to take the energy from this product from this campaign and use it in my