The Value of Meditation in Career Clarity – Part of Chapter IV of the upcoming book Find Your Passion

The Value of Meditation in Career Clarity – Part of Chapter III of the upcoming book “Find Your Passion” –

We went through the mental and physical habits for you to realize their real value for your resilience, well-being, health, and passion! Now it’s time for us to see the habits that will build your emotional resilience. How can you keep your mood high and your emotional state positive during your long days? How can you reach a lasting emotional harmony, in spite of your daily problems and challenges? In spite of their size and importance? How can you fully prepare your spirit and mind and set the pace for your entire day? That’s the value of your emotional habits. There are plenty for you to practice, but we’ll focus here on the most important ones for you to discover your passion and turn it into your dream career. Make sense? Let’s go!

1. 1. 1. Meditation
      2. Gratitude
      3. Prayer 
      4. Visualization 

1. Meditation 

What is meditation? It’s the technique and art of self-observation. That is, your ability to observe and focus on your inner world; your thoughts, emotions, reactions, behavior, yourself; your true self. It’s one of the greatest means to practice self-mastery; your ability to acknowledge and manage your emotions and thoughts, take a step back from the outer world, and a big dive into your inner world. 

So far, you must have already understood the value of self-mastery for your passion and life in general. If not, read again the seventh principle, “Focus on Yourself”, and don’t come back here until you understand the impact of self-mastery on your career and life. Meditation is a unique, simple, easy, and effective way for you to learn and practice how to get closer to self-mastery. I said “get closer”, because it’s an ever-going process and journey. Like self-awareness, which will be significantly increased through the practice of meditation. Finding your passion is all about self-awareness and exploration, so meditation is going to play a key role in giving you the insights and clarity you want in your career. Think about it as one of the main tools that will support you to discover your passion; a torch that will shed light on the obstacles that will stand on your passion journey. 

Although meditation is a common practice in some Eastern Asian countries, like China and India, especially as part of worship in Buddhism, we should not strictly and exclusively associate it with a certain religion or culture. You don’t have to be a Buddhist or be religious to meditate; neither will it jeopardize your emotional and spiritual identity. In fact, quite the opposite. You’ll be able to discover your passion and get as close as possible to your core identity, the core part of your “being”. You can absolutely meditate while maintaining your personal values and principles. I learned so many things about myself and changed for the better thanks to my meditation practice. After almost three years of practice, I couldn’t feel more certain, peaceful, balanced, and focused in my day. The same applies to all the people I’ve worked with across the globe who discovered their passion and strengthened their resilience. 

The Value of Meditation  

We’ve mentioned before that meditation is a crucial method for you to discover your passion, as it increases your self-awareness. But why? Because it helps you access your intuition, your highest self, the greatest inner power of yours. 

Intuition & Self-Awareness

It’s important to understand that your intuition is strongly interwoven with your self-awareness. It’s also called “sixth sense” and “gut feeling”. It’s the voice of your inner power, self-belief, courage, and wisdom you have within you. It’s the voice that reminded you that you do deserve to discover and make a living and a fortune at your passion! It’s the voice that made you decide to read this book – thanks for the honor! It’s the voice that knows what’s the best choice for yourself, anywhere, anytime. 

Have you ever felt that this date or spouse is not the right one for you? That something doesn’t feel right, although this person is quite friendly and kind? That this professional who seemed a great colleague, employee, client, or business partner is not a great fit, and you were right? If you are a mom, have you ever felt that your children are in danger, even though you were not at the same place as them? Ever felt to take a different way to go to work, only to learn later on that there was a car accident where you normally pass by? 

Have you ever had any similar experiences? I’m sure you have. But we cannot explain “it”, because we cannot see it. So, we never talk about it. Please be aware of this: you cannot explain everything exclusively based on your five physical senses and rational mind. Although they are great ways to observe, perceive, and study the environment, they are not the only ones available. I believe there are many more ways for us to understand, interpret, and make our world a better place for everyone. Intuition is also one of them. 

In fact, sometimes our rational mind and five senses are not even enough to make you survive, much less to thrive! In the previous example of the car accident, you might have been in the wrong spot, wrong time, without any guarantees for the effectiveness of your physical reaction. It was your intuition that made you avoid this dangerous situation; that made you take the very best decision for yourself, in any area of your life. It was my intuition that made me discover and follow my passion: to inspire others to discover and follow their passion!

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift” 

– Albert Einstein –

Your intuition can save your life, if it hasn’t done that already. It also helped my mom to save my life.

It’s November 5, 1999. Athens, Greece. It’s 23:00. I’m 5 years old, and I feel so tired. I’ve lied on my bed, trying to sleep. I also have a high fever. 102 F (38 C). I thought it was just a fever. But my mom didn’t. She felt that something was going wrong. She felt there was something unusual with this fever. I was “too calm” for my standards – Yes, I was quite active and talkative since then; since always actually! 

But that night, I wasn’t talking at all. My mom felt that this was much more serious than a high fever, so she took me to the hospital. Normally, you don’t take your child to the hospital that easily. But she was right. I was infected by the bacterium group B streptococcus. This infection can cause severe illness and sometimes death, especially in newborns and people with a compromised immune system. And although I wasn’t a newborn, my situation was pretty bad. Doctors said that if we had come a little bit later, there would have been no chance for me to make it. Always trust your intuition. Thank you, mom! Love you! 

“Always trust your intuition.”

The Science of Intuition

Have you ever wondered why we also call it “gut feeling”? “The system is way too complicated to have evolved only to make sure things move out of your colon”, says Emeran Mayer, professor of physiology, psychiatry, and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angele. For example, scientists were shocked to learn that about 90 percent of the fibers in the primary visceral nerve, the vagus, carry information from the gut to the brain and not the other way around. “A big part of our emotions is probably influenced by the nerves in our gut,” Mayer says. 

Michael Gershon, chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at New York – Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology and author of the 1998 book “The Second Brain”, adds that “Butterflies in the stomach, signaling in the gut as part of our physiological stress response, is but one example.” 

That’s also why I emphasized the value of nutrition for our mental health and well-being. Our brain receives a tremendous amount of information from trillions of bacteria in our gut. Perhaps, our gut is also the part of our body that receives the largest number of data and stimuli from the environment; including the impact and interaction with other energy sources, like another person’s emotions and individual energy field (remember that emotions are energy and every emotion in our body has its own unique calibration and power). Maybe that’s the reason why we feel someone’s good or bad intention, although we might not know them. 

We use phrases like “I like/don’t like this person’s energy” or that “The energy in the room is high/low.” Our gut bacteria most likely receive the calibration of one’s emotions and send to our brain the relevant signal. Then, we have an opinion about whether we like or don’t like this person. Maybe that’s also one of the reasons why we decide, unconsciously, whether we like someone or not, whether they’re “friend” or “enemy”, in just 6 – 12 seconds! You might have heard that this applies to all our interactions, both personal and professional; whether it’s about hiring or working with a new colleague, advisor, client, business partner, or just talking with a stranger at a bus station!

For you to learn more about yourself and discover your passion, you’ll need to gather more info and data about your behavior, your patterns, and who you really are, deep at the very core of your being. To do this, most people use their physical senses. We see, hear, smell, taste, and touch to learn more about our environment and ourselves. Nevertheless, very little can we increase our self-awareness this way. Because it’s a journey into your inner world, not the outer world. Different worlds need to be explored by different means. 

That’s right. Reason and physical senses are the tools that help you observe and understand the outer world. They are like a telescope. You can observe anything around you, from valleys and mountains to planets and galaxies. On the other hand, your intuition is like a microscope. You get to observe all the things that are invisible to the naked eye. Your intuition gives you the chance to observe all the invisible things that are within you, your inner world. 

So, let me ask you this: Would you use a telescope to see and observe the chemical properties of a stone? Probably not. Would you use a microscope to observe the stars? I don’t think so. Well, that’s what most people do. That’s what you do! That’s what we’ve learned to do in our society; trying to learn more about ourselves and our inner world by using a telescope! If you keep using a telescope, do you know when you’ll discover your passion? Never! So, use your microscope! Use your intuition to explore, discover, and leverage your infinite inner wealth; and one of its fundamental elements is passion, your passion. 

The thing is, you can’t leverage any tool, including your intuition, if you don’t access it first. You need a “pathway” to do this. That’s where meditation comes in to pave this pathway for you.

“Different worlds need to be explored by different means” 

Now, how can you meditate? Although there are so many ways and techniques, I’d highly recommend you to start practicing a specific one, because this way is the one that worked for all the people who worked with me from all over the globe, regardless of their background, age, gender, nationality, profession, social status, religious and ideological beliefs, and the like. This technique is an important ingredient in the recipe of discovering your passion. Even if you change only one ingredient, you have a different recipe, without any guarantees for its great taste. At least the recipe that I’m giving you tastes amazing! 

So, you should really avoid experimentation with new recipes for the moment. After you implement the “Find Your P.A.S.S.I.O.N” method and enjoy its unique taste, then cook anything else you want to explore yourself even further! 

Feel free to pre-order (50% off) the “Find Your Passion” book to transform your career and life by visiting my personal site here