Meditation and Dealing with Disappointments

Following on from last week’s post about disappointments, I would like to talk about how you could use meditation to help you through the process of getting over your disappointments.

Just a quick recap – based on my experience, the way to get over a disappointment is to follow these four steps:

• Let your emotions flow
• Accept what is
• Reason with your heart
• Move on

Breaking it down into four bullet points as above makes it sound easy. But it is not easy. Believe me, I struggle to follow this process myself.

What really helps me is meditation. Meditation especially helps with the 2nd and 3rd step i.e. Accept what is and reason with your heart.

I would say these two steps are the hardest of the four. It’s easy to let your emotions flow (cry, get angry, scream) or to move on (treat yourself, meet up with friends, have an icecream) but it’s not so easy to accept what just happened and how to make sense of it.

In order to go through these two steps, you need to create time and find a space to be alone. Trying to do these steps takes effort and emotional energy. Trying to do it on the go won’t really help you get to the bottom of things.

Meditation really helps me focus my thoughts, reason and let go.

The best time, I find, for meditation is in the morning when I’ve just woken up. It’s a new day, I’ve slept over my troubles and to be honest, when I wake up, I’ve kind of forgotten about my troubles until my mind starts spinning a web again and those emotions come right back. Have you ever felt this way?

In the morning, your mind has had a chance to rest. Yes, your mind needs to rest too. Can you imagine how tired your mind must be with the amount of thinking you do all day?

If you need to go through your thoughts, this is the time that I feel you’ll be able to process them well and come up with an amicable solution/answer.

How to Meditate through your thoughts

1) You’ve woken up, done what you need to (I mean brushing etc., don’t do anything too heavy like work) and you’ve found a space to be alone. It is very important that you make sure you have enough time alone. If you have to worry about that chore you need to do or that person you need to meet, it won’t work. Your thoughts will always go to that event and how much time is left to meditate. Therefore, it is very important that you keep your morning free and take as much time as you need to. Wake up early if you must or do it on a Sunday. Your mind must know that it has all the time and space it needs, there’s no rush.

2) I normally start meditation by first breathing and focusing on breathing alone before going to my thoughts. This enables my mind to relax before taking on the intensive process of dealing with my thoughts. I inhale slowly while counting 1, 2, 3, 4. I hold my breath for another 1, 2, 3, 4. I then exhale very slowly and count up to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Once again I hold my breath for 1, 2, 3, 4 and repeat the process all over again. It is very important for your exhale to be longer than your inhale. I find that it is at the exhale that I’m able to release and let go. The slower I do it, the more effective it is. Sometimes I exhale and count upto 8 as well.

3) I do the process above 10 times. For the first 5 times, I focus on keeping my mind empty – preventing any thoughts from entering my mind. It is very hard. Some days I can do it, some days I can’t but that’s ok. It’s normal. For the last 5 times, when exhaling, I also tell myself (I just say it inward, not out loud), I let go of all my anger, hurt, sadness, depression, anxiety, hopelessness or whichever emotions I feel are bringing me down at that moment. If it is about a person, I also tell myself I forgive that person and let go of any anger or negative feelings about them.

4) If you are able to get through the above breathing steps, you’ll know that you’ve done it right if you feel your mind can breath. It’s a feeling you’ll get when you’ve done it right and you’ll just know. Your mind will feel very light-headed, fresh and alive. It will also feel a bit cooler up in your brain 😀 You will not believe that your mind could feel that way and it just goes to show how much weight our mind carries and the rest it needs. We don’t realise how much our mind needs to rest just like our body.

5) It’s now time to focus on your thoughts while you continue breathing. You can choose to breath normally or breath as per the technique above. It’s up to you, the important thing is to relax and let you thoughts flow. Don’t shun them, let them come. Think whatever you need to. Once you’ve given your mind the space to think whatever it needs to, it will give up, finally calm down and at that point, you can take control of your mind.

6) First of all, accept what is. I speak to my mind as though it’s another entity. I tell it, well what happened, happened. It’s done now and you can’t go back and change it. This is acceptance. I then move to the next step of Reason with your heart/mind – I tell my mind – But you can analyse it and figure out what went wrong. Was there anything I could have done differently? Was the disappointment because of a person? Did I have any control over it? If I had to go back in time and re-do it again, would I have changed anything? Does this have anything to do with me or was it the other person? How is thinking about this disappointment again and again helping me? Is it making my life any better? No – so then why am I worrying about it? This is the step where I figure out any changes I need to make, learn from my mistakes, forgive or let go.

7) Take all the time you need to for acceptance or analysing. Tell yourself whatever you need to or analyse as much as you need to until you are satisfied that yes, I have accepted this and I now feel better. I’ve also got to the bottom of this.

8) Meditating through your thoughts and disappointments once may not be enough. You may need to repeat the process again and again until you are at peace.

Using Meditation to Deal with Disappointments

Using meditation to guide me through dealing with my disappointments has really helped me alot. I cannot stress how relaxed and happy just having one session of this made me feel. I would like to help you deal with your disappointments too and I hope this process works for you. Remember, everyone is different, it may or may not work but there’s no harm trying. Also, don’t go too hard on yourself, take it at your own pace. If it’s not perfect, don’t lose heart, try it again. You’ll get better with time. Let me know how you felt or if you did it any differently to work for you in the comments section below. I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best and have a lovely Sunday ahead.