Harvey, Jason - Achieve Anything In Just One Year - Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals

112

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

— Johannes Eckhart

Over the next few days, you are going to take a look at what prayer and meditation can do to help you on the road to success. If religion of any sort makes you queasy, don’t worry. Your next assignment is not to join a monastery. You will have an opportunity to take a non-denominational look at the value of each and decide for yourself if they will be useful tools in your quest for success.

Prayer is simply a form of communication. It’s a chance for you to talk. For some, it is communication with their god. For others, it may be a petition that is sent out to the universe or humanity as a whole. A prayer can be a request, a petition, a thank you, or just a thought that you don’t want to keep to yourself. It’s really up to you who or what you address in your prayer.

A lot of prayers seem to start with, “HELP ME!”

Johannes Eckhart suggests that the most important prayer is, “Thank you.”

What are you thankful for in this world? Make a list, and then find a quiet spot in your home or outside and read the list out loud. Thank God or the universe—or the doorknob if you can’t think of anything suitable to pray to—for these things. Communicate your gratitude out loud.

Prayer helps you to be mindful of what is important in your life. It helps you to put words to your joys and concerns and hopes and dreams. Give prayer a try every day this week, even if all you say is, “Thank you.”

DAY

113

“Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of a cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments, to the news that is always arriving out of silence (Rainer Maria Rilke).”

— Sogyal Rinpoche

Cindy had heard about the benefits of meditation for years, and she finally decided to try it for herself. She bought Meditation for Dummies and a bunch of CDs that included chanting monks, flutes, and wind chimes. She even found a fancy animal print pillow to sit on while she got “spiritual.”

She followed all of the instructions in the book, but she felt ridiculous. Time crawled by, and she was lucky if she could sit still for two minutes, let alone a half hour. One time she sat on her fancy animal-print pillow for a full forty-five minutes, but she didn’t think she could officially call it meditating. Her own snoring woke her up.

After a solid month of attempts, Cindy finally gave up in disgust. She couldn’t do meditation the right way, and she hated trying and failing every day. Maybe meditation wasn’t for everyone. She put away her pillow and her CDs and moved on.

Have you ever tried meditation and quit, because you got too fidgety trying to follow the rules? There is good news for you today! There are no rules to meditation. That’s right. You don’t have to twist your legs into a pretzel, chant words you don’t understand, and listen to freaky music to reap the benefits of meditation. All you have to do is be silent and pay attention. Your assignment today is to try silence.

DAY

114

“To meditate is to observe simultaneously the formation of thought and breath, and then let it go, without complicating it, without formalizing it, without identifying with it, without rejecting it, letting it follow its own way.”

— Allen Ginsberg

One of the great gifts of meditation is that the rewards far exceed the effort. As was mentioned before, there are really no rules for meditation. There are a few suggestions that seem to work very well for people, and they are to breathe, to be silent, and then just observe what happens. That’s it. Trying meditation is one of the easiest assignments you will have in this book.

Give it a whirl today. You don’t have to find a special spot in a dark room with soothing music. You can do it in the car on the way to work, on the subway, in your room, at your desk, at the gym, on your bike, in your favorite chair, wherever you want. Just take a few minutes to be silent. Feel your breathing. Then, observe the thoughts that bubble up when you have this small opportunity to be quiet for a minute.

Do not judge your thoughts. Just notice them and let them flow on by. Some people like to imagine their thoughts like clouds that pass before their eyes slowly and softly. You watch them, but you don’t analyze them or reach for them or try to do something with them at this moment. You just see them float on by.

You may be surprised at what thoughts pop up in the silence. You are opening a window to your soul when you take the time to be quiet, and sometimes amazing ideas show up on one of those puffy clouds. Other times, your body might just enjoy the break. In this exercise, though, the results don’t matter. It’s the action of meditation that counts.

DAY

115

“I have never wished there was a God to call on—I have often wished there was a God to thank.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Meditation is an exercise in listening, and prayer is an exercise in communicating. They are both opportunities for reflection. Today, you will have another occasion to see if prayer is a useful tool in your life.

You do not have to believe in a particular god in order to pray. It is primarily a form of communication, so there are no prerequisite beliefs in order for it to be useful. If you do not believe in a god, then pick anything outside of yourself, and point your prayers in that direction. The idea is that you communicate with something outside of you. This is your chance to get your grievances, concerns, hopes, dreams, or fears out into the open so that they don’t weigh so heavily on your soul.

If you had an opportunity to give God or the universe (or your coffeemaker) a call, what would you say? Would you have a list of grievances several pages long? Maybe you’ve been saving a wish list of requests. You might also just want to say, “Hey, thanks. This has been a pretty cool ride so far.”

Give prayer a try today. Just like meditation, there are no rules. Prayer is an opening for you to communicate your feelings without necessarily having to confide in another living person. Your prayer can be as short as “Please!” or “Thank you!” On the other hand, if you have a lot on your mind, you can pray for as long as you want. Communicate today through prayer and observe how you feel afterward.

DAY

116

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”

— Beverly Sills

For the next few days, you will be studying the topic of endurance. One of the most important things to consider as you strive for success is that you are in a long distance race. The road to success is not a fifty-yard dash. There will be victories along the way, but the path stretches throughout your life.

Now that you are aware of that, take your time. Enjoy the view. Don’t bother with the shortcuts, because they’re not going to take you where you really want to go. Part of the joy of success is to discover the places that are worth going. Where do you want to travel in this marathon? What would you like to see?

Choose a path that will strengthen your mind, your heart, and your soul. That is not usually the easiest and shortest route, but it is always the most rewarding. Be patient with yourself as you travel. Celebrate all of your victories. Rejoice when you pass each mile marker, because you are on a path that is gradually fulfilling your dreams.