I want to teach you a simple 3-minute meditation that will help you quiet your mind and become more centered and present in the moment – no matter what is happening in the world around you.
Despite meditation being such a powerful and important success tool, a lot of people are wary about meditation. They’re either skeptical of the benefits or they worry that it might go against their own personal religious beliefs.
The reality is, anyone will benefit from meditation if practiced regularly—both in their mental and physical well-being.
Getting Started With 3×3 Mediation
Meditation, while it can be used with a spiritual intent, is simply a matter of learning how to quiet the constant “monkey-chatter” in your mind and allow you to consciously think better thoughts.
My friend Dina Proctor encourages people to try what she calls 3×3 meditation, which is doing a 3-minute meditation three times a day.
Most people, when they start to meditate have difficulty sitting for longer than three minutes at a time. When you begin the 3-minute meditation it can be hard to just meditate.
A 3×3 meditation is simply breathing and being with whatever thoughts you’re having for three minutes at a time, three times a day.
The best thing about this is that often you’ll find that once you start, you’ll begin to want to meditate for longer and longer, until eventually without you even knowing it, you may be meditating for 20 or 30 minutes at a time.
If you focus on that for a few minutes it is incredibly relaxing, calming, and begins to quiet your mind so that deeper insights can begin to emerge. It will also begin to condition your mind for deeper, longer, and more impactful work later on.
Benefits of the 3-Minute Meditation
Once you start practicing this 3-minute meditation, you will begin to feel happier and more relaxed. This feeling will encourage you to want to try longer periods of meditation.
When you start with a 3-minute meditation once a day, you can easily move on to 5- and 10-minute periods of meditation. As your momentum builds and you feel more confident, you’ll find you look forward to your daily meditation breaks.
You don’t have to invest a lot of time and energy into it to experience real results. So to begin, let’s actually practice the 3-minute meditation right now.
Practicing 3-Minute Meditation
To start the 3-minute meditation practice, be sure to set some reminders. The early morning and evening may be easy to schedule, but that midday three minutes can really make a world of difference.
1. Find a Comfortable, Quiet Space
If your office setting is not conducive to the 3-minute meditation, find a small room, or even go and sit in your car in the middle of the day.
First off, I encourage you to get comfortable. Sit back in your chair, with your hands resting lightly on your thighs or with one hand resting lightly in the other. Or, if you prefer, you can lie on the floor with your arms at your sides.
2. Focus on Your Breathing
Go ahead and close your eyes, and take a moment to tune into your breathing. Just breathe in, and breathe out, slowly and steadily.
Keep your thoughts focused on your breathing. And whenever you find your thoughts wandering, gently release them and simply redirect your attention back to your breath.
Simply become aware of the sensation of the air going in and out in your nostrils in your nose. Or you can focus on the sensation of the rise and fall of your chest and stomach as you breathe in and out.
Just keep on returning your attention to your breath. When you notice you are thinking a thought, just allow it to be there but gently return your attention back to your breathing.
3. Consider Your Surroundings
And now with your eyes still closed, just allow yourself to slowly become aware of your surroundings again by first noticing the sounds in the room around you, or in the world outside. And then begin to feel your hands in your lap or on your thighs, or, if you’re lying down, on the floor beside you.
4. Practice Gratitude
Take a moment to give gratitude to yourself for taking this time to do something gentle and nourishing for yourself. And now go ahead and open your eyes and look around the room. And if you want you can stretch your arms and your legs.
How did that go for you? Do you feel a little more calm and centered than you did before the 3-minute meditation?
5. Make a Commitment
If you make it your goal to practice this 3-minute meditation every day for thirty days, I promise you will notice a difference in your mindset and how you show up in the world. And then you might want to move onto doing five, ten, or even twenty-minute meditations, for even deeper and more transformational results.
For some additional resources on meditations, be sure to visit my website at jackcanfield.com. And remember, nothing in your life will change for the better until you do.
Let’s Dive Deeper
In “The Success Principles” and its new companion text, “The Success Principles Workbook: An Action Plan for Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,” I’ve devoted an entire chapter to the practice of meditation and how to make it work in your busy life.
The chapter also includes links to videos where I show you how to perform a simple meditation routine along with tips on how to turn it into a successful practice that transforms your life.
As the beloved originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, Jack Canfield fostered the emergence of inspirational anthologies as a genre—and watched it grow to a billion dollar market. As the driving force behind the development and delivery of over 100 million books sold through the Chicken Soup for the Soul® franchise, Jack Canfield is uniquely qualified to talk about success. Jack is America’s #1 Success Coach and wrote the life-changing book The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be and Jack speaks around the world on this subject. Check out his newest book The 30-Day Sobriety Solution: How to Cut Back or Quit Drinking in the Privacy of Your Own Home. Follow Jack at www.jackcanfield.com and sign up for his free resources today!
Image courtesy of Tamarcus Brown.
