What Are The Long Term Benefits Meditation Has On Your Life?

[heisenburger]

There's no shortage of information on how meditation can impact you in the short term eg reduced anxiety better performance. But there seems to be no information on after three or more years how your life may change. Leo says meditation is the most important self improvement habit you can have, and that it radically changes your life. But in what way? Has anyone who has been sticking with it long enough to have amazing results able to share what meditation has done for them?

[herghly]

Great question!

I have been mediated for 2 years (almost everyday) between 10-30 minutes. The number 1 thing mediation has taught me is how to disassociate from my thoughts and how little control I have over my mind.

Meditation for me is an extremely humbling practice. Every morning when I sit down to meditate I am reminded how little control I have over my thoughts.

[PetarKa]

I've also struggled with this issue and have been wondering whether I'm wasting my time with it or not. If I think about it, I have changed quite a bit in the past couple of years (almost 2 years of meditation, every day, 15-30 min) and I can see how my behavior and emotions change, though these changes are so specific to me and so subtle that it's hard for me to express them with words. For example, I find myself sort of magically not even wanting to engage in low-consciousness activities and the most of the things I was addicted to (porn, arguing, stubbornness, etc.). I don't know how, but I'm just indifferent to them now. I can't claim that this is due to meditation ONLY, as I've done other things to grow myself. But I just think that the progress you get from meditation is so slow, but at the same time, so steady, that it's hard to recognize the effects it has on your life - you might just think back to your past 5 years from now and say "Holly shit! I can't believe I used to do that in the past!" Hope it helped.