Meditating without a clear plan or purpose is like going on safari without a map. You will lose yourself very quickly and you will not achieve what you set out to do. A meditation plan should simply lay out how you want to plan your meditation for the week and what you want to focus on for that week, but keep in mind that there are a few items you’ll want to consider.
Meditation is a fantastic tool to help you deal with problems in your life and the role of the meditation plan is to help you establish how you will plan your meditation week, what types of meditation you will use during the week to get the result. You are looking for. For example, most people simply use meditation to relax, which is absolutely fine, but if you want to overcome whatever is causing the stress, then your meditation needs to address the root cause of the stress.
Let’s say your stress is being caused by someone being nasty and rude to you at work. The clear goal of your meditation should be for you to develop a strategy on how to deal with this person because you cannot physically change the other person, you can only work on yourself.
The first thing you should do is read, that is, go to the library and find as many books as you can on “Dealing with Rude and Nasty People”. Read the strategies they recommend. Watch videos of professional psychologists or TV professionals like Dr. Phil and see what they recommend for dealing with these types of people. Find out how you think is the best way to deal with them and that is what you are going to meditate on.
Now to develop your weekly meditation plan…
We should always start with our Weekly Meditation Plan on a Sunday. I also recommend meditating twice a day, 20 minutes in the morning and at least 20 minutes at night, preferably 40 minutes. Our meditation plan goes from Sunday to Saturday.
Your Sunday morning meditation session should simply be for the purpose of relaxing. The meditation session should include meditation techniques such as the stillness type of meditation, deep breathing meditation, or number meditation. The session should not take more than 20 minutes and may include meditation music to help you with your meditation.
Your Sunday afternoon meditation session is the beginning of your reflective meditation sessions to help deal with the person who is rude and unpleasant. The first 5-10 minutes should be spent clearing your mind and working on calming down. The next ten minutes should cover reflection on the material you have read. You should also reflect at that moment on how you reacted to that person. Literally in your mind’s eye, look at yourself and the other person, see how you deal with them, how you expect them to act, try and reflect on using the techniques you learned and how the other person reacted when you used those techniques.
To end your Sunday afternoon meditation session, spend five minutes relaxing before ending your meditation session and clear your mind. Don’t get caught up in the stress of what might happen the next day. Expect the Sunday afternoon meditation session to last up to 40 minutes. If you find that you can’t meditate that long, then don’t force yourself, but try to encapsulate all the material covered.
During the week, your morning meditation sessions try to prepare you for the day. The key issue here is not to push yourself before you get to work. Morning meditation sessions should be 20 minutes long and should primarily focus on relieving stress and preparing for a restful day. Towards the end of the meditation session, take a moment to simply reflect on the key points on how to handle a rude and unpleasant person, simply by bringing the key points to the front of your mind. This is simply an update session.
Your afternoon sessions are going to be a very important session to unwind from the challenges of the day. This session will give you the opportunity to deal with whatever has happened during the day. The first 5-10 minutes should be focused on relieving any stress or anxiety that has built up during the day. Then, once you’ve done that part of the meditation, it’s time to review the day. During your day, how did you manage, how did you deal with the person who is rude and unpleasant, did you overreact, what caused you to overreact, etc. Then, once you have identified those problems, reflectively reflect on those problems, for example, how you could have addressed them better, what you would have preferred their reactions to be, etc. To end this part of the meditation, simply reflect in your mind on how you want to react and deal with this person in the future.
Before completing this session each night, be sure to do five minutes of meditation to de-stress and focus your mind.
Friday nights are important nights to meditate, as you need to use relaxation meditation that night so the stress of the previous week doesn’t ruin your weekend. You will need to do a minimum of 40 minutes of meditation if you have had a rough week. All this time should be spent in relaxation meditation.
The Saturday morning meditation sessions should be used to review the entire week and reflect on how you have grown during the week. To review how you handled problems at the beginning of the week compared to the end of the week. If you really did step up and address some of the issues around the person’s rudeness. This is also a good time to look around and decide if during your reflective meditation there are any issues you need to investigate that might help you deal with this person.
On Saturday nights, I like to recommend people to stop meditating and go out and have some fun. During the week you have grown and now it’s time to just take a break.
By developing a meditation plan like the one I described above, you are working on solving a problem and training your mind to deal with certain types of people more effectively. Meditation planning doesn’t need to be very in-depth, but having a clear plan for how to meditate will mean your meditation sessions are more purposeful and help you achieve the goal you want. While this meditation plan was focused on dealing with an unpleasant person, it could be used for whatever purpose you need.
