To be successful in life, you need an empowered mind.

You can spend money on health supplements or any brain food that improve your brain and mind power, which may or may not be effective. However, the best way to an empowered mind need not cost you anything. It is free! It is achievable through meditation exercises.

Millions of people around the world have been practicing meditation, and have found meditation exercises to be an effective way to develop an empowered mind that is critical for achieving success in life. However, contrary to what it seems, mastering the skill can be a challenging task for most people. Many people who attempted meditation for the first time discovers just how hard it can be if the person’s mind is weak. The most critical tool you'll need to master this important life skill is your mind. Just like any worthwhile skills, it requires regular practice, review and refinement to reap its best potential.

Regular practice of meditation exercises can develop an empowered mind in many ways, such as building patience, relaxation, observation, perception, concentration, and focus. Meditation can also help bring changes to your mind and body for the purpose of self-benefit, such as helping you to lose weight, quit smoking, reduce stress and depression, healing, overcome pain, regulate your body temperature, and much more.

Beyond the physical health benefits, meditation can even make you more receptive and sensitive to outside energy fields, improving your psychic intuition. Meditation is truly a miraculous skill. Unfortunately, most people failed to realize its powerful benefits due to incorrect way of practicing this exercise.

To most people, meditation is nothing more than sitting cross-legged on the floor quietly with eyes closed and began the breathing exercise. The key point to remember in performing the meditation exercises is to feel comfortable. It does not matter whether you are sitting on the floor, lying on the bed, or sit on a chair, as long as it does not get too comfortable to the extent that you may fall asleep.

Step 1: Control Your Breathing As A Concentration Exercise

The first step to learning meditation is to learn how to control your breathing. This may sound simple and feels boring at times, but the key here is to prepare your physical and mental state by bringing them to the state of deep relaxation. One thing to caution is not to control your breathing too consciously. As you move into the deep meditative state, you want to turn your focus from consciously breathing to deeply meditating.

Tools like soft music, candles, and incense can be used during meditation to increase its effect. However, using tools is not a must if you prefer a simple plain breathing control exercise to bring you into the meditative state. When using music, you must pick something pleasing to the ears but not powerful music like heavy metal or rock. Also, the key point to remember is to choose music that won't distract you. You should choose music with only melody and not any lyrics. Incense is also helpful but takes some preparation on its own. Incense helps you relax, but do make sure that ventilation in the room is good. You don’t want to get throat irritation during meditation as a result of smoke building in the room.

Step 2: Relaxation

Relaxation is the challenging part of meditation that is often overlooked. Once you have assumed your chosen position, prepared your tools, and begun breathing, your goal now is to let your body relax completely. Every muscle in your body should be as relaxed as possible. The recommended way is to start at your feet and tense up your muscles as hard as possible for several seconds, and then release them. After your feet, move up to your legs, calf muscles, and then your thighs, hips, abs, chest, and arms. Eventually, you will reach your face and the top of your head. At the end of this process, your entire body will feel so relaxed that you lost the sense of your body weight. This process will feel lengthy when you first do it, but you will be able to find your rhythm after a few practices.

When you reached a state of deep relaxation in every part of your body, the real meditation begins.

Step 3: Use Different Meditation Exercises For Different Purpose

As you control your breathing and set your body into a state of total relaxation, you free yourself from any mental focus and clarity and your mind starts coming into clarity. At this point, you can choose to practice the following basic meditation exercises:

Meditation Exercise No. 1 -Build Mental Clarity:

The purpose of this exercise is to clear the mind. A clear mind is an empowered mind. The way to achieve this is to let your mind be still, and not think of anything. Sometime it is impossible not to think of anything because the mind chatters when send thoughts into your mind. When any thoughts come to your mind, don’t need to resist them, just know that they are there, without making any judgments. Remember not to continue to indulge in the thoughts, just stay conscious and observe them like a non-concerned 3rd-party. The thoughts will go away. By doing this, you’ll not let the thoughts cloud your clarity. As your mind achieves clarity, it builds will and concentration. You’ll find this to be one of the most relaxing exercises when you mastered the skill. The challenge you’ll face initially is to overcome the sense of boredom. Stay focus on you objective. It does take some mind discipline.

Meditation Exercise No. 2 -Create Visualization:

This exercise helps you build mental images much clearer without being interfered. The way to do this is by having a simple picture to focus in mind. It can be anything; a personal symbol, a religious symbol, a person, etc. At first, it is best to keep the image simple and easy to picture. As you progressed, move on to more complicated pictures. Make it as wide and clear as possible. After some practice, you can try giving it color. After that, animate it by making it rotate or move around. You can even visualize yourself touching the object with your hands and how it feels under your sense of touch. You will be very surprised to see how real it'll begin to feel after you've had some practice. Remember to keep your mind on the task and not let it wander.

Make Daily Meditation Part of Your Self-Development Journey

Now you have grasped the idea of how meditation exercises can change your life and how to practice the basics. This exercise should be performed everyday if you are serious about seeing the results. The best time would be after you wake up in the morning, which allows you to prepare and empower your mind before starting the day. You can also do the meditation exercises before you go to bed at night, so as to enhance the quality of your sleep. Do remember, this wonderful skill don’t come easy. It takes a lot of dedication of time and effort before you see results. However, when the results begin to show, you’ll realize how much your life will be improved with this life skill.