Meditation Exercise

Here is a simple exercise I made up to strengthen your awareness and control of your mind and emotions.

Find a song you like and set it to repeat play that song on low to medium volume for 1 hour.

Step 1: Focus
Find an important and challenging task to work on while the song is playing. Try to enter a zone of focus on your work task such that eventually you are no longer aware of the song playing. You may fall out of focus occasionally. When this happens, try to re-group and get back into the zone. See if you reach points where you do not hear the song, similar to the way that you might not hear the air conditioner humming or traffic going by while you are asleep.

Step 2: Awareness
Try to achieve the same level of effort and focus, but this time your mind is consistently aware, at a minimal level, of the song playing. You may find yourself becoming annoyed by the song repeating. If so, try to embrace what it is about this that you find annoying and turn it into a positive. Think about how you like the song, and about the good progress you are making on your project.

Note: This activity is not recommended if you have an office-mate or room-mate during the exercise.