I've started to listen to some TED talks while getting ready in the morning, in fact they've virtually become part of my daily routine. I always find them fascinating and inspiring and love how it's possible to type in a keyword and a whole host of talks centered around that theme come up. My theme at the moment is 'happiness' and this morning I listened to a talk by Matthieu Ricard who suggested that happiness comes from within. As someone who has read a fair bit about Buddhism and had on-off love affairs with meditation, this idea didn't come as a surprise to me; but one thing that Matthieu said really struck a chord with me, he said that we are prepared to spend time working out, educating ourselves and looking after our bodies but we don't spend time looking after our minds (meditating). Wow! When I heard that, it hit me that I fall into the category of people that don't look after their minds; I do everything else: working out, eating healthily, taking vitamins, getting enough sleep etc. but my days are filled with such busyness that I rarely take the time to sit and meditate anymore. It's something I often think about but rarely do. But that is going to change, from today I'm going to make the time to look after my mind and spend some time each day meditating. I'm not going to set myself goals of "I'm going to meditate for x amount of time each day" as it's not a competition and I have nothing to prove, it's simply a way for me to create some space and time for myself each day, a quiet place where I can allow myself to unwind.
For anyone curious about what else Matthieu had to say, I've posted the talk below:
I hope you find it as inspiring as I did.
