I am not one for “shoulding” all over other people. It’s messy and not that nice. But when it comes to meditation, I just can’t help myself.

This practice has single-handedly redirected my life for the better, and I ooze with desire to share that joy with everyone I know.

Seriously. Ask the people in my life—I’ve been lovingly smacking them around with the meditation transformation-stick for the past few years and I think they’d say that on the whole they feel better for it.

It all comes from love and a desire to give people the key to happiness that we’re all so desperately seeking. And so from a place of love and a spirit of sharing, this is why I meditate. (And why I think you should too.)

It has made me a better version of myself.

Before meditation I considered myself a fairly nice person. I generally tried to be kind and patient whenever possible, but stress honestly got the best of me on many occasions. I was the one who wasn’t so nice to customer service people when I felt like things weren’t going my way, and I yelled at other cars in traffic on the regular. My perception was that I was just doing the best I could, but honestly, my best wasn’t that great.

The deeper I get into meditation, the more gratitude, love and compassion I started to feel. My base level of stress is way lower and I don’t really have to try to be nice to people—it’s just a product of the natural calm I feel. I can’t remember the last time I experienced road rage, and now I’m the person that customer service reps are grateful to talk to after a long day of stressed-out people verbally abusing them.

Meditation has made me kinder because kindness is just a byproduct of the natural peace and contentment I feel. And the more we feel these elevated emotions of love and compassion, the better we are for each other. People don’t give and help from a place of constriction; they do so from expansion. And meditation continues to expand me.

It has opened me up to possibility.

Limitation is the quiet disease of our species. We create invisible walls around ourselves in the name of false beliefs and then obligingly (albeit sometimes resentfully) live within those walls. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Each person’s reality is nothing more than a product of the beliefs they cling to. Change those beliefs and the reality changes. Doors open. Opportunities arise. Possibility emerges.

It isn’t safer or smarter to live in tightly confined corners of our heart—it’s just a shame. A shame because we are so much more than we realize. A shame because even opening one tiny little inch can spread love and light to hundreds of those around us in this technologically connected age. A shame because living a fuller, more daring life is just a whole lot more fun.

Meditation has made me the belief police of my own thoughts and shaped me into a master-creator. I don’t default into thinking things aren’t possible anymore. Instead I slip into the stillness and allow my brain to dazzle me with my own creative genius. I assume the feeling of already being connected to the possibilities I desire in my life, and then I watch them come into my reality.

It has made me more open-minded.

The pre-meditation version of myself would have never been able to have some of the miraculous and mystical experiences I have had, because she would have been too busy judging them. She would have been locked in fear of what other people think and living a life in service of assuaging other people’s fears. No more.

I have never felt so open, so free and so in love with life. I am not the close-minded, judging machine I once was to experiences and people that felt or looked different from me. I realize that judgment is just a minion of fear, and fear is no longer my master.

Life is so much easier and more fun when we don’t constrict our energy at every turn, and this is what judgment does. It shrinks the field around the body and closes you up. Why choose this route? What are we so afraid of?

These days conversations about out-of-body experiences are as common to me as conversations about the weather. I stuff crystals in my bra every day with the legit belief that they’re helping me. When I talk about orgasms I have to clarify whether I’m talking sexual or meditation orgasms. My life is weird. And I am so beyond okay with that.

It has made me more empowered.

I would like to think I’ve always been a smart, strong, savvy woman, but the truth is that before meditation I felt victimized by life. I knew there were certain things within my power to change, but I also had a whole slew of beliefs that said there were many more things I couldn’t.

When “bad luck” found me, I would break down. Flat tires would level me. Unexpected money curveballs would have me on the closet floor in tears. Setbacks large or small sent me into a tailspin of victim mentality that always ended in panic, anxiety and fear.

As I’ve advanced in my meditation practice, I now understand that life is happening in accordance with my own thoughts, beliefs and emotions. I understand that I am not the helpless victim of life’s happenings, but rather a co-creator choosing to see things from a state of power or weakness. I’m not the person who quakes with fear at the slightest rumblings. I’m the one who says, “Step aside. I got this.”

When we realize that life is a blank canvas, we begin to awaken the artist within. When we believe life is a darkly scribbled scene already scrawled before us, we feel stifled and lost. The more I’ve chosen the blank canvas mentality, the more beautiful the picture has become.

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Although it’s been close to 1,000 days of a devoted meditation practice in my life, I am not of the belief that change has to take time. Some of the changes in my mind and heart have happened in a moment. Others have been labors of love, painstakingly re-carved in my brain day after day.

It isn’t about how long it will take. It’s just that you begin. And personally I think you should. Because you’re worth it.

Author: Kayla Floyd

Editor: Nicole Cameron

Image: Author’s Own