Let’s start by defining what a ‘hack’ is. Nothing in life is free; every result requires an effort. However, there are better and worse ways of doing something. So, for the sake of this article, I define ‘hack’ as the fastest way to acquiring wisdom, smartness, and awareness.
Meditation
My recommendation for a life hack is meditation.
Meditation is the very foundation to becoming wiser, smarter, and more aware. In order to acquire skills or developing talents, we will always need to put in the required work, but if we implement a good meditation routine, we will have the best mindset in order to grow from everything that happens to us.
Mind, intrinsic wisdom, and the reason we struggle
Everything we experience happens through our mind. You could say that our mind is the window through which we view the world and the vehicle with which we participate in the world. So, the most important thing should be to keep our mind in the best shape possible.
Wisdom, reason, and intelligence are intrinsic to every human being. All of us have it within, and life is an opportunity to discover it and hone it. It is only natural that we seek a way to do it as efficiently as possible.
The reason why we struggle in life is because our intrinsic wisdom is cluttered by tens of thousands of thoughts and emotions. These thoughts and emotions are pain, burden, stress, worries, greed, expectations, jealousy, anger, bitterness, etc.
The way meditation works is that it removes these cluttering thoughts and emotions from our mind to the effect that wisdom naturally ensues in our mind. Meditation provides an effective way to reflect on ourselves and discard cluttering thoughts and emotions, and by doing so wisdom ensues naturally in our mind.
Discovering wisdom, smartness, and awareness
Through meditation, we become increasingly aware of ourselves. It doesn’t take long before line between meditation and ‘life’ disappears, and we realize that every moment is an opportunity to reflect on ourselves. For example, if I get aggravated in a certain situation it is because I have the mind of aggravation. If I become lazy, that happens because I have laziness in my mind.
Through the meditation technique, we can ‘release’ or ‘discard’ these minds. The more we discard, we can recognize that we make progress in the sense that ‘next time’ something happens, we react differently, with less mind, and we realize something new. Thus, we have become wiser.
You could say that meditation is a process of revealing the ‘original mind’. This original mind is empty and not obstructed by distracting thoughts and resistance in the shape of negative emotions, and when we live with this mind, we just act in accordance to what is required in the situation at hand. This is wisdom and nature’s flow.
The journey is not always easy, but endlessly rewarding
As we go along, we will recognize that the inside of our mind is not pretty. It is very self-centered, with hatred, jealousy, anger, self-entitlement, inferiority, greed, etc. So, it’s only natural that the cleansing process will take time and be painful at times.
Albeit being painful, the process is endlessly rewarding because it allows us to find everlasting wisdom and happiness. This is also something that every human being must do; there is no alternative. Without progress, we would just stay in the same state of awareness, which means repeating the same mistakes and experience the same suffering over and over again.
A life of wisdom, smartness, and awareness
The more we meditate, the easier it becomes. As we get rid of the minds that are triggered by every condition in life, our mind becomes empty and in tune with the is-ness of reality. We realize that wisdom means to not be stuck in a certain thought or emotion, but to reside in the whole, which is our original mind. This allows for our life to become a life of nature’s flow, where things happen without blockages or hang-ups. When our mind is in this place, we can just focus on what we do, and results and answers will naturally unfold.
A life of nature’s flow is the wisest, the smartest, and the most aware way of living life. So, in this way meditation has brought us everything we were looking for – wisdom, smartness, and awareness. Meditation can be called a ‘hack’ because it’s the fastest way to achieve this, but be prepared to do the work.
Thank you for taking the time reading this post. Please check out the video below, it describes a productivity hack that can be achieved through meditation.
