Meditation makes you smarter

We talked before about how meditation can actually give you more time (and energy!) — how it’s a smart investment in helping you be more productive with the goals in your life.

But did you know it can literally make you smarter, too?

1. Meditation brings mental clarity. When you meditate, you clear your mind of all the confusion and noise.  Even a short meditation can increase your sense of calm and quiet. Over time, with a consistent practice, meditation even makes you wise. This gives you the ability to make better decisions — even simple things, like which direction should I drive to work this morning in order to avoid the traffic? You’ll have a sharper intuition and you’ll be able to trust it to guide you well. This makes you more efficient and effective as you navigate your life.
2. Meditation increases the chip size. In other words, meditation increases your capacity to learn.  Not only will you be able to pick a better path through the world in the mundane areas like your morning rush hour, but you’ll also be able to pick up new skills more quickly. If you’re studying for a certification exam for your career, for example, you’ll find that it’s easier to concentrate. You can get through the material faster because your attention is sharper. So, you can say that meditation makes you smarter.
3. Meditation makes you wise. While this one is perhaps on a longer time horizon, it’s also true that meditation brings wisdom. Experience is the great Teacher, but what is meditation if not direct personal experience? Certain styles of meditation are especially powerful in this way.

All of these things will accrue naturally, to some extent, with any meditation practice. When you put meditation as a priority in your life and you commit to doing it every day, these miraculous new gifts will start to snowball in a delicious way, allowing you to apply the energy you build up into greater success so that you can be of more service to others.