Most Useful Exercises

I think that the two exercises that were the most helpful to me (and that will be most helpful in the future) are the loving kindness meditation and the use of the mantra a few weeks ago. The loving kindness meditation will serve me well because I occassionally have to work with difficult people. Since doing the loving kindness meditation, I am generally slower to get annoyed and more willing to approach people from a place of acceptance and love. My future career will involve helping a wide variety of people, some of whom I may not immediately get along with. The loving kindness meditation will be very helpful with this. I plan to return to this meditation regularly in order to recharge that loving kindness battery. When I'm feeling antagonistic towards someone, this can be done in an abbreviated form immediately in order to reduce the tension inside me.

The meditation with the mantra was not a success in and of itself, but it did show me how useful mantras can be. I had heard a lot about their use, but I had never really experience firsthand how effective they can be at occupying the part of the mind that would normally be given over to extraneous thoughts. I plan to find (or create) mantras that support the practices that I'm doing and try them out to see if they help me to focus my attention.