10 Ways Meditation Can Help Improve Your Finance (Number 9 Might Surprise You!)

Affiliate disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

How meditation can help improve your finance

For many people, the word meditation might make them picture monks in robes or long-bearded hermits living in caves. It implies spiritual life and nothing else. At least that’s what I often get as a response when having a conversation with friends, colleagues, and many others about this particular topic.

Though not entirely wrong, it barely covers the whole truth.

Meditation can benefit all walks of life, spiritual life included. The notion that meditation is exclusive only for those living a spiritual life in seclusion, is one of the meditation myths and misconceptions.

If you do some digging, it won’t surprise me if you find more and more people are practicing meditation for practical reasons.

Now, that meditation can improve our general health and well-being is no longer a secret. In that regard, I can testify a little bit based on personal experience.

So, if meditation can benefit many aspects of life, how about finance? Can meditation help improve your finance? Is this not another myth?

No, it is not.

You might be surprised!

Meditation can benefit our finance in a lot of ways. All are logical. None of them are supernatural.

Let’s elaborate more.

It goes like this. The right meditation practice will result in a balanced mind. A balanced mind is a mind that is aware. Aware of what? Aware of the present. It is mindful and focused. It is calm but alert. A balanced mind is a stable mind. A stable mind will be less prone to mood swings.

Will those qualities help improve our finance?

Let’s break them down a bit.

1. Meditation strengthens our awareness

The truth is, awareness is an important mental faculty for any situation, in all aspects of life.

As for financial aspects, with strengthened awareness, we can assess our financial situation more objectively. We can analyze our portfolio with more clarity; which investments are performing well, which ones are not.

With awareness, we become mindful of our greed and fear. Those two are the most common cause of bad investment choices.

2. Mindfulness keeps our greed in check

Whenever we see gains in some of our investments, naturally, we want to double down. That is an example of greed in action. See that coming?

Unchecked, greed tends to make us forget our risk exposure. Our risk management plan suddenly goes out of the window. 

It’s not uncommon we end up overleveraged and putting ourselves in a dangerous and potentially unrecoverable situation.

Greed clouds our judgments. It makes us hold on to losing positions for too long when our initial risk management plan dictates to cut our losses short.

So, we need to keep our greed in check if we want to improve our finance. And mindfulness, as a result of the right meditation practice, does exactly that.

3. Mindfulness keeps our fear in check

A healthy dose of fear is essential in any investments and financial endeavors. It implies that we check and recheck if all needed preparations have been done, or if all relevant aspects have been considered.

But, when that fear becomes overwhelming and unreasonable, it often leads to rash decisions and financial mistakes. In some cases, those mistakes are fatal.

Mindfulness and fear are inversely related. That means the stronger the mindfulness, the tamer the fear. Don’t worry, mindfulness won’t destroy fear completely because it knows that fear is important, in the right amount. With mindfulness, fear reminds us to check if all relevant aspects have been taken into account.

If we want to improve our finance, we need to keep our fear in check.

What about too much mindfulness, is there such a thing? You may want to find out.

4. Meditation improves our attention span

Regular and consistent meditation practice will result in improved mental stamina. It is like going to the gym builds your muscles and improves your physical fitness. Only this time it’s mental muscles, and mental fitness.

Mental faculties like mindfulness and focus or concentration are like muscles. The more we train them, the stronger they become. A bit of a reminder here, meditation is a marathon, not a sprint. If we want to develop those mental muscles, we need to practice on a regular and consistent basis.

As a result of the development of mindfulness and focus, you will improve your attention span. You will feel that your mental energy level is elevated. That translates to a bigger mental capacity. Meaning, you will be able to handle more challenging mental loads. It also means you will not easily get stressed.

For your finance, it means you’ll be more thorough when planning and executing your strategies. It also means you’ll make fewer mistakes.

5. Meditation improves our focus and concentration

Without proper focus and enough concentration, we will be easily distracted. In any decision-making, distractions are costly, especially in finance!

Mindfulness and focus need to be in balance. Focus means thorough. A focused mind can stay on-topic much longer, making sure that no relevant aspects are overlooked, whereas a mindful mind will disregard irrelevant aspects and be aware of the ones that matter.

Financial decision-making requires a balanced mind. Meaning, a mind that is mindful and focused.

Developing mindfulness in balance with concentration is exactly what the right meditation practice does.

As a result of a balanced mind, we become calm which brings us to the next point.

6. Meditation keeps us calm and maintains our balance

Becoming calm is one thing. Maintaining that calmness in challenging situations is something different entirely.

Becoming calm is not too difficult. There are a lot of relaxation techniques out there. If you do some googling, chances are you’ll find one that best suits you.

Though meditation includes relaxation, it goes far beyond that. Meditation builds awareness muscle. Strong awareness muscle makes us more capable of handling higher pressure without losing balance.

So it is not about becoming calm. It is about remaining calm but alert.

Calmness and alertness are essential qualities that make our mental state conducive to improving our finance.

7. Meditation makes us more thorough

When analyzing and comprehending information regarding investment and financial choices, being thorough is key.

You cannot afford to miss important financial data!

What many people may not realize is that thoroughness is not God-given. Thoroughness is a skill that can be mastered.

To be thorough, the mind needs to be calm, focused, stable, and alert. Fear and greed need to be in check so they won’t cloud our judgment.

In other words, the mind needs to be in balance.

To build a balanced mind, we need to cultivate mindfulness and focus hand in hand. For this purpose, I know no better way than meditation practice.

8. Meditation is one of the best if not the best stress management

Do a little bit of research and it won’t take long to realize that meditation is one of the best, if not the best stress management technique available.

Meditation is also one of the very effective relaxation techniques.

I don’t feel the need to include any links here. You can do some research yourself if you feel the need to. The evidence and testimonials are just too many.

You can learn about my personal experience with meditation as well as some scientific backings here.

9. Meditation increases our chances of being “in the zone”

Many people report that meditation has made them more receptive and creative.

This is especially apparent in people working in the field of arts like musicians, writers, painters, etc.

The calm, stable, and balanced state makes the mind conducive for ideas and creativity to emerge.

For people working on improving their finance, this state of mind translates to a better comprehension of the market dynamics. 

Additionally, a calm state of mind also means less reactiveness to news headlines. This is important because that reactiveness is likely based on fear or greed.

In investment and financial planning, fear and greed are two foes that keep pushing us to make rash decisions.

With fear and greed in check, we increase our chances of making the right financial choices. 

With a calm and stable state of mind, we are more likely to be “in the zone.”  Meaning, we can “feel” the ebb and flow of the financial markets more often thus putting us in a better position for making timely financial decisions.

In The Behavioral Investor, the New York Times bestselling author Dr. Daniel Crosby states that meditating can reduce your desire to make poor financial choices. Familiar with falling into the trap of greed by taking too much risk in the hope of making a home run?

Based on the research presented in his book, Crosby claimed: “the parts of the brain associated with greed, expecting and anticipating reward, are actually less active in the minds of those who meditate.”

10. Meditation can reduce our health costs

It is no secret that a lot of illnesses, physical or mental, and other health problems have roots in the mind. Many of them are stress-related. If not well treated, stress can turn into anxiety. In some cases, it even results in panic attacks. All are related to mental conditions.

With meditation being an effective relaxation and stress management tool, it can minimize the occurrence of mental-related health issues. In a lot of cases, meditation even successfully overcomes health conditions related to stress, anxiety, and panic.

Many scientific studies have shown that meditation improves and optimizes the immune system.
Source (1), Source (2)

So, if practiced regularly, in the long run, it only stands to reason that meditation will reduce our health-related bills.

Conclusion and recommendation

Meditation is not just for those living spiritual life.

Meditation can benefit all walks of life in many aspects. That also means that meditation can help improve your finance.

The many ways meditation can help us improve our finance as I outlined above are nothing magical. All of them are logical and natural processes.

Though meditation is not the easiest thing to do on earth, it’s not rocket science either.

The question is, can you practice meditation on your own?

Yes, you can.

Please, feel free to download my free guide here.

Having said that, practicing meditation on your own can be challenging. You may experience things you don’t understand. For that reason, you will have a lot of questions and you’d want someone of authority to answer them.

Besides, there are many options of meditation techniques out there. How do you know which one will suit you the best?

So, in case you’re dead serious and don’t want to waste your precious time on trial and error to find the meditation technique that suits you the best, consider taking a meditation course.

Check out my recommended meditation course.

The teacher is an accomplished meditation master with extensive experience under his belt that WILL answer your questions.

The course covers many meditation techniques with in-depth step-by-step guides and the teacher can help you find the right one for you.

Read my review here.

Related posts

• Forget Self-Improvement, Do This Instead!
• 4 Tiny Steps to Reach Your Goals Without Motivation
• How to Take Advantage of Your Pessimistic Thoughts and Beware of Your Optimistic Thoughts
• How to Take Advantage of Your Negative Emotions and Make Peace with Them
• The Most Effective Meditation Hacks for Lazy People (Smart Ways to Eliminate All Hindrances to Improve Your Practice)
• 9 Most Practical Sitting Meditation Preparation Exercises to Eliminate Pains and Aches for Lazy People
• The Most Effective Hack for Letting Go (A Meditative Approach to Natural Acceptance)
• The Most Effective Hack for Overcoming Fear of Failure Without Struggling

Featured Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay