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How Meditation Changed My Peace Corps Experience

The word meditation conjures up a lot of different thoughts in people's minds, but for individuals who have attended a meditation retreat they will probably say it was incredible.

It can share invaluable lessons about perception, sensation, the space between you and your mind, patience, pain and pleasure (and the destructive power of them both), and most of all, your weaknesses and your strengths. Going on a retreat was one of the most incredible experiences of my life and it was a great way to prepare me for my Peace Corps service.

Retreats can inspire you to think about your life in a new way, and put you in a great receptive state, so you are better ready to take in the unique and incredible world of a Volunteer. If you have the time before leaving for Peace Corps, consider signing up for a free Vipassanna meditation retreat, which you can learn more about here.

Learning how to slow down is a huge advantage in the Peace Corps. College and jobs in America can be very fast-paced and it will be hard to slow down at first, but spending some time not doing anything at all can be quite helpful. Something like a retreat could be one of the best things you have ever done and prepare you for the Peace Corps in ways you could never imagine.

What To Do When You Have Too Much To Do

Excerpt from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

“Time management” is really a misnomer—the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves. Satisfaction is a function of expectation as well as realization. And expectation (and satisfaction) lie in our Circle of Influence. Rather than focusing on things and time...focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results—in short, on maintaining the P/PC Balance.

The only place to get time for Quadrant II in the beginning is from Quadrants III and IV. You can’t ignore the urgent and important activities of Quadrant I, although it will shrink in size as you spend more time with prevention and preparation in Quadrant II. But the initial time for Quadrant II has to come out of III and IV. You have to be proactive to work on Quadrant II because Quadrants I and III work on you. To say “yes” to important Quadrant II priorities, you have to learn to say “no” to other activities, sometimes apparently urgent things. You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically—to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. Only when you have the self-awareness to examine your program—and the imagination and conscience to create a new, unique, principle-centered program to which you can say “yes”—only then will you have sufficient independent will power to say “no,” with a genuine smile, to the unimportant.

We accomplish all that we do through delegation—either to time or to other people. If we delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness. Many people refuse to delegate to other people because they feel it takes too much time and effort and they could do the job better themselves. But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is. Transferring responsibility to other skilled and trained people enables you to give your energies to other high-leverage activities. Delegation means growth, both for individuals and for organizations.