I'll be completely honest. For the last couple of years when I heard the term mindfulness meditation, I associated it with a religious activity or something I needed skill and practice for. Although people around me suggested me to try it out, I always said I would, when I make the time. But like a normal college student, I became more constantly overwhelmed with trying to balance and make every part of my life perfect—whether that was my academics, school life, relationships or health. While trying to manage everything and even going on social media to still see myself as incomplete, I decided it was time to give it a chance.

First semester of the fall of my sophomore year, when I entered a class in cinematic arts for my minor, I expected to learn about digital media and branding. Sitting in class, my professor began to talk about the benefits of mindfulness meditation and wanted us to meditate together for 15 minutes in class. While it was still a new concept for me, I closed my eyes, began to focus on my breath and the small sensations around me—the smell, sound and touch. I noticed the weight of my heavy body on the seat, the sound of the monitor breathing, the smell of something I could not describe. In this moment, I was only focusing on the present. Not the past, not my worries about the future, but the present. Nothing else was on my mind for the first time, and I felt liberated.

After this first meditation session, I sensed with my body and mind that it was a healthy way to put away my negative thoughts for a second and be present. Because I am a type of person who gets stressed easily and becomes vulnerable to my surroundings, mindfulness meditation became a part of my life that detoxed my mind and generally made me more calm and appreciate the present moment.

Another aspect of mindfulness meditation I wondered about was how it fosters creativity and imagination. Many creative, successful individuals around the world like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Sheryl Sandberg spend their evenings meditating everyday. What was the connection between meditating and our creativity? As a aspiring designer, I looked into the science behind this and the research supporting it. When people practice mindfulness meditation, they are able to get things out of their mind and focus on one thing, which is similar to when we do activities not requiring thinking like running and dozing off into the distance or riding a bike without actively thinking about anything. This kind of process includes observation, acting with a sense of awareness of activities, describing phenomena without analyzing conceptually and accepting without judgement, just enjoying the present-moment experience. This process is a key element of creativity and allow people to open their minds to new, more innovative thoughts.

Mindfulness meditation may not be the perfect solution to everything in your life, but it definitely changed my life for the better. I naturally became more open-minded, optimistic and less stressed and when encountering anything overwhelming in my life, I am now much more able to deal with negative emotions and conflicts.