The Alien Meditation

Imagine you’re looking out a window at the night sky…

(Source: Matt Gross on Unsplash)

It’s not full of fancy colours like in the movies. But it’s intriguing.

So imagine you stared at just one tiny ‘pixel’ in the sky. Smaller than a square centimetre of space! If you looked close, you’d see something like this:

(Source: European Southern Observatory)

This is an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It looks into one ‘pixel’ of the sky.

Each speck of light is one of 3000 galaxies in this ‘pixel’ of sky.

Each galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars.

And each star has one planet on average.

The Milky Way has <6 billion earthlike planets itself! What’s the chance that one of those trillions and trillions and trillions of planets has life?

What’s the chance that one of those lifeforms is looking out into the sky in your direction?

Every time you look at the night sky, it’s likely there’s life on some planet staring right back at you 🤯

So I want you to look back at the sky and think of all the alien life looking back at you.

Vectors by macrovector on Freepik

Imagine one of the aliens is worried. Imagine they’re facing the same problem you’ve been facing in the last little while. Visualise them walking about their life, thinking about the worries you’ve been thinking about.

Vector by macrovector on Freepik

Now I want you to do something a bit weird. Talk to the alien as if you were giving them advice. What would you tell them to help get over that problem? What would you say to wish them well as they move on?

💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭 Actually Stop to Do That 💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭

💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭 Actually Stop to Do That 💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭

💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭 Actually Stop to Do That 💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭

💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭 Actually Stop to Do That 💭💭💭💭💭💭💭💭

This is what I call the Alien Meditation.

It helps you look at your situation from a third-party perspective. It’s based on the fact that you know yourself best. You know how to best solve your problem.

But you might struggle with treating yourself as kindly as you treat others. So when you imagine the alien going through the problem you face + try to be kind + give advice, you get around that barrier of treating yourself kindly. But you still get the bonus of knowing the problem well! Double-win!

A similar strategy is to imagine your best friend is struggling with a problem and to give them advice. But best friends can be messy at times (and sometimes be the problem themselves 😅).

But the aliens never are! So I hope you try the Alien Meditation yourself if you look out at the sky tonight. Here are the steps to remember for then :-)

The Alien Meditation Steps

1. Focus on one little ‘pixel’ of sky
2. Visualise cartoon aliens looking back at you
3. Imagine one alien has the same problem as you. What advice would you give them? What do you say to wish them well as they move on?