Here’s a nice side effect for you. Imagine you’re reorganising your thoughts from the ground up. You are releasing old emotions and scars from your childhood. You’re calmer, more focused and less rattled by nonsense. Energy – real energy, not caffeine adrenaline shakes – fills your entire body.

Nothing feels the same. Even boring, familiar things like queuing seem so much more interesting.

After a few days of enjoying this, you notice something intriguing:

Your cravings are gone. Or at least so small you can easily ignore them.

Whatever you vice – whether it’s food, booze, smokes or whatever – it’s less appealing. You’re so focused on your new mental reality you barely noticed.

People would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for that. You can stumble upon it as a free bonus.

This doesn’t happen to everyone, it’s true. But, if you meditate well enough… well, I like your odds.

Mindfulness is a key skill but you need to go beyond it. The best meditators incorporate mindfulness into every moment. But, unlike what others will tell you, there’s more to meditation than observing your breath.

When you work with your mind – and I mean really work with it – useless thoughts fall away and you become more you.

Imagine everything you could be without everything holding you back.

Then imagine you became that while on the road to something greater.

It’s not all unicorns and fairy floss, though. When it comes to your mind, nothing ever truly goes away. Some meditators replace one addiction with another. Many a brave soul has fallen off the path when they start craving sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Others have fallen into a deep funk. Addictions reward the brain with dopamine and more. Change suppliers and it can throw you into a spin.

Or you can do the smart thing. If you’re going to dismantle and reconstruct addictions, you might as well do it right.

I used to have “meditate” written on my to-do list. I don’t need that anymore – I crave meditative trances something fierce. If I don’t get a hit morning, lunch and night, it really throws me off.

Have I replaced one addiction with another?

Hell yeah I have. This has two advantages over typical cravings though:

Firstly, meditation is crazy good for you.

Secondly, this too shall pass. This is a familiar sight on my journey into my mind. The place beyond meditation addiction is a mind so rich and sharp you literally can’t imagine it.

Think of it as growing pains. Or your mind’s way of keeping you on track.