When I started meditating, one of the immediate positive effects was that it gave me a sense of how much time there is in ten minutes. A meditation session can feel like a long time, and what you were thinking about beforehand becomes relatively distant. I often briefly use a breathing exercise, to try to get this distance from problems or worries in daily life.
I meditate early in the morning, and I find this good as it means that I start the day by doing something which contributes to my own development. This creates a positive feeling that can help to resist negative pressures later in the day. Regular meditation also helps to separate the problems of one day from the next, and set them in perspective as things that will also soon pass by.
Some meditation sessions can lead to positive feeling of joy or contentment that spreads out into everyday life – I sometimes find myself noticing the beauty of the light, as I ride my bike to work on a rainy morning, in a way I wouldn’t have done before I was meditating.
Learning meditation has not had a significant effect on my views about the universe or humanity – my mind or notions about life after death – but it has led me to think through those issues again and perhaps to achieve some greater clarity.