Let’s start with a quote so good.. that I am using it a second time for a piece of writing on meditation.
“My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.” – Sam Harris from Waking Up.
Dating back to July 9th, 2019, I came up with a hypothesis riffing off of this Sam Harris quote in a blog post on meditation. In this piece, I stated that meditation acts as a cheat code for our happiness for the video game that is our lives.
Today, I’ll revisit writing on this idea of meditating everyday as I continue to explore the rabbithole that is my self-care routine.
Self-care routine: the habits that we tend to daily, for the benefit of no one but ourselves.
The first piece I wrote in my self-care routine series was: Double-Clicking on Anki.
The second piece I wrote in this series was: Why you should write everyday.
This week let’s talk about meditation.
Defining Meditation
Meditation, according to the Mayo Clinic is:
“…the practice of focused concentration, bringing yourself back to the moment over and over again, actually addresses stress, whether positive or negative."
What does this mean?
In essence, meditation is the act of focusing on ones breath; typically with your eyes closed, sitting with a straight back and with your hands rested at your sides.
Any moment in which you find yourself paying attention to a random thought while meditating, you are to return to your breath… letting that initial thought fall by the wayside. Only to return to the present moment as guided by your breath.
When to meditate?
I have found that meditating first thing in the morning, so I am not distracted by the day’s events, is rather helpful. I encourage you to not meditate in bed, as I have found myself falling asleep quite a few times (this isn’t meditating, this is sleeping lol).
By meditating first thing, you’ll find a better experience, as you’ll find yourself more connected with your breath having just becoming awake from your sleep.
How do I meditate?
Based on my experience meditating.. this typically means launching the Calm app that I use on my iPhone and selecting a meditation from a menu of options (I typically use the Breath function).
From here, a rhythmic deep breathing visual, as well as soothing audio clip plays… I sit back, close my eyes, and begin to inhale, hold, exhale, hold along with the sounds the app provides as a guide.
Tending to a pattern of rhythmic deep breathing helps regulate your body temperature, while also lowering your blood pressure. Whereas, holding your breath allows carbon dioxide to build up in the blood…. releasing that inevitable breath energizes your body, guiding you to become more relaxed, as well as attentive.
The standard meditation time I have found to be super helpful is about ten minutes long.
You’ll be amazed by the way you’ll feel post-meditation.
Tracking my Meditation Profile
The first day I utilized the Calm app for meditation was on January 4th, 2018.
A HUGE benefit of using the Calm app for conducting your meditation sessions is that it compiles your statistics on your profile over time. I have been amazed to track the progress, and am stoked to share this with you all!
Since January ‘18, I have meditated a total of 1,320 times. My highest meditation streak thus far has reached 135 days in a row. Since beginning, I have spent 224 hours and 31 minutes in meditation.
How does one get to this point?
Practicing a day at a time
Just as with any habit we are looking to start, it is essential to start off by being realistic with our goals.
Setting an initial goal such as meditating twice in a week, is a good first step.
Overtime you can challenge yourself to meditate on a more frequent basis, meditating every other day, to four to five times a week, to eventually working your way towards making meditation a daily practice.
I assure you I did not start out with the intention of meditating almost everyday over the span of the past three-to-four years.
However, I found it to be quite beneficial to become more regimented with my daily practice of meditation overtime. There are still days I inevitably skip meditating, but I have found more times than not, that meditation helps bring me mental clarity more easily compared to the days where I don’t meditate.
I initially knew meditation was a habit I wanted to integrate into my life after seeing meditation rising to the surface level of more & more self-help books I was reading. (E.g., You Are A Badass, How We Work & Why Buddhism is True)
With this being said: I concluded there was only one way to figure out what all this speculation with meditation was all about.. by doing it of course!
Why meditate?
Meditation has been noted to offer many benefits. These benefits consist in helping with relaxation, reducing stress, reducing fatigue, increasing concentration, as well as fueling inner peace. I can attest to these hypothesized and tested benefits.
Meditation has transformed my everyday waking experience. Allowing me to stay grounded in my present reality, while simultaneously having the awareness that “woah, I am really thinking too hard on this”, and simply letting the situation come forth.
I like to view meditation as another tool in our self-care toolkit. It enables us to examine our stories more carefully… from the ground up. This allows us to separate reality (what’s actually happening) from the fabricated (no everyone isn’t staring at you) form of reality that is shaped internally.
Having the recognition that our mind is capable of blissful ideas, while also, capable of some pretty negative thoughts is a powerful realization. Meditation is the awareness of knowing when you have taken a thought too far and bringing yourself back to the present moment.. (or doubling down on that positive vision - ooo I like this thought).
Meditation as a cheat code
It is clear that we have entered an “always-on” paradigm with the rise of remote work enabled by the latest technologies. However, always being connected to our emails, IMs, deadlines, Zoom calls, etc.. is clearly taking it’s toll.
9-5 work hours don’t exist anymore, which is a wonderful thing, yet a troubling thing, if you lack the self-control to take a step away from work. Don’t let your 9-5 job turn into a 9 to forever existence.
Meditation acts as a cheat code in stepping away from our work. To give us that increasingly ESSENTIAL time away from our work, our social media feeds, and better yet, our highly critical selves.
Meditation enables us to craft our narrative more easily, by giving us the power to step back and acknowledge the story we are telling ourselves. To shift that pessimistic framing we have for that next social event, into acknowledging that we cannot assume the worst, and bringing ourselves back into the most precious moment: the now. As well as shifting those future worries into present positivity.
If we are unable to find peace in the now, we will never be able to find peace in the future.
Finding peace in the now… picking our heads up to work on that baller idea we have been debating on going through with for the past 2 years… is the ante to play. Taking that risk in the present is a lot easier than taking it later on.
Doubling-down on the unthinkable, unreachable ideas we have and putting our minds into the present to execute making progress right now… rather than procrastinating pushing it out into the future.
Procrastination leads you to a state of inaction. A procrastinating mind is the farthest thing from a meditative mind. A procrastinating mind is an inactive mind, disabling you to act in the present.
A meditative mind is a flexible mind. An active, flexible mind enables you to take that next step in the present (no matter the obstacle) towards creating an incredible future.
Treat meditation as the cheat code it is for living our lives presently & happily!
Cheers to lifelong learning,
Adam Bartley
PARTING NOTE
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