I dropped meditation after years of consistent practice. Now what?

Why we quit important habits, and how to get back on track.

Illustration by the author.

After meditating for 45 minutes a day for almost two years, I recently dropped the habit.

If you ask me why, I struggle to find an answer. Meditation is probably in my top three life priorities, which makes it even weirder that I quit.

So, what happened?

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I thought about all the possible reasons.

Maybe it’s because work takes up so much of my time and mental space recently. Maybe my social media addiction and my caffeine consumption removed all my concentration power. Or maybe I’m just tired and unmotivated.

So I tried all the solutions I could come up with to address those problems.

I took time out of my work to meditate. I started going to bed and waking up earlier to have more energy. I joined a meditation course. I quit social media for a while. I tried the good old-fashioned trick of simply forcing myself to meditate more (which needless to say, was a disaster).

Some of them worked for a while, but I always ended up quitting the habit again. I felt like I was…