How I Meditated for 100 Consecutive Days
I began my meditation journey a few years ago when my sister told me to try it out. It was very strange to deliberately sit down quietly for a set amount of time. I was restless back then because I had very ambitious ideas and wanted to do everything. Sitting down to do nothing seemed like a waste of time. It was very conflicting with what I wanted to do with my “precious” time at the age of 15.
I gave into my sister’s suggestion and tried it out by myself one day. It was very rewarding because my mind began to explode with many new ideas. I already had the ability to develop ideas in the span of a few seconds or minutes, but this was something else. Despite that happening, I did not want to try it again.
It wasn’t until August 2019 when my family went on a trip to Paris where I saw my sister take the time out of each day to sit on the ground and meditate quietly. She’d get angry that I’d often disrupt her when doing so, but I did not fully understand the reason to it.
I started seriously meditating when I wanted to improve my sleep. I downloaded Headspace and received their premium membership due to my COVID-19 unemployment. As I started it, I noticed in the first few nights of doing it, the quality of my sleep had improved. I didn’t wake up groggy or craving to roll back into bed; I felt awake and present in the morning. This jumpstarted me to become excited to make my morning coffee and just get to work.
After about a week of meditation, I decided to take a week off from it. I noticed how the exact opposite of that week happened; I stayed up late and felt very tired in the morning. The week had ended, and I decided to continue to practice meditation to improve the quality of my sleep. Weeks turned into months, and eventually I reached 100 consecutive days of Headspace.
Why Meditate?
As of the twenty-first century, we are constantly bombarded with information. Countless headlines and notifications appear every hour, keeping people informed about almost every piece of news out there. Even back when Facebook was starting to become popular, I found myself always refreshing my feed, trying to see everyone’s newest post. I think to this day, I consider it as a bad habit and borderline addiction. With the COVID-19 quarantine, I spend about 3.5 hours on average on my smart phone every day.
I would define meditation to be a way to provide headspace from that clutter. Meditation created a space for my mind to focus on the things I wanted to focus on as well as free myself from the lingering thoughts we sometimes have at night.
A mantra I’ve devised when I meditate at night is:
“Everything from today is over. Whatever I am thinking of now can be saved for tomorrow. Right now, I am calm; I am present; I am free.”
Forming the Habit
I wanted to keep practicing meditation as consistently as possible. In the past, I’ve struggled with dedicating time in the day to sit down and do it.
The solution? Make it easy.
Habits work based on cue, routine, and reward. The cue causes you to think of the routine, the routine is the actual habit, and the reward is our response to performing the routine/habit.
In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg states that it’s impossible to eliminate a habit; but replacing it is entirely possible.
I have already formed a habit of going on my phone at night prior to sleep. I usually stay on for a few minutes then proceed to just lie in bed until I fall to sleep. This process takes about an hour most times, so I figured that I would establish meditation as my nightly routine. It was significantly easier to turn on Headspace while lying down in bed rather than stopping what I was doing during the day to sit down and do it.
The goal is to meditate as much as I can. There are nights where I don’t feel like doing it, and it’s easier to not do it during those times. Instead of throwing in the towel, I try to do the minimum number of minutes that the course or exercise I’m doing provides. I usually do the wind-down course on sleep, which is a minimum of 3 minutes and a maximum of 10 minutes.
Helpful Links To Understanding Habits
The primary goal of meditation was to improve my sleep. I did not go into meditation to form a habit; it just happened because I wanted the reward following the routine. When I slept, I was more relaxed in contrast to other nights where I’d stay up scrolling Instagram or YouTube. The lessons I’ve learned about habit formation had unconsciously made their way into my meditation, and that’s just fine with me.
If you’d like to learn more about habits, here is the content I’ve consumed up until now.
YouTube:
Books:
Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit
