324 Days of Meditation, Almost Losing Myself.
Honestly, the biggest realization came after the streak ended.
Now you’re probably wondering to yourself, “Micah, you’re the biggest advocate of meditation and what bad things do you have to say about this”.
Well, let me set up the frame for you.
It’s not that meditation is bad, it’s that before I knew it — I was more interested within increasing the streak after successfully making it past my 200 day goal.
There are big insights that come to me when I think of my journey.
- Chasing admiration.
- Did I ever land on the proper way to meditate?
- Lastly, the overall learning of the moments of meditation.
Chasing the admiration
If you’re coming from this article, you mostly likely know me on social media and within social media I feel like we all have some sort of mask.
The mask that many see upon me, is the guy who meditates.. parties.. and then comes home to design or write some code.
With being that guy who meditates, always showcasing the amount of days I have reached within my journey.. hey it’s almost like I owe it to myself to have one of the longest streaks on the app.
And I couldn’t lie to myself — it felt so good to have such a massive number.
So, looking at this now.. my ego was talking and I stopped meditating just to meditate (for the most part).
Landing on the proper way to meditate.
I’d love to start this off with a quote from my friend George Thompson and his teacher Master Gu.
Within his video “How to Meditate like a Taoist Master” — Master Gu explains 4 steps which I have found to help me the most.
- Visualize a Peaceful Image.
For example, picture yourself sitting on the grass looking up to the clouds.. or yourself on a raft floating down a river stream.
2. Incorporate sound into your meditation as if it was music.
Don’t pick and fight the sounds of the birds, or your neighbors TV.. invite it into the meditation as if it was music.
3. Find joy in your heightened awareness of the world around you.
While you meditate, you will probably hear the sound of the footsteps around you.. the people farthest from you and just about everything.
4. Naturally, let your breath slow down.
Slow down.
With these steps paired up with guided meditations here and there, I realized not to beat up on yourself so hard.
For, the only wrong way to meditate — is not to meditate.
My Overall learning from the experience.
I’ll make this short and sweet.
- Meditate.
It doesn’t hurt to give it a try, go download an any app and just start. You can even jump on youtube and find something (literally no excuse).
2. Don’t get attached to the number.
Look to just build this into a common practice into your life, not to gloat and show off to friends and family. (“look at me I meditate”)
3. You have the time.
If you say you don’t have time to meditate, then you need to take the time. Upgrade that mindset of yours my friend.
