One year ago I had many misconceptions about meditation. I thought meditation is for saints and spiritual adepts. I felt disappointed after my first session because I didn’t experience any visions or hear a choir of angels. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find any spare time for it. Today, I have passed 180 days of consistent daily meditation with Headspace.
I was thinking about writing a blog post on how meditation changed my life. How I got smarter, quicker, and how meditation made me significantly more handsome (sarcasm). Though, the results are not as obvious and tangible as I had expected.
In this blog post, I answer some of the questions that I am getting lately about my experiences with meditation.
1. Why did you get into meditation?
I got into meditation thanks to two best-selling authors: Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss, they both advocate mindfulness. Each time I am low on energy, I go back to their work. Tony Robbins is a huge fan of a concept called “priming exercise.” Tim Ferriss mentions meditation on almost every single episode of his “The Tim Ferriss Show” podcast. The trigger for me to start meditating was a statement in Tim’s book, “Tools of Titans.”
If you don’t have 10 minutes, you don’t have a life… don’t have 20 minutes to delve into yourself through meditation, then that means you need 2 hours - Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
Out of curiosity, I tried different sessions on Youtube. It felt strange and artificial. Until one day, during lunch, my friend suggested me to try out the Headspace app.
2. What is so unique about Headspace?
Headspace is a digital service that provides meditation sessions and mindfulness training (taken from Wikipedia). If you look from this angle, it is one out of many. There is Calm, Insight Timer, Zazen, other alternatives. I tried many, but only Headspace felt natural and complete.
What is so unique about Headspace? The author and the voice of all things - Andy Puddicombe. I love his accent, the sessions, and gamification. Yes, they use gamification to encourage more people to try meditation. I have to admit that it kept me on track and I didn’t want to waste my progress.
3. What was the reason you started meditating daily?
Autumn in Eastern Europe is not as beautiful as you see on Google Images. There is no blue sky and golden leaves, only rain. Frankly, autumn is my least favorite season. It depletes my energy every year. In November 2016 I started becoming anxious about everything. At work I was thinking about an upcoming weekend, at home, I was wondering how to solve an issue at work. And the worst thing was the feeling that I am not working hard enough, I am not as productive as I would like to be. Thanks to meditation I managed to get myself out of a vicious circle. Why do I meditate daily up till now? Because meditation is like brushing your teeth
Meditation is like brushing your teeth. If you have pain, it might be too late
4. When and where do you meditate?
On workdays, I meditate after breakfast, before driving to work in my bedroom. It takes up to 15 minutes. During weekends I am more flexible, I don’t have any fixed time. I remember during the first 30 days I was very sensitive to external voices. I wanted to have complete silence. That was an impossible thing to achieve, as my girlfriend was preparing herself to work too. Blowing fan, running water, boiling kettle. I even considered having meditation sessions at work in a meeting room or a toilet. I am glad I didn’t try that. Now, it seems it was the first meditation test I had to pass. I have moments of weakness when I am easily disturbed, but usually, I am the zone.
It took 30 days to became impervious to all the sounds during meditation.
5. What have you gained from meditation?
I’ve got superpowers, and I am capable of slowing down time.
No kidding. Let me elaborate on this. For me, stress makes time go faster. I have a tendency of taking too many responsibilities, starting too many things, overthinking. And then running like a headless chicken, acting like I have many things to do, not finishing on time (it’s just another form of procrastination).
A solution here might be very simple, stop starting start finishing, as Henrik Kniberg would say. But thanks to meditation I can concentrate better, and as a result, deliver more. In a certain way, thanks to meditation I can slow down time and do more in a twenty-four-hour period.
6. Does it require less effort now?
As Andy Puddicombe repeats quite often, it has to be effortless. Let’s take falling asleep, for example. You can prepare in the right way, get yourself comfortable. But after that, you can’t force it to happen. In fact, it works exactly the other way around. I think I had made the biggest progress when I got rid of the idea of becoming better at meditation. And the greatest relaxation comes when Andy says, “And now you can let your mind to do whatever it wants.”
Though, not everything is perfect. It is still tough to leave all worries behind and get in the zone. Especially when something important is about to happen that day - for example, speech, important meeting. I am high energy then, already living it, thinking about the event, not relaxing during meditation.
7. What to do if I just can’t sit still and think about nothing?
I totally understand you! Lately, in addition to Headspace, I am trying another daily routine called Priming. It is Tony’s Robbins Priming exercise where he uses mainly breathing, calm music and slight moves. If you want something even more energetic, then I suggest you check out this. Elliott Hulse’s Daily Bio-Energizer Warm Up Routine
Summary
In my wildest dreams, I didn’t expect to get this far with meditation. My issue of “being everywhere and nowhere at the same time” was solved, mainly thanks to Headspace. Sitting still, no thoughts at all might seem like a mission impossible. However, if “you don’t have 20 minutes to delve into yourself through meditation, then that means you need 2 hours”.
Do you want to try?
1. Check out those appealing and short Headspace videos about meditation videos on Youtube
2. Headspace hands-on at Google