What meditation taught me

I recently posted that I’ve completed 365 days of meditation (414 days today!) and I wanted to share some things that mediation has taught me.

Often when I mention that I meditate people tend to say that it’s not for them or that they’re too restless to sit down and not think. And I get that, because in my experience mediation and staying committed to it is quite hard. I’ve failed several times before I managed to meditate consistently for a whole year. Also, I don’t think that everybody needs to meditate at least not in the classic sense of sitting down crossed legged and focus on you breath, but I do believe that everyone will benefit from spending one or two moments to observe what’s going on in their head. So what have I learnt from this:

• Everything is temporary. My thoughts, my feelings and neither is good nor bad they just are. And this has taught me to be less reactive and also not as easily spiral down into worry and anxiety.

• It requires an effort. It’s not difficult to mediate in my opinion but as I mentioned previously it’s hard to stay committed and to find time to really sit down. So, what’s worked for me is to set a time when I will sit down and take 10. For me it’s best to meditate in the morning.

• It’s ok to have help. Previously I had this idea that to be meditating “for real” I had to sit down quietly with my mind with nothing else and obviously I had to sit in lotus. But most of my meditations I do with headspace’s guided meditations. Unfortunately I think they’ve removed the free version but it’s a really great app with a lot of resources outside meditation too. But I have also used Oak as a meditation app which I think is still free and that I’ve enjoyed a lot.

How about you, do you have any meditation practise? What has that experience taught you?