Reflecting on One Year of Consistent Meditation

A year and a half ago, the meditation mustard seed was planted in my brain by none other than...Chelsea Handler. I know, not the meditation master you were expecting right, but it's true. During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school I took Handler’s book, Life Will be the Death of Me, on vacation and devoured it. I related so much to Handler and the way she spoke about meditation really sold the practice, so when I got home, I downloaded Headspace, a guided meditation app and timer, and began my journey. I stuck to it for a bit and even made it through the month-long beginner's course, but soon after life got in the way. I was so busy juggling school, college applications, work, and family life that one day I turned the Headspace app off and never turned it back on...until quarantine! 

 When quarantine began people started doing and making all kinds of things. Sourdough bread was all the rage one month then whipped coffee the next. As the introverted film/tv lover that I am my schedule didn’t change much. But, a month into the stay-at-home order and online school I started going stir crazy. My anxiety got worse, and my brain felt scrambled after so many 7-hour school days spent staring at a screen. 

One day, while aimlessly scrolling through my phone in what probably was a math class, the famous orange circle that is the Headspace logo caught my eye, I had a flashbulb moment and realized what my COVID project was going to be. So, on April 4th, a month into quarantine, I sat down for my first meditation all year and my journey began. I committed to never miss more than 2 days in a row of meditation and over a year later I am still going strong. The journey has not been perfect, but it has been mine, and the road is nowhere near over but when I look back, I see miles and miles of progress. 

Standing on the other side of my year of meditation, I am not exactly ready to teach my own mindfulness master class, but I do have a few outcomes I’d like to share. Meditation has changed my life in a hundred different little ways for the better but the three biggest takeaways from this crazy year have been: 

1) The day you don’t want to meditate is the day you need to meditate most.

Now this one I heard at the very beginning of my practice, and like most other people took a skeptical attitude towards it, until it proved itself correct VERY quickly then continued proving itself time and time again after. You will have those days when clicking the play button on your meditation will be the most dreadful moment of the day but that is the day you need to sit down and “suffer” through the meditation most. We all have off days, but the beauty of meditation is that in addition to helping you on your good days it saves you on your bad ones. Never have I ever not wanted to meditate, then forced myself to do it and still regretted it after. I have been thankful for the meditation every, single, time. 

2) Meditation can help you establish whatever your version of the word “God” is and bring you closer to him/her/them.

After fourth grade, I switched out of my small Armenian Christian school into an American Catholic one. I was not exactly close to God before but going to a Catholic middle school and then high school did not help my situation. By the end of high school religion and spirituality were the furthest things from my mind. Then, something strange happened, something that if you’d told be about in high school would end with me laughing in your face. Shortly after my commitment to meditation I began to think about God, who I thought God might be, what “God” meant to me, and the kind of relationship I want to have with God. I have heard people say that praying is talking to God while meditation is listening to God, and after my experience I believe it. I don’t know what it was about it, but meditation opened my heart to spirituality again. A year later, I consider myself to be very spiritual, I have my own idea of what “God” is and I even started praying again. I never thought I would have this close relationship to spirituality, but I am so thankful that I do, and that meditation helped me get there. 

3) Meditation has helped me separate a reaction from a response.

Before meditating incidents would happen all the time and I would have knee jerk reactions to them. I could drop something and break it and it would immediately enrage me and ruin my day because I would have to stop and clean it and delay my other tasks. I didn’t realize it at the time but in all these instances I was reacting to the stimulus and letting my automatic reaction control my response. Meditation helped create within me that internal pause, that allows digestion and consideration, which is what separates a reaction from a response. I remember so vividly the day I realized it. I went to open the fridge door and the second I did a Tupperware fell out and spilled all its contents on my feet. In that instance I literally felt time stop and gave myself a pep talk that sounded a little like this, “This will be fine. All you have to do is clean it and the problem will go away. This will not ruin your day. It is only a minor inconvenience that you can handle.” By the time I was finished with my speech the Tupperware had already fallen and when I looked down at the mess, I didn’t feel the immediate ball of rage I used to feel. That day, instead of freaking out about the mess and letting it effect my mood and the rest of my day, I looked down, picked up the food, wiped the floor, and moved on, just like that! This may not seem like a big deal, but it was for me, it was a tangible marker that told me my commitment to meditation was paying off. It was this moment when the power of meditation really hit me, and I first had the thought that I want to meditate consistently for my whole life.

So, wherever you live, whoever you are, whatever you like sit down for a short meditation and see how you like it. Start slow (it took me months to go from 3 to 20 minutes) and be patient with yourself. You will not see the results immediately, but I promise one day you will have your own epiphany moment, maybe even while standing in front of your fridge with food all over your feet, and on that day, you’ll thank me! Namaste!