I always thought meditation was some woo woo kind of thing where you would sit in silence and pretend like you were floating while discovering the answers to your deepest questions. I thought there was a perfect meditation position that you needed to sit in in order to attain the benefits of meditation. And, most of all, I thought that meditation, while an intriguing concept, just wasn’t for me. The “perfect meditation position” was extremely uncomfortable, my mind would be racing constantly, and I would often wonder how much time I had left before the alarm that I set for myself went off.
Then, back in 2015, I started using the popular app Headspace to guide me through meditation exercises. I wanted to see if a regular meditation practice could help me manage my stress a bit better. I was also starting to hear of the many health and brain benefits of meditating, and wanted to experience those for myself.
When I first got the app, I really enjoyed using it. I completed the first 10 days in a row, then the first 30. Somewhere between days 30 and 60, however, I fell off the wagon and stopped using the app altogether. I would open it up every now and then for a 10-minute meditation session, but those times were few and far between.
But then, last April, I decided that I wanted to start meditating using the app again. I wanted to see if I could meditate every day for an entire year and set the goal to do so. The app has a nice feature where it measures your current meditation streak, so that would be easy for me to track. It also has markers along the way at days 3, 10, 15, 30, 90, 180, and then finally 365.
So I started the “woo woo” activity, sitting in a more comfortable position than what I had originally believed was appropriate, and just dealt with the fact that my mind was wandering a lot during my practice. And I did that everyday for an entire year.
After having meditated every single day for the past 365 days (and counting), I realize that I was way off on my initial judgements of meditation. And, while there is a lot that I learned about meditation over the past year, there are a number of lessons that can be applied to all areas of my life.
1) Goals have to be easily measurable.
One of the great things about the app I used is that it automatically tracks the consecutive days that the user meditates. All it took for me to see my progress was one swipe to the right and the data was there. This ease of use let me check how I was doing whenever I wanted, and the immediate feedback created a rewarding aspect to the daily activity.
When thinking about your health and fitness goals, how are you measuring your progress? Is the measuring easy to do, or is it more laborious? For example, body weight and body composition are fairly easy to measure. Inches lost is a bit more difficult. And VO2 max can be far more difficult to measure. So, if your goal is to increase your VO2 max, you may want to consider other goals to measure that would indicate whether or not your VO2 max is improving, such as how often and how hard you are exercising.
2) Your goal has to be prioritized
At the end of the day, nobody has time for anything, except for the things we prioritize. So, if exercising and eating healthy are activities you want to do but “can’t find the time”, the time is there, but prioritizing those activities highly is not.
For my goal of meditating every day for a year, I made it a priority to meditate as soon as I woke up. With me, the longer I am awake, the more intrusions creep in and direct my attention and efforts away from my original plans. Therefore, in order to make sure I stuck to my meditation, every morning I would wake up, make my bed, drink 24 ounces of water, and then meditate in my chair for 10 minutes. If I was traveling, I followed this same routine. I would even choose to sit in the chair in my hotel room just to keep that part consistent.
Last summer, when Julie and I went on a cruise at the beginning of July, I knew we would not have cell phone service or internet access for the three days we were on the boat. But, I still had my goal of meditating every day using the app, so I planned ahead and downloaded the sessions I would be doing on the boat before we left. That way, even with my phone in airplane mode, I could still use the app to meditate and it kept track of those days once it had signal again.
A little planning and a little prioritizing go a long way when it comes to getting things done.
3) You have to be celebrated along the way
One of the neat things about the Headspace app is that it would send out congratulatory emails when I would hit certain streak of days. There were also badges that would become “unlocked” within the app whenever a milestone was hit. These simple acknowledgements were moments that I looked forward to and was excited about. Additionally, they were particularly helpful at breaking the larger goal down into smaller steps.
The thing about setting the goal of meditating every day for a year is that you won’t complete the actual goal for at least a year (duh!). Often, this length of time can be far too long to stay motivated about one goal. However, having moments along the way that were acknowledged and celebrated kept the process of achieving the goal exciting.
What was important about the celebrations was that they were in line with the original goal and helped to further my pursuit of the goal. They were not there as a “get out of jail free card” whereby I could make up a day if I missed one. They were not detrimental to me achieving my goal, either.
When thinking about your health and fitness goals, what celebrations do you allow yourself? Are they in line with your bigger goal? Or are they something you have to make up for later? For example, if you choose to eat out one night to celebrate exercising consistently for three months, are your food choices in line with your goal? Or do you consider it a splurge night that you will have to make up for later?
Celebrating in a manner that can help to further your efforts toward your goal would be a worthwhile shift to make when considering how to reward yourself for a job well done.
4) You have to be held accountable
Accountability is a huge aspect of accomplishing goals and getting things done. Often times, accountability can come in the form of other people watching over us. However, accountability can also come from within.
For me, the “current streak” section of the meditation app was a huge source of accountability. That number showed definitively whether or not I was meditating. It helped me to stay accountable to myself. Additionally, I would update Julie along the way. Every time I hit a new milestone I would forward her the congratulatory email that was sent. As I got closer to reaching my goal, I would update her on my consecutive day count, too.
Who or what can you be accountable to for achieving your goals? You shouldn’t have to be pressured into achieving your goals, but having something or someone that you can keep updated along the way can help to make sure that you achieve what you set out to.
5) Choose progress over perfection
This was a big one for me. When I first started meditating, it was difficult for me to focus for the 10 minutes. I would often feel that I would sit there and just run through my to-do list for the day or go over past conversations. This was frustrating at times because I felt like I was not doing a good job meditating. But, once I realized that a perfectly silent mind was not the point of meditation, and in fact the mind chatter is often widely accepted as being part of meditation, then I could focus on making progress with my meditation instead of trying to meditate perfectly.
Over time, this mindset of choosing progress over perfection allowed me to enjoy the process of improving as well as accept that some days I would be more focused during my meditation while other days my mind might be a bit busier. The former days continually increased in frequency while the latter decreased and, over the course of the year, that’s what I learned to strive for.
The danger in aiming for perfection is that nearly every attempt will be a miss, and if it does not appear to be a miss, it is likely because you are not analyzing things closely enough to realize that it is a miss. So, the sooner you can get passed the notion that the only days of value are the ones that were carried out perfectly, the sooner you can appreciate the days when you are progressing.
In practical terms, if you are trying to implement lifestyle changes to improve your health and fitness, don’t consider days to be an “all or none”. Examples of beliefs to avoid would be: 1) Either you have to eat perfectly all day or the day is a complete loss; 2) If you start the day off on a bad note, the rest of the day is going to be ruined; 3) If you don’t exercise on Monday, you need to wait until the following Monday to start working out again; 4) If you can’t get a full workout in, you should not work out at all. These kinds of thoughts can be the death of achieving your goals.
Health and fitness goals are not always the easiest to achieve. They often require consistent discipline and implementing lifestyle changes that push us out of our comfort zone. But, if you are serious about making improvements to your health and fitness, I hope that the above five lessons I learned from setting a year-long goal can help you accomplish the changes you seek.
Did you enjoy this post? Give it a share below and subscribe to our mailing list to receive our most popular posts every week 🙂
