26 Days of Meditation
This series documents my progress and some of my reflections from meditating for sixty minutes every day for sixty days.
Disclaimer: This article is written with the premise that some combination of collective human happiness and contentment is the ultimate goal, and that any other goals are simply in pursuit of that end.
I sometimes have a hard time writing these entries, as I don’t feel like my experience is particularly important enough to share on the web, and I’m not sure it can really help any other people. After all, meditation is uniquely personal in ways that other things aren’t — two people can have dramatically different interactions with their minds during this time. I guess that this series is justified as long as it helps me reflect on my own time, and it’s an added bonus if other people can glean any insight from it.
Anyway, I am now nearly halfway done with this “challenge”, which is to say that I’ve meditated 1560 of 3600 minutes in total. I wouldn’t say that it’s changed my life completely, but (with a few exceptions) I can feel myself becoming much more calm about things and much less worried about my job and projects than I have been in the past. The way I’ve started to look at it, at my age, there’s really only one thing that matters, and that’s mindset creation.
A lot of people my age get caught up in achieving specific goals — getting As in classes, landing internships, publishing work, but to me that’s all besides the point. Especially when our brains still have an extreme level of plasticity, the best things you can spend your time doing are things that will stick around forever — and that’s your mindset, not a project or job. Form the right mindset, and the rest will follow.
One of the main ideas that I try to bring my attention to during meditation is self-compassion. I can get into cycles where I feel like I’m not being “productive” enough, and get seriously distressed to the point where it can sour my outlook for the rest of the day, and I’ll spend it wallowing away. Self-compassion stops this tendency because it cares less about your “productivity” and more about the actual state of your mind. This aspect of my mindset is my first concern at the moment — I feel like I really have low levels of self-compassion. I cut myself very little slack in most endeavors, and any feelings of satisfaction in the things I create cease to exist quickly. Once I accomplish something, I tend to think of it as really easy, and tend not to feel any pride about it.
On the one hand, this has made me ruthlessly effective in some ways about my goals. My lack of satisfaction pushes me to constantly work harder and expand what I think I’m capable of. However, it’s not a good mindset in the long run. Eventually, “progress” will slow, and I’ll have to look myself in the face. Milo out, see you sometime soon.
