Want to know what 30 days of meditation will do to you? Well, you have come to the right place, because in this blog post, I’ll be sharing my experience and insights with you after trying out meditation for 30 days straight!
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Who else has been saying for YEARS they want to start meditating on a daily basis?
Well, I finally had my “enough is enough” moment.
What was I waiting for? When would there ever be a ‘right time’?
I was done telling myself I’d like to do meditation, and ready to start actually doing it.
So last month, I decided to meditate for (at least) the following 30 days, and I’ll tell you all about what happened.
Why 30 Days of Meditation?
These past few years have been hectic, and it has shown (or more like confronted) us how big of an impact this has had on overall mental health.
With all the time we spend on social media, checking our emails, dealing with technology, and all things that are screaming for our attention, there’s little left to give to our own minds.
I don’t know about you, but I have an incredibly hard time being present.
Because of all the distractions around me, and all the things I feel I need to do, in my mind I’m always somewhere else.
I’m never in the present moment. And over the past months, I’ve been starting to feel this intense need to be more grounded and in the ‘now’.
Which leads me to meditation and mindfulness.
These practices are perfect ways to gain more control over our thoughts.
It can help focus our attention on things that we WANT to focus on, those that really matter to us.
But that’s not all it can help with! The benefits go on and on, but because that would take up an entire blog post, I have decided to pick the ones that are important to me personally, such as:
- Helps with stress reduction.
- Lowers your anxiety
- Helps you to sleep better
- Increase your self-awareness.
- Helps you shift negative thinking and help you move on.
To unlock the full potential of meditation, it is said to prioritize consistency over length.
That’s why I tried meditation for 30 days straight, to see if I could feel the positive changes for myself.
Here are the biggest take-aways of my journey!
Getting Started
Okay, first things first: the set-up.
Where do you want to meditate? At what time are you going to meditate?
Before diving into 30 days of meditation, it’s a good thing to establish the moment and a comfortable space for the practice.
I could give you all kinds of tips on how to add in cushions, candles or incense or whatever, to ‘enhance the ambiance’, but no.
Let’s be real: I wake up at 6, I already have a (quite extensive) morning routine, so the last thing I feel like doing is to light some candles and get all cozy before I start meditating.
We need this to be easy and quick. So what is necessary? Just a quiet spot where you can sit comfortably without distractions.
For me, that’s my couch and a pillow behind my back. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.
I do not want to meditate in a chair or on the ground, because that does not feel comfortable to me, but if that’s your go-to, you do you!
Same goes for the candles or the incense.All that matters is that YOU are comfortable in YOUR practice.
And about the when: I decided to incorporate meditation into my morning routine.
I’d sit my butt on that couch after I had done my journaling and before I ate my pre-workout snack.
But again, this is personal preference. Whether you do it as the first thing as soon as you wake up, as a midday break, or at the end of the day before you head to bed: you do you!
With the plan in my head, I was almost ready to start my practice.
Almost, because after establishing the when and where, in comes the how.
Choosing Your Practice
There are countless of meditation techniques to explore, from guided meditation, mindfulness meditation, loving-kindness meditation, or transcendental meditation, the list goes on and on.
And it’s essential to find one that resonates with you.
If you’re like me, and you have never done this before, just seeing all those different options feels super overwhelming.
However, you will not know what your preference is until you’ve tried!
You’ve got to start somewhere, experience it, and then you’ll know.
And let’s take a moment here to be very grateful for the internet, because there are a trillion videos on YouTube as well as thousands of apps that can help you find your favorite kind of meditation.
I got recommended an app called Insight Timer by a friend, so I decided to go with that one, but otherwise I would’ve definitely gone with a 30 days thing of of YouTube.
With Insight Timer (I use the free version!) I can just pick from literally thousands of meditations, which range from all the kinds of techniques as well as duration.
And from the moment I checked it for the first time, I knew it was absolutely perfect for me.
All it takes for me is to open the app, pick a title that sounds good to me that morning, and I’m ready to GO!
The Journey Begins
Now we have the when, the where and the how. Nothing left to do but wake up and start.
Sounds easy enough right?
Well, it wasn’t.
I was open-minded, full of good intention, but the moment I sat down and started my first guided meditation with Insight Timer, I felt lost.
My thoughts were ALL over the place.
But I have learned that meditation is not about a quiet mind. It’s about the part where you regain focus when you feel yourself getting distracted.
And that it’s okay if you’re distracted, especially in the beginning.
The most important thing is to not get angry that you can’t concentrate, and every time you feel your mind drifting, you gently guide it back to the present moment.
So here I was, on the first day of the month, struggling with my thoughts for the full five minutes.
And despite it being a literal battle with all my thoughts the entire practice, I felt super content after I was done.
Because I knew this was only the beginning.
Navigating Challenges
Every meditation practice will be different. None of them are the same.
I sometimes pick guided meditations and one minute in I feel like I don’t resonate with the person or practice.
But I don’t open my eyes and switch, I decide to keep going. Why? Because I’m experimenting. And these kind of meditations still teach me things.
And not liking a meditation was not the biggest challenge at all.
No, the thoughts are the challenge. But that’s exactly why most of us start meditating right? To get control of your never-ending thoughts?
My most important note, which holds true for every single practice, but most importantly the first one, is to not judge.
Just start observing, and accepting.
Every single thought that would pop up, I would literally tell myself inside my head: “Hi, thank you, but not right now. I want to be here now, you can come after I’m done.”
I don’t get bummed out, I don’t tell myself I’m doing it wrong: I just accept, and let go.
Aside from the thoughts, you can also encounter challenges such as restlessness, boredom, or resistance.
Instead of viewing these obstacles as barriers to your practice, see them as opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
Don’t see it as struggles, see it as teaching moments.
And after you’ve done your practice, despite the restlessness, the boredom or resistance, you will feel a sense of pride and happiness.
Because you overcame your struggles!
The results of 30 Days of Meditation
After 30 days, I could not believe it had already been an entire month of meditation!
It was time to take a moment to reflect on the past month and to notice the changes I had made since beginning this 30 days of meditation.
So, looking back, this is what I’ve learned from practicing meditation for 30 days straight:
1. The frequency of thoughts popping up will lower
YES! It is true!
I don’t know about you, but before this month, I honestly told myself that my thoughts would never quiet.
Others may be able to, but my head is just always at work, that’s the way it is.
Girl, I was wrong.
And I’m so happy that I was.
Let me start by saying that no, my mind isn’t quiet. Thoughts always pop up, but not as frequently as they used to!
And over the month, I started to be able to dismiss those thoughts much more easily.
2. Being gentle towards upcoming thoughts makes it easier for them to go away
As I said earlier, I would literally talk to myself in my head when thoughts would pop up.
And not in a negative, girl-why-can’t-you-just-be-quiet kind of way.
I’m meditating because I want to be more positive, which means there’s no room for anger or frustration towards my thoughts.
Negative self-talk won’t help the thoughts dissappear quicker, in fact, it makes it harder. It’s a downwards spiral, and I don’t want to go that way.
So what did I do? I treated my thoughts like little kids. Yes, that’s right, kids. The cute, Agnes of Despicable Me kind of way.
How would you treat that little girl? Would you get angry at her, dismiss her rudely? No you would not.
Every time I realised I was drifting off again into another place that wasn’t the present, I would be kind and gentle to both the thought and myself.
I would literally greet them, smile, and say “Hi, thank you, but not right now. I want to be here now, you can come after I’m done.”
And every time it got easier and easier.
I’d be smiling instead of getting frustrated, and that made it much easier to get back to the present moment and focus on my practice and breath.
3. Positive affirmations and intentions boost you throughout the entire day
My favorite practices were the ones which either used positive affirmations or setting intentions for the day.
If you have read more of my blog posts, or you follow me on Instagram, you know by now how I am all for affirmations.
I feel so empowered by them, and the same goes for intention setting.
Throughout these practices, there would be a genuine smile on my face.
As I was going through the meditations, there was often a moment where the guide told me to visualize lights or colors entering my body.
I could literally feel this light inside of me, and I was ready to let that light guide me throughout the rest of my day.
And during the day, I would consciously be thinking about that morning’s practice, and the affirmations or intentions I had set.
Saying today was going to be a good day, and that I held all the power to make today great…YES!!!
So, if you’re not sure where to start, I’d definitely recommend affirmation or intention-setting meditations!
4. New breathing techniques
Breathing is one of the biggest parts of meditation.
Most of the guided meditations also keep on repeating this.
“Whenever you notice yourself getting distracted, focus on your breath.”
I loved all the practices I did that focused especially on breathing.
Because of all the different experiments, I learned a lot of new techniques, which I had never heard of.
My favorite one was the ‘Fire Breathing Technique’. It felt extremely intense the first practice I did, but it gave me such an incredible boost of energy!
I will definitely write a blog post about it in the future
There were more breathing meditations that I absolutely loved, and I will be incorporating more of these kind of meditation practices in my daily life!
5. Making it a goal helps in motivation
I had been telling myself to make meditation a daily habit for YEARS.
But I never actually did it until now.
Why? Because I never really got over the thinking part, never made it real.
And then I wrote it down as a goal at the end of last month, so it was there staring me in the face.
Now I had to do it.
I set that intention to do this for 30 days, and if you’re as competitive as I am, nothing feels better than completing your goals.
From day one, there was no way I was going to give up on my streak.
And that motivated me every single day to keep going.
6. It’s not about duration, it’s about showing up
Even on days where I really did not feel like it, there was no doubt in my mind to NOT do it.
I made a deal with myself, and I was going to complete these 30 days.
So every morning, I’d just scroll through all the meditation sessions in my app, and look at the duration of the practices.
Just know that even a ‘3-minute coffee break’ meditation is still a practice.
And what is three minutes of your day?
All I have to do is sit on a couch and breathe, listen to someone guide me through the practice, and then I can do whatever I please.
It’s all made so incredibly easy, that all I have to do is just show up and sit down.
And every single time after I was done, I felt so glad that I did.
Ready to Begin?
In conclusion, I highly recommend giving meditation a try for 30 days.
Even if it doesn’t resonate with you, it’s worth the experience.
Whether you choose to meditate in the morning or evening, dedicating a moment of your time (even if it’s just 5 minutes) can potentially yield profound benefits.
After only 30 days, there have been incredible changes in my mental and emotional well-being.
I’m so happy I did this, and I will not stop here! I can’t wait to see the long-term results of meditation.
So why not finally start your own meditation journey and see for yourself?
Head to YouTube for a 30-day meditation, or download an app like I did, and just GO!
Take the first step today and commit to prioritizing your well-being and inner peace.
In this post, you have gained insight in my 30 days of meditation. I told you all about my experiences of the past month of meditating every single day, and let you in on my biggest lessons.
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What’s your favorite kind of meditation practice? Or which one would interest you the most if you haven’t done it before? Leave a comment and let’s connect!