I did mindfulness for 100 days. Here's what happened.

Back in 2016, the shit hit the fan. I had just qualified as a teacher and had got a job as an English teacher at my local high school. I should have been riding high, but both my brain and my uterus had different plans. One imploded into a mess of depression and anxiety, and the other imploded into a mess of fibroids and pain. As I attempted to navigate this hellscape, I discovered mindfulness and if became the raft I clung to as the vagaries of life swept me through this rough patch.

Which app to use?
Since then, I have been doing mindfulness on and off, but I hadn’t managed to create a firm habit of it. I knew that this was something I would need to do to equip me with the tools I would need to make the most of this year off in terms of recovering properly from the last seven years. I had been using HeadSpace, which I enjoyed, but I needed something different. I did some research and I stumbled across Calm.

Calm had the best mix of what I needed: daily meditations on tap and a variety of sleep tools to help me get to sleep, stay asleep, or get back to sleep. Their sleep stories are probably my favourite thing about this app, and I use them nearly every night. Beyond the soporific timbre of Matthew McConaughey’s Texan drawl, however, is where the real work lies: the daily calm. Every night, before I go to bed, part of my pre-sleep routine is to settle down and meditate for 10 minutes using the guided meditation. It follows the format of a guided meditation, usually following your breath, then a thought for the day on a relevant topic.

I started this nightly meditation on October 28, 2019. I have meditated every night since then. So far, that’s a streak of 113 days (nights?) of meditation and the results have been genuinely impressive. Here are some changes I have noticed in myself.

Compassion for self
My inner voice has always been a bit of a dick. I think that’s quite common - in fact, I have only ever met one person who doesn’t have an inner critic, and that’s Dan. When he does something wrong, he just gently thinks “Oh well, I’ll do better next time” and just gets on with his life! Just like that! In my head, however, there’s a voice that’s only all too willing to elucidate how much I screwed up, how poorly others likely think of me now and how much of an impact this one mistake will have on their ability to think well of me in the future. It’s exhausting, isolating and deeply inaccurate.

Thankfully, since mindfulness became a regular part of my daily routine, my inner voice has become far less grumpy. If I screw up, it doesn’t shout me down. I don’t feel like a failure that every single person will hate. I know that I am a flawed human being who is allowed to not be perfect at all times, and still be worthy of love and positive regard. It’s been exceptionally freeing and has been a real boon for my self-image and sense of place in the world.

Less reactivity
If you know me, you’ll know that I am a sensitive soul who feels things more than the average Joe. It’s not just my emotions, it’s physiological as well - I have spent several hours and many dollars seeing quite a few people with lots of letters after their names to assure me that this is just who I am. My nerves are on hyperdrive; a small knock in the wrong place can be far more painful than it technically should. It can and is being improved, thankfully, with a set of daily physio exercises, regular gentle exercise and, of course, meditation.

Since doing mindfulness, I’ve noticed an increased gap between the stimulus, be it physical or emotional, and reaction. It’s only tiny, but it’s there and, in that moment, I remind myself that I am safe and I am OK and as a result, I am not flooded pain or hurt. I can still feel it, but it is at an observable distance, rather than engulfing me: I am not the pain; the pain is over there.

“It is what it is”
Being an anxious soul, I have always tried to anticipate every single thing that could go wrong and plan a contingency. As you might imagine, this has been rather tiring and has, more often than not, stopped me from being able to enjoy the moment. I have longed for a way to get out of my head, ditch my fears and expectations and just enjoy what is happening around me for what it is.

With meditation, I seem to have finally retrained my brain to be able to do this at least some of the time, and for the rest of the time, I now have the ability to recognise when I am getting too “in my head”, and be able to do something about it. This has come from the daily act of practising meditation, even when I don’t feel like it, and being OK with whatever happens. It is what it is. Far better to just sit with it, than chase my tail trying to change it or berate myself for not doing better.

Staying in the game
I know how hard it is to set up a habit and maintain it, especially if you’re a perfectionist. However, even just a couple of minutes a day on a bad day keeps the habit in place and allows you to make incremental improvements. Did I meditate faithfully for 10-12 minutes every single day of the 100 days at the same time in a state of complete zen? Hell no. On some nights, I only did 2 minutes due to lack of time, energy or internet connection. And it’s OK. It’s something. The goal, I’ve realised, is not to be an A+ student for a short period of time, but to be a solid B- student for a long time. The longer you’re in the classroom, the more you’re going to learn.

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to give mindfulness a go. It’s not the magic bullet for all, but it might be the one for you. There’s a load of Mindfulness tools, courses and apps out there to have a play around with. Have a try and see what you think!