I Meditated For 187 Straight Days — This Is What Happened
Substantial mental benefits were realized
We’ve all heard the sayings about how meditation is good for you in a multitude of ways, but initially to me it just felt like wasting time.
I would string together 2–3 days, not really feel any effects, then just get distracted with other stuff and not come back to it again for a few weeks/months.
I’m not really sure why, but somewhere along the line I decided I would give it a try for an extended period. Maybe it was because I started using an app called headspace and they had a streak counter that got me hooked. Or maybe it was because on podcasts I would listen to and books I would read, they would talk about it over and over and over again. If you aren’t familiar with what some of the proposed benefits of meditation are, there are a few resources for you to check out here, here, and here.
I managed to run up a streak of 187 consecutive days before a long plane ride to South Korea messed up my streak due to the time zone change (and me not planning ahead). I’d like to present you with what changes I noticed in my body and mind so you can learn from my experience. If you have been considering starting a meditation practice, it is my objective to give you some subjective evidence on what sort of changes it had on my mind.
Spoiler alert: It is a fantastic practice, and I will continue to do it for as long as I live.
I made it a goal to just do 10 minutes every day, and for the first few weeks I didn’t really notice anything substantial happening. Honestly, I thought that it was all for naught and I was just wasting my time.
However, one day I noticed something interesting.
I used to work in sales as a personal trainer, and at the time I did not have a ton of money so people telling me no when I offered them my services stung a little bit. One day, after trying to close a lead I had been working for a few weeks, he gave me some BS excuse about how his wife wouldn’t want him working with a trainer.
Normally, that would have bothered me because I spent ALL this time trying to close this lead and just wasted my time. But on this occasion, I remember looking at myself as if I was a 3rd party outside of my body, staring down at me. I saw my brows starting to furrow and my shoulders tense up as if I were looking at them from someone else’s point of view.
When I noticed this, I took a breath and realized I was indeed starting to get tense. I relaxed, shook his hand and said “Let me know if you need anything else, I’m here to help”. I remember thinking that it was just time to go out and find the next one, instead of dwelling on a missed opportunity. The very next day, he came to the gym and said he “changed his mind” and wanted to start working with me!
Now, I’m not going to say meditation magically changed this man’s mind, but it did prevent me from feeding the anger and frustration I felt boiling up inside of me. If I gave into it, I likely would have left him with a bad impression of me and he would not have wanted to work with me.
This is the main skill that I learned from meditation, mindfulness.
The art of mindfulness is simple, but not easy.
It involves being able to detach from your current emotions and feelings, and see things as they objectively are. If you have a bad experience, you can detach and notice yourself reacting. You can also notice yourself breathing, you can notice the world around continuing on as if nothing was happening to you at all.
What I started noticing is that little things did not bother me anymore. I was able to catch myself having an emotional reaction, and before it got too hot I would ask myself “Why do I feel this way?” That one question allowed me to rapidly change my emotional state and come back to something more neutral!
I started stressing less and sleeping better. Historically, after working an 11 hour shift I would come home wiped, dreading the next day. But what I started to notice after meditation entered my life for an extended time, was that I would instead come home and simply enjoy the few hours I had before I went to bed.
I was more fully immersed in what I was actually doing in the moment in my time outside of work, which took my mind off of work, which subsequently reduced my stress levels by a large degree.
Many people have an inability to live in the present moment. As the old saying goes, “Living in the past creates regret, living in the future creates anxiety, living in the present creates bliss.”
Additionally, I started getting into the best physical shape of my life. Cortisol is an interesting hormone that is increasingly released into your body when you are chronically stressed. It stimulates fat and carbohydrate metabolism, which in turn creates a surge in energy.
Higher energy levels lead to an increased appetite, and an increased appetite leads to increased weight gain.
So by learning to release some of the stress I was hanging onto, I was able to better regulate my cortisol levels and start to lose more body fat. Pair that with regular and consistent exercise and it’s a great recipe for being in peak physical condition.
In summary, here are the main 3 benefits I realized from meditating for 187 straight days:
- The art of mindfulness
- Significantly reduced stress
- Increased level of physical conditioning
Hopefully this encourages you to at least try it out. It takes on average 2–3 months to build a new habit, and by that point you will have seen firsthand some of the benefits of meditating.
I’d love to hear if you have any experience meditating or plan on trying it out, let me know in the comments.
