The monkey mind. It’s when your mind is agitated, buzzing with thoughts, and jumping all over the place: planning for the future, reminiscing about the past, thinking what to eat for dinner and being annoyed about the ambient noise. All of it within 5 seconds. So. Many. Thoughts.
Trying to keep up with the monkey is exhausting. What can be done to calm the creature down? There are a bunch of obvious techniques that help to clear the mind: coffee breaks, walks, naps. In 2020 I picked up a habit of daily meditation, and found that a short daily practice can really help to tame the monkey 🐒. In these notes, I share my experience after 100+ days of meditating every day for 5-10 minutes.
It’s really simple
Firstly, for those who never tried it – the practice of meditation is really simple. You sit with your eyes closed, the meditation teacher (e.g. via a recorded audio) tells you in a soothing voice to focus on your breath and allow your thoughts to pass by. Every time you notice you’re distracted, you can gently acknowledge it (oh, thinking again) and softly bring the focus back to your breath. That’s it. You’re meditating.
But it’s really hard
If you were to try it (which you should!), you’ll likely find that even though the idea is simple, following through with it is what’s hard. In the beginning, it can feel pretty hopeless, with the mind instantly wandering away every time you bring it back to breathing. And even when you do get a few seconds of focus, the mind can get excited about it, too: wow yeah it finally works! Whoops, thinking again….
It turns out that meditation is a skill, like playing guitar or riding a bike. It takes time to learn, and the key to success is regular practice. On some days, meditation will feel easy and natural. On others, you’ll struggle to follow the instructions and wonder if this can ever work. The challenge is to stick with it – on good days and on no-good days as well.
How Andy Puddicombe made “click” for me
I tried to try meditation a couple of times before, with an online course, with a phone app, and with various YouTube videos, but it only finally “clicked” for me when I tried Headspace, a meditation app founded by Andy Puddicombe. I think there are two main reasons why Headspace worked for me where prior attempts failed.
Firstly, Andy is an excellent teacher. He not only emanates what he preaches (calm, compassion, sense of light playfulness), but he also knows how to gently guide beginners through the initial discovery of meditation, addressing common problems and reassuring the student at each step of the way. Check out his excellent TED talk to see for yourself.
What Headspace gets right
Secondly, the app is a triumph (rated 4.9/5.0 on iOS and 4.8/5.0 on Android) of engineering, UX design, and behavioral science all coming together to make your days a bit lighter, one meditation session at a time. The app offers:
- flexibility: the daily meditation curated by the app comes in the duration of your choice: 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. This makes it easier to stick with meditation even on days with heavy time constraints.
- guidance: each meditation starts and ends with a bit of advice or insight on meditation or mindfulness in general, and comes with nicely crafted animated shorts which complement explanations of the teacher. Some of them are on YouTube, check out this one on the monkey mind metaphor.
- expert courses: while each “daily meditation” is standalone, usually covering general topics of wellbeing and mindfulness, the app also offers specialized courses: these are also meditations (so when following a course you can do them instead or in addition to the daily meditation series), but with techniques and guidance tailored to specific topics: better sleep, better focus, managing anxiety, etc. (The 30-day course on focus is a personal eye-opening wow-favorite of mine)
Each meditation session ends with a takeaway card referring to a specific idea or advice discussed at the beginning of the session, which you can store or share using the app of your choice. I hoard the ones I like in Google Keep :).
Conclusion and takeaways
100 days of daily meditations later, I sometimes feel like I’m a different person than the guy who installed the app in the summer of 2020. I feel less irritable, fall asleep easier, I’m more patient with people in my life. Some of them noticed the change :).
My takeaways so far:
- meditation is quite simple in principle and worth trying
- like every skill, it takes some practice to learn
- the hard part is sticking with it every day
- picking the right teacher / app / course can make a big difference
I hope that these notes may encourage more people to try meditation. If you have any thoughts or questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment – I’d be happy to hear what you think. Thank you for reading!
