365 Days of Meditation

February is beginning, and I am now one month in to my 365 Days of Meditation project.

I’m uncomfortable with New Year’s resolutions, because my track record of following through on goals is anything but consistent. I also have a tendency to dream big, with many lofty goals, all of which I want to see completed immediately, or yesterday. This year, to help myself tame those tendencies and create consistency I decided to focus on one small goal, with a single measurable step I can take every day: meditation.

I know the value of meditation in my own life and desire to make it a daily habit for myself. My hope is that by engaging in that one, small success every day I will also have the motivation to work toward my other goals as well, but the only goal I am holding myself accountable to is daily meditation.

To increase my accountability I plan to share my progress along the way. The Calm app that I use for meditation has a tracking calendar that shows a visual representation of daily progress and the current number of meditation days in a row. Before I started this project on January 1st my longest streak was 5 days. My plan was to meditate every day this year, to see a full bubble on every day of the calendar and see a 365 day streak at the end of the year.

I have already failed.

I successfully meditated every day of January, until the last. On January 31st I forgot to meditate. When I woke up February 1st and realized I hadn’t meditated the day before a wave of disappointment washed over me. My dream of perfection for the year was no longer possible.

I breathed in, I breathed out, I got out my meditation cushion, sat down, and started up the timer again.

In a way it was a relief to know that I don’t have to strive for perfection any more, that one missed day here or there will be ok, as long as I don’t let it keep me from sitting down again the next day, and the next day, and the next.

Today I meditated.

I’m going to make it a good day.