What I’ve Learned by Meditating Every Day for the Past 5 Years

Since 2015, I’ve meditated for at least five minutes every day. While I’ve learned a lot about mindfulness, I’m no expert. That can take decades. That makes this discipline all the more intriguing—you can practice often, yet there is so much to learn before you can call yourself an expert.

Here, I’ll share my experiences from meditating, what meditating is, and the basics of how to do it. Then I’ll talk about what happened when I suddenly stopped cold turkey near the beginning of the pandemic.

Why Meditate?

Meditation can help one become more present in their life, better able to manage their emotions, act less impulsively, and feel less stressed. In my case, I’ve noticed I’ve been more emotionally well-regulated, less anxious, and more mindful.

Lower Anxiety

I’ve had anxiety issues for most of my life and still do. While I didn’t start meditating because I thought it would improve my anxiety, I found that after meditating for a short while consistently, my anxiety did improve.

Less Reactive

Firstly, after starting the habit, I found that I’d be less reactive to urgent things that would cross my desk. I’d be more able to put my reaction to something on hold without it bothering me, and sometimes I would intentionally pause before reacting to have a more thoughtful response. Similarly, I’d behave less emotionally to challenges. I’d be more conscious of what I was feeling and thus better able to manage how I responded.

Since you are sitting quietly and refocusing on the present, you are training yourself to not immediately react to your surroundings. Instead, you are practicing focusing on the current task at hand (observing the breath) and being comfortable addressing anything else once you are finished. This is how meditation practices being non-reactive.

Less Fixation

Meditation encourages focus. So as thoughts come during a session, part of the practice is to let them go.

The app, Headspace, gives a good example of this in one of it’s guided meditations. The narrator presents a metaphor of a dog chasing down a car. The dog represents your conscious mind and the car represents a thought. Yet often, streets have traffic, not one car. Similarly, the mind has many thoughts coming and going each moment. The dog chasing down a street full of cars can get very overwhelming for the dog, just like your mind chasing down every thought it has can get quite stressful. It is more relaxing for the dog to sit by the side of the road and watch the cars go by.

Meditation practice functions the same way. You’ll get better and better at not following every thought that comes by and instead be present in the moment and watch all the cars going by peacefully. In my case, this concept helped me to obsess less over things, and to be better at letting go.

More Mindful

These things come down to a critical component meditation teaches through practice: mindfulness. Mindfulness means just being aware of something. You gain this by being present. For me, I found this translated into being more aware of my mental states and how I was reacting to things. I could acknowledge consciously when I was sad, happy, angry, etc. Being conscious of emotions makes them easier to manage, which allowed me to be more intentional in how I reacted to things.

What is Meditation?

Meditation can take many forms, but the most common style (called Mindfulness Meditation) involves sitting quietly by yourself and paying close attention to something, often your breathing.

Concentrating on just your breath for any length of time can be very difficult for anyone. It is common for your mind to wander when trying to focus on your breath. When this happens, it is important to bring your attention back to the breath once you notice it wandering, without getting frustrated with yourself. This will happen a lot. That’s fine. What is critical is the repetition of bringing your attention back each time it wanders. This practice of continuously re-focusing is what hones your ability to concentrate over time.

That’s all there is to it. Sitting quietly by yourself, focusing on something, and then bringing your mind back to that area of focus once you notice it wandering. You can do it for however long you wish. Even meditating for less than a minute is still meditating.

How do I Meditate?

I’ve found guided meditation apps to be very helpful in getting started and learning new techniques. I started with Headspace and listened to their introductory courses. I then moved on to listening to Calm’s guided meditations and then dove into unguided meditations for 5-10 minute sessions using Oak.

Switching up between guided and unguided is helpful, as it introduces variety into the practice. This makes it easier to pay closer attention when it is something “new”.

While meditating, your mind will move around a lot. Don’t get upset! Instead, calmly refocus your attention on your breath. Distraction while meditating is very common and part of the process. Just refocus and continue. You might only be able to stay focused for a few seconds or so at first. That’s fine. It gets better. And even if it doesn’t, you’re still benefitting. The repetition of refocusing is where all the practice lies. Catching yourself then bringing your attention back is the exercise in mindfulness. If you can notice where your attention is going and bring it back to where you want it, that’s huge progress in being more mindful.

Eventually, you’ll get quite good at this and be able to expect when your mind is about to drift off before it happens. This is a big leap in mindfulness but requires a strong ability to stay focused. It also involves knowing what triggers your mind to wander. That self-knowledge is a big step up in your ability to be mindful.

Guided vs Unguided Meditation

What are the benefits of going with guided meditation vs unguided? Guided meditation will teach you the principles of meditation and give you a variety of different practice exercises. Unguided is better after you’ve gotten the basics down and need to practice on your own for a while to apply what you have learned.

You can use whichever type best fits your learning style. Some would prefer to experiment on their own first, while others would prefer an approach that shows you the ropes. I liked starting with guided meditation and then jumping into unguided after a few months.

Recommendations for Meditation Apps

I’ve used all three of these apps and recommend them.

• Calm has a lot of great free and premium content. I find the premium content on Calm to be the best out of the apps out there. I love the material, the variety of different lessons and techniques it teaches you. The ambient background noises are great, and the guided programs often ramp up in length over each session. Some of my best meditations came from using the premium content on this app. My meditations were deeper, more meaningful, I was especially calm and learned a lot when I stuck to it.
• Headspace has great introductory content. I would recommend to anyone getting started with meditation to start their journey by listening to the first 10 days of Headspace’s meditation course (free content). It’s great baseline knowledge and has some fun videos that give you a great primer on the basics. Often, after going through long stretches of unguided meditation, I would rotate back to Headspace for a refresher.
• Oak has some guided content that I was never very impressed by, but I love their unguided ambient background noises. There are some great selections to pick from (my favorite being the Tibetan Om), with an ability to set custom increments of reminder sounds to keep you focused on the breath.
  

Starting with the ten introductory days in Headspace, move over to some of the free content in Calm, and then either buy a month or two of Calm’s premium content or dive straight into unguided either using Calm’s or Oak’s unguided offering. That will give you plenty of ways to test out what meditation styles work for you.

Meditation Length

Practice for at least 5-10 minutes per day. You can start by practicing for longer or shorter than that though, as any length can grant you benefits after a few sessions. You should pick a length that you can keep up with habitually, but just long enough where it challenges you to sit still for just a bit longer than you are comfortable.

One can even go for 30 minutes to an hour, where you’ll likely see greater results. That said, this can be a very long time for some (I’ve only gone for as much as 20 minutes), and many would find it hard sticking to a daily practice for a full 30 minutes per day. Again, pick whatever length you feel you can keep up with every day. At least you are spending some time to sit.

There aren’t any hard and fast rules when it comes to meditation length. You can meditate for a long time or a short time. It doesn’t matter. Regardless, you’ll get something out of it. Making it a habitual practice is the most important part. If you can practice for longer lengths every day like any practice, you’ll see the best results. But that won’t work for everyone. So pick any length you feel you can keep up with and add an extra minute or two to challenge yourself.

Habit Tracking

Using a habit tracking app has been central for me in keeping up with a daily routine. Habit trackers keep you accountable to stick with something. Merely downloading an app won’t make you meditate every day. The commitment is the most important part. The tracking is just a system to make your commitment visible to yourself.

I find Streaks on iOS to be a great app for this and would recommend giving it a try.

What Happened When I Stopped?

After five years of meditating every day, it started to feel like a chore and as if it’s lost its purpose. I also felt my concentration was especially lacking.

As the pandemic started to set in, I didn’t want obligations or chores or extra things to check off. I wanted to pare down what I had to do every day. So I stopped. I stopped all my daily habits. And I must admit, I like the feeling of having less to do. I do find I get angrier more quickly, I am more anxious and it is easier for my mind to spiral and have emotional swings. Admittedly, enough is going on with the pandemic that could cause these things even if I was meditating.

I wish I could end this post saying that I started back up again and have achieved perfect calm, but I haven’t. I haven’t been able to pick up the habit again. I have tried a few times ten minutes here or there, and I did feel better after the practice, but I haven’t been able to make it a habit again. Will I? I’m sure I will. Nonetheless, if there is one takeaway from this article, it’s that meditation can be of any length or any quality, but if you keep up with it, you will see benefits in your life in dealing with day to day problems. These days, it’s probably the best time to START meditating, not stop.