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Have you ever thought of starting a meditation practice?
I’ve been challenging myself to meditate every day since January 2023. I began a 31-day meditation challenge on January 1st on Instagram, mostly to help keep me accountable, because I know how important it is for your mental health, cognition, and overall life.
The result?
I only missed a total of 2 days in January, which was GREAT, because I was sick, I was traveling, and a whole lot was going on. The meditation challenge was so helpful that I decided to continue it into the next month. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same in February, where I skipped an entire week. Well, I began the challenge AGAIN in March. Why? What has this challenge taught me?
3 Things I Learned From a 31-Day Meditation Challenge 2023
1. Building Discipline
It’s so easy to give up on commitments in modern times. Excuses like “I’m loving myself, so I’ll just watch Netflix instead” or “I’m tired, so I’ll just press snooze”. If you’ve read through my other articles, you’ll know that I’m ALL about self-love. And while I do have a tendency to be extremely self-critical, I also end up compensating by being extra forgiving towards myself.
By committing to meditating every day, the strength of discipline (which I had my entire childhood!) rebirthed in my life. I learned to show up for this challenge, no matter what. (And also because I was the leader of the challenge. Don’t underestimate the extra accountability and motivation being a leader gives you!)
2. Letting Go of Perfectionism
Through this challenge, I learned to let go of expectations. Although the goal was at least 10 minutes of meditation a day, if I felt like I couldn’t meditate because I didn’t have energy or was too busy, I decided 5 minutes was better than nothing. While I prefer meditating in the morning, I learned to let go of rules and just fit it in whenever I could – even if that was in the middle of the day or on a flight. I let go of ‘shoulds’ and what seemed “right”, so that I could just complete the challenge, and that made a hell of a difference!
We have certain ideas when it comes to goals, especially healthy habits like doing yoga, journaling, or meditating. Instagram reels and TikToks make us believe that the act has to be a ‘vibe’, we must have incense and fancy candles, and we must be wearing perfectly flattering loungewear. On the other hand, spiritual gurus make us feel our meditations must be ‘magical’ and ‘other-worldly’, or we are doing it wrong.
Well, this meditation challenge helped me break through all those myths, while giving me the permission to focus on the unembellished purpose behind this challenge: to meditate.
Get rid of the fuss. Meditating, in itself, whether it’s magical or not, is a great way
(If you haven’t read it, here are 12 Reasons meditation is good for you)
3. Taking Each Day As It Comes
Do you ever miss a day while trying to start a new habit and then give up?
This challenge taught me how to continue a habit, even after missing a day. The missing piece that I discovered during this challenge was to look at every day as a fresh start, irrespective of what happened the previous day. When trying to build new habits, we’re often given the advice to aim for a streak. But, this just adds unnecessary pressure. As a result, if you mess up once, you lose all motivation and completely give up. What’s the point of that?
Instead of counting streaks, count your intention. If you miss a day, don’t let that derail your entire progress. This especially works because it helps us avoid the all-or-nothing cognitive distortion.
Read more: The Problem With Motivational Quotes – 4 Reasons They Do More Harm
So by adopting this mindset, I could miss a day, and still be as motivated the next day to complete the challenge as I would be if I had completed a 100-day streak. This mindset hack helped me successfully get back on track in January after the 2 random misses.
Benefits of This 31-Day Meditation Challenge
Wondering if you should try a month long meditation challenge? I’d say, go for it!
Not only are there so many benefits to meditating every day, but also I’ve been able to practice focusing my mind – which is a prized and rare skill in 2023! Even if some days I had trouble focusing on the practice, it still gave my brain a chance to pause and practice the skill of focusing – just like a basketball player would shoot a few hoops on a low-energy day.
In addition, this challenge broke down the resistance I had to meditating, especially for longer than 10 minutes. On some days when I had more time, I was able to experiment with longer meditations that I wouldn’t have ever gotten to if I hadn’t built my habit with short 10-minute meditations. And finally, meditation helped me reconnect with myself. And for that, I am so grateful 🙂
How can you begin?
There are numerous free challenges online. You can find many free 21 day meditation challenges. I preferred the 31-day (for January), because it helped me stay accountable for the entire month, rather than having an ‘end’ date. When 1st of February rolled around, I was motivated to continue.
Want to join my next monthly meditation challenge? DM me on Instagram! And follow for daily mindset tips and life snippets!