I tried morning meditation for a week

If you just look at the definition of meditation, it's a practice that involves focusing the mind to achieve a state of calm and clarity. At least that's what Google's AI overview says. I've seen videos of other people trying it and heard of all the benefits, and I wondered if I too could enter that state of calm and clarity. So for the next seven days, I'm gonna try meditating. The first problem is that there are so many different types of meditation and each type isn't for everyone, so I'm gonna focus on these four for the next week. Obviously, I know it takes more time to get into the habit or the discipline of something like meditation, because on average, it takes someone like 21 continuous days to form a habit. So while I may not instantly enter a state of calm and clarity, odds are I'll still experience something, and that 5 a.m. start time, that's just an added bonus, because for some reason, I feel like if I start the day with a clear mind, I'll feel motivated to do more stuff or just be more in the moment. I start the first day with mindfulness meditation, and I honestly didn't have any expectations, but I just knew that it would be an interesting task, to say the least. Just to be safe, though, I'm just gonna start with 10 minutes and then go from there. I was just wondering how often I would get distracted by my thoughts, because with mindfulness meditation, the goal is to acknowledge your thoughts and kind of just let them pass by your mind and focus on your breathing, really. It was one of those things that I would say is just easier said than done. These next clips are obviously for reenactment purposes, but some of the random thoughts that I had were, I wonder if the title of this video is good. I mean, I guess if you're watching it, it looks good enough. Wearing this blue long sleeve was a bad choice because it's kind of warm, and your boy here is really not that flexible. What can I post to my Patreon for my Patreon members only? Actually, how can I tell people about my Patreon? Well, I guess I just did while I'm recording this also. What should I eat for breakfast? It's really quiet in here. Man, this is pretty hard. I mean, I know this is only the first day, but I'm like already asking myself, will this be worth it? I also have my morning voice still, like I haven't even had a glass of water or anything. And everybody else in my house, including my dogs, are still sleeping. But usually after every thought, I was like, wait, wait, wait, focus on breathing. Focus on breathing. Just breathe, and out, and in out. I think the interesting thing for me personally will be how I go about the rest of my day, and how I feel my thoughts. And I know nothing can just happen after one day, but just the fact that I got up this early and actually did it the first day, I'm proud of myself. I mean, I guess technically I could just go back to sleep, but I'm trying to be more productive. And ever since I haven't been able to run, my schedule has kind of changed. Like, because when I was running, I would wake up early to beat the heat and all that kind of stuff. But now I'm trying to wake back up early and get going. But I can assure you, I am really tired. Hey, Harif. I'll still get a small, hot Mr. Wonderful. Thank you. I honestly got the 2.30 feeling, as in, like, I was just sitting there and I was tired. And I know that's kind of my own fault, because I don't necessarily have to do it at 5 a.m. But I still wanted to, just because I wanted to be productive with my time. And I didn't know how long I was gonna do it. And I wanted to leave a cushion just in case I decided to do it longer than 10 minutes. I had every intention of going to bed early, just to prepare myself for the 5 a.m. wake up. But of course, I ended up staying up later than I needed to. I tried Pranayama meditation on day two, and it's also called the breath control meditation. It's all about controlling the pacing of your breathing. No, that's weird. Basically, you breathe in for four seconds, you hold for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, hold for another four seconds, then you repeat that over and over again. I was honestly eager to see how much of a difference doing this method of meditation would be compared to mindfulness meditation, even though I know it was only the second day and I can't really expect that much to happen. So right off the bat, I felt like that was better than yesterday as far as the random thoughts. There were still a lot of them. I think because I had to focus on counting, that kind of blocked out some of the thoughts. But then I was like, I'm thinking about counting and not really being in the moment. I don't know how that one worked for me. I don't know if that's better than mindfulness, but as of right now, it helped block out the other thoughts. I do think, however, I need to like, probably just sit in a chair because the way my foot is right now, it just, it hurts putting pressure on it. So I might just have to sit up in a chair. Another thing that I realized that I was slightly focused on was my posture. Like if I was sitting slouching or if I was sitting up straight. I almost feel like every time I'm in the car recording, it's always raining. Today is kind of a big day for me because, I mean, it's not really that big of a deal, but it's just the first day I'm going into the office since my injury. But all that to say, like, this is my first time, well, obviously, meditating and going into work, but I'm just interested to see how that affects my overall mood throughout the day. If I feel better, granted, I know I'll have the like, woo-hoo, back to work kind of feeling, well, that depends on what your job is and if you actually like it. But outside of that, once again, I feel like ready to start the day. Now, I am tired. I can openly admit I'm tired. Like, I've been yawning a lot already, but as far as my mood and energy towards the day, I feel ready to take it on. What do you think about meditating? What was that? Meditating. Meditation. Oh, meditating. Yeah. Meditate, meditating. I think meditating is good for the soul. Have you tried? I have, I have. Do you do it consistently? No, I, well, you know what? I would say my version of meditating is taking a shower because I would do a lot of thinking in that shower. That's why they call them shower thoughts, I guess. Now, with the little bit of experience I have with meditation, 48 hours, I do prefer this one over mindfulness meditation because I can see it being a method that I use right before I go to sleep or something when I need to like, regulate my heart rate or lower my blood pressure. Also, the benefit of this method is it strengthens your lungs. Who would've thought? Let's talk about mantras or mantras. I've heard it different ways. I have no idea how to pronounce it. There are many different things you could say or like make a noise for. I mean, it's kind of similar to self affirmations if you think about it. But the concept is that you say a phrase over and over and over again until you either start believing it or you just feel motivated and energized by it. Like an example is if you say, my life is full of joy, you might start seeing more joyful things in your life or at least become more aware of it. I actually listened to the song mantra by Bring Me The Horizon before I started this one. I didn't, but I know the song. But this one's gonna be like the weirdest one just because I'm gonna be sitting and just talking out loud the whole time, basically. But the mantra I'm gonna use for this session is simply, I am confident and able to do anything. Because I know that I personally have an issue with just being confident in different situations. So I just wanna be better at being confident. So other than needing some water from talking so much, did have a couple of thoughts come through. One of them was that scene from Dexter's Laboratory where he's repeating, I think it's the French phrase, omelet de fromage. Omelet de fromage. I will say out of all the sessions so far, this one felt like it took the longest. There were a couple of times where I was just like, this is taking forever. I wanted to look at the clock, but I was just trying to stay strong and not look, just continue on. I also had that moment where you're saying the same thing over and over, and eventually it sounds like you're saying the wrong thing, but you're still saying the right thing. I could see myself saying these things to myself throughout the day, just like one quick sentence or something like that, just to kind of amp myself up or encourage myself. Now, while I do think it's kind of weird just sitting there saying something over and over again out loud, I do think it's still beneficial because I was thinking about it throughout the day. I was ready to take action in certain areas. I wonder if I continue doing something like that, if it genuinely will make me more confident in different areas of my life. Before I even start this one, I feel like the hardest thing is choosing which guided meditation to use because there's like so many different apps and there's so many different videos you can use. So I just typed on YouTube, 10 minute guided meditation and chose the first popular one I saw. Hopefully it's good. I have some noise canceling headphones and I'm just gonna put those on, sit back, try to relax, get in the zone and just be guided. Now, guided meditation seems like it would be the easiest one out of the four that I chose, but I guess it depends on the person because with this one, you have a guide, which is typically a voice, maybe with music, instructing you to do things and think about certain things. I see how it could be a distraction though because I know some people just don't want someone talking to them or they don't want another voice in their head because they already have theirs or they don't want any music because they might be thinking of music even though you're not supposed to be thinking about distractions and you might just be thinking about other things and music and a voice is just something that, you know what I'm trying to say, but like at the same time, if you have any recommendations of guided meditations, feel free to let me know because I feel like that's an area that I'm willing to explore because there's even celebrity voices for meditation and sleep stories with something like the app Calm. I do think I might use some noise canceling headphones in the future though because even if I'm not listening to music per se, they help block out distractions so I wouldn't be hearing crickets like I did on the first day. The fifth and sixth day were similar since it was the same type of meditation that I did on the first day and the second day. One thing I can say is that my second time doing mindfulness meditation, I felt like I wasn't getting distracted by my thoughts as much and it could have been the headphones blocking out random sounds because I didn't even play any music this time. It could have been the fact that I actually had a better understanding of what I was supposed to be doing or it could have just been a big placebo but I did start to wonder like how I could be more in the moment and present with the things that I was just doing on a regular basis and that's when I became aware of active meditation. So I tried it in two different scenarios. One was on the stationary bike for my physical training because I had to do that for like eight to 10 minutes and then the second one was while I was eating and it was kind of weird to be honest but I could see it working and I will say that the sixth day was a struggle because as I was doing the box breathing meditation, for some reason I started to feel dizzy even though I had my eyes closed the whole time. It was just a really weird feeling if I'm being honest. This was also the day I feel like my patience was kind of running out, like 10 minutes felt like forever and so I think it's safe to say that so far, unless tomorrow's worse, this day was definitely the worst one. Oddly enough, I was looking forward to the last day not because it was the last day but because I knew I was gonna do another mantra day. I ain't gonna lie to you though, I kind of regretted it after I started. This one deals with communication because I tend to have a problem with that, specifically like in person. With these videos, I can write out the script, I can do all the things, I can make all the jump cuts, like ooh, ah, ooh, ah, and piece the sentences together that almost make me seem like I'm a robot. When it comes to public speaking, my sentences have a lot of uhs and a lot of pauses and I think things through and even then when I say stuff, it doesn't make sense sometimes. So my mantra is seek to understand, then to be understood. And the reason that I said I regretted is because I remember the last time I did a mantra meditation, I just remember how dry my mouth was. I felt like Spongebob in that one episode. What is? But in all seriousness though, I know that I need to get better at communication and that's one area of my life that I really wanna get better at, almost more so than building up my confidence. Like maybe I can get more confident to be a better communicator or I can become a better communicator, then I'll become more confident. Which one comes first? So I think the main thing that I've learned over the past seven days was that it's important to take a break and be present in the moment without any thoughts. I tried being more present while doing my social media detox, but this was different. Like it required me to focus more. And even though I only tried four different types of meditation, I feel like I got a lot out of this experiment, if you will. And if I had to choose a favorite out of the four, I would choose mantra meditation because out of the two phrases, even though I only said it for the first 10 minutes of my day, I said it throughout the day in my head and just kind of motivated myself as I did different tasks. And if you have a favorite type of meditation, please let me know because I know it's not a one size fits all. I know there's different types that I need to try. What type is your favorite? Do you meditate at all? Should you consider meditating? Let me know. I personally know that if I continue to meditate more often and continue to understand why I do it, it'll become easier and more natural to focus on the moment and not focus on my worries and distractions. And I would also maybe experience some of the benefits after making it a habit. So to see even if those benefits are attainable, I'd be willing to try to continue to do this every day and make it part of my schedule. And I'd also be willing to try different types of meditation to see which one fits me best. Just not at 5 a.m. ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Sunday morning views quickly turns to afternoons ♪ ♪ It's like that I can barely go and catch it ♪ ♪ Kinda how I feel with you ♪ ♪ Cool with you ♪