I can’t believe we’re finally here! This is a blog post that has been a year in the making. Essentially, what happens to us after a year of daily meditation?
Following the latest trends in generative AI, I asked ChatGPT this very question. Unsurprisingly, I was given a very generic overview of the benefits of meditation. And while some of what ChatGPT had to say about daily meditation rings true, it felt inauthentic to use AI to describe my own personal experience.
Just as in life, to truly benefit from daily meditation, there are no shortcuts. So, sorry ChatGPT, I’m just going to have to write this blog the old fashioned way – one word, one thought, one experience at a time.
Half an hour’s meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.
– Saint Francis de Sales
My own adventures with mindfulness meditation begin in 2018 when I first seriously began questioning my relationship with alcohol and marijuana. But the practice of daily meditation didn’t stick until June 6, 2022. Since then, it’s become a habit, a ritual. What started with 5 minutes a day has grown to 30-45 minutes. Sometimes multiple times!
Today, skipping my daily meditation is like skipping my first cup of coffee. Ain’t happening!
So, after a year of practicing mindfulness and meditation every day, what has changed?
In Short, Everything
A few months back, I wrote a blog about all the ways meditation had changed my life forever. And the content of that blog remains 100% true today. Yet, since I wrote it, I’ve continued to experience both subtle and profound psychological, physical, and spiritual changes that never cease to surprise and amaze me.
As I carefully examine my progress over the past year, I realize daily meditation has fundamentally changed me. Its influence has seeped into every corner of my life. The term ‘everything’, as in ‘everything you need to know about the positive changes brought on by daily meditation’ is both broad and subjective.
Thus, I can only share my personal experience and emphasize that your own experience may vary. And like all things, you’ll only get out what you put in. Time and consistency matter A LOT. It is constant flow and pressure over long periods of time that turn quaint creeks into gaping canyons. Contemplate that for a moment.
And while a year doesn’t amount to much in geologic terms, it can be quite meanfulful in terms of our limited human lives. And potentially into our spiritual lives beyond the illusion of this material existence.
For me ‘everything’ encompasses:
- Mental – better sleep, focus, & memory
- Emotional – better mood, outlook, and emotional awareness/control, freedom
- Physical – weight loss, production of ‘feel good’ neurochemicals, increased muscle mass
- Spiritual – deeper connection with spirit and non-material existence
So let’s break it down.
Daily Meditation Brings Presence Of Mind
Many of us are told that we should ‘be more present’. But what does this often overused and misapplied phrase really mean? More importantly, how can it be applied?
One of the very first meditation techniques a newbie is introduced to is ‘counting your breaths’. Sounds simple, right? But the first thing we notice when we try to count our breaths is how hard Monkey Mind makes it to do so!
Monkey Mind comprises all of the automatic thoughts racing through your head: gotta pick up the kids, that overdue project at work, walking the dog, returning a phone call, feelings of guilt over eating or drinking too much, etc.
By slowing down and counting our breaths, we are forced to be present. And in our new found presence, we begin to notice how not-present we really are. By developing the ability to count your breaths for longer and longer periods, you may notice that your ability to focus gets a boost. And along with that, your memory may improve. Both of these things happened for me.
As a result, the presence of mind I have after a year of daily meditation has resulted in vastly improved productivity and work quality. I’m also sleeping better and feel more restored when I wake up. By getting a handle on monkey mind, I’m less haunted by the past and less anxious about the future. Without either of these occupying my mind at bedtime, I naturally sleep a lot better.
Developing Metacognition
Becoming increasingly present in my life caused me to think more about what I was thinking about. Thinking about our thoughts is known as metacognition. It’s something that I was doing before my first year of daily meditation, but it’s a crucial skill that has developed markedly during this time.
It’s something you’re already doing, too. Whenever you think thoughts like: ‘why am I feeling this way?’ or ‘why is this song stuck in my head?’, you are using metacognition. But with practice, metacognition can become a powerful tool in your pursuit of mindfulness and neuroplasticity. Because, let’s face it, much metacognition suffers from its own kind of autopilot. So we must learn to use it with intention.
An excellent tool for applying metacognition is RAIN, a topic I’ve written much about. It’s another daily meditation beginner concept that has outsized implications for broadening metacognition. First we Recognize the thought, Allow it, Investigate it, and, finally, Non-associate (let go) from it.
I can’t quantify for you in this article exactly how many negative thought patterns I’ve released after applying RAIN to a year of daily meditation. RAIN is so powerful that it’s become a major tool in my Sobriety Toolbox.
Thus, metacognition builds upon an increasing presence of mind to cast out negative thinking, emotional baggage, and to foster a greater sense of forgiveness and acceptance for yourself and those who have impacted your life for better or worse. Like fine wine, all of this gets better with time.
Daily Meditation Fosters Emotional Wellbeing
Once I had become more present and subjected my automatic thought patterns to additional scrutiny, I noticed profound emotional changes. These changes have continued to grow as my daily meditation practice kicks off its second year. At day 371, they are an integral part of me. So, what are they?
I am completely relieved of my haunting negative thought patterns.
Whether these negative recurring thoughts were memories of childhood traumas or embarrassments, missed opportunities, regrets, or piled up emotional baggage, each event driving my negativity has been acknowledged, confronted, examined, and released. The coulda, woulda, shoulda’s of my life have entirely dissipated! Gone without a trace.
The daily meditation technique I was taught to make peace with lingering emotional baggage is commonly known as ‘Loving Kindness’ practice.
Loving Kindness is a mindfulness technique that asks us to work through not only loving and forgiving ourselves, but also those we love, have a neutral relationship with, and those with whom we have negative relations.
I’m not going to lie, this process can be very difficult, particularly in forgiving someone who has harmed us. But as the famous quote goes:
Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
– Malachy McCourt
Therefore, daily meditation has taught me that holding on to harmful negative thought patterns such as: resentment, envy, jealousy, anger, sadness, fear, and desire, are far more deleterious to my emotional wellbeing than to those I’m targeting with these thoughts – who likely remain oblivious to my internal vitriol.
Being present, honing our metacognition, and dealing with negative thought patterns, one at a time, has brought me a truly life changing amount of emotional wellbeing. I’m more patient, more generous, more forgiving, and more loving than I’ve been at any point in my life. And, I’m becoming more so with each successive day of meditation practice.
Daily Meditation Exposes Life’s Push & Pull
If you’ve visited my Return On Sobriety blog before, you know that this website grew out of my daily journaling. I started journaling as a way to put my metacognition skills into overdrive. Between daily meditation and journaling, the pushes and pulls of life came to light.
Let me explain what I mean here. My early meditation and journaling focused on the push and pull of addiction, particularly alcohol and marijuana dependence. Then, without warning, at Day 35, I stopped using marijuana cold turkey after over two decades of daily use.
The most keenly interesting aspect of my quitting marijuana, wasn’t that I quit, but that marijuana quit me. Essentially, not only was I NOT pushing it away, it was NOT pulling me toward it.
This fascinated me. Think about your typically diet. You are asked to push away unhealthy sugary and processed foods while at the same time, you are being pulled toward them. The harder you push, the harder they pull. Crazy, right?
But with pot, the push/pull dynamic vanished entirely. And after a year of daily meditation, I’ve learned that the key to overcoming any obstacle, addiction, or habit is to removing the duality of push/pull.
If this sounds hard, I’ll confirm from my own personal experience that it is – at first…
When we become present, we begin to worry less about what we didn’t receive in the past or what awaits us in the future. With metacognition, we take a deeper look at what is driving our current thinking. Fear and desire tend to float to the top for me. Fear of loss, fear of not keeping up with the Joneses, fear of the future. Along with all that fear is the desire to change, accumulate people and things to fill our gaping emotional holes. Fear pushes. Desire pulls.
After a year of daily meditation, I’ve managed to not only reduce the overall quantity and quality of my fear, but simultaneously to do the same with my material and emotional desires. Less desiring equates to less pulling. Less fear means less pushing. Thus, I’ve calmed my emotional waters.
Wanting less and fearing less has buttressed my emotional wellbeing and has become a cornerstone of who I am. I can’t express how liberating life is when gratitude replaces longing and covetousness. Genuinely wanting less means less to worry about, and, not surprisingly, this has led me to be happier and healthier overall. And by a large margin!
Impermanence And Happiness
Everything that has ever happened, happened in the present. The same is true of everything that will happen. Every moment, the present moment becomes the past and all the things we plan to do will occur at some present moment in the future.
When I began daily meditation, and worked to be more present, metacognition led me to observe that I was spending most of my time in the past or the future. Repetitive negative thoughts of the past dogged me. Thoughts of a better and brighter future driven by ‘if’ and ‘when’ (as in ‘if/when I have enough money then (insert blank)’ for example.
Impermanence is another basic meditation concept. It’s a topic I’ve written a fair bit about along with its ability to enable to rob us of happiness. Once I began to understand that my weight problem was impermanent, I lost 30 pounds. Watching my marijuana addiction disappear inexplicably, demonstrated the impermanence of my brain’s internal wiring. Examining this concept at a deeper level drove home the undeniable fact that everything is impermanent – age, possessions, jobs, health, weather, relationships, absolutely everything. Change is the only permanent state!
Grappling with change was a primary driver of my unhappiness. Once I accepted impermanence AND learned to use it to my advantage, I became increasingly happier. That happiness continues to expand after one year of daily meditation.
By changing my impermanent mind, I rewired my impermanent brain. I used my mind to change my brain to change my mind!
Daily Meditation Brings Physical Changes
I plan to cover this topic in more detail in future posts, but for now, let’s examine this whole idea of using your mind to change your brain to change your mind.
To start, I made up my mind to commit to daily meditation until it became a deeply entrenched habit. The practice of developing or changing habits requires brain wiring/rewiring at the physical level to work. You’ve probably heard that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Once I got a month or so into daily meditation, negative thought patterns began to disappear and with them, my 25 year marijuana addiction. My drinking dropped from nearly every night to just a couple days a week, or not at all for months at a time. Why? I was feeling a lot better, a lot happier. I was medicating myself naturally rather than self-medicating for the first time in decades!
Research I’ve done in the year since I stopped using marijuana led me to the neurochemical Anandamide. Anandamide is a cannabinoid naturally produced in the brain. This led to many questions. Had my brain started producing more of it? Was this a result of daily meditation? Was my increasing happiness a natural outflow of more Anandamide AND increased production of other ‘feel good’ chemicals like dopamine and serotonin? Studies suggest that this very well be the case.
According to the Royal College of Psychologists, other physical changes brought on by meditation include:
- Decreased heart rate and blood pressure.
- Increased blood flow to brain and heart.
- Positive changes in EEG, EMG and skin resistance.
- Improved sleep and digestion.
- Less irritability, anxiety and depression on rating scales.
- Less frequency and duration of illnesses.
- Decreased accidents and days lost at work.
- Improved interpersonal relationships.
- Improved scores on self-actualization inventories, and emotional and
spiritual quotients.
Wow! That’s quite a list! Yet, think about how many folks turn to expensive and risky pharmacological solutions to address these very same woes.
Looking Forward To Another Year
Despite the rather lengthy nature of this post, I have barely scratched the surface of this topic. The profound changes that have occured within me after a year of daily meditation could fill a book. In fact, so far, it’s filled over 150 blog posts!
You might be thinking that a year is a long time to commit to anything. But let me ask you a question: looking back over the past year, how quickly did it seemingly pass you by?
As a follow up: how much of the past year did you invest in bettering yourself? Did you accomplish everything you set out to do? How would you use that time differently if you could have it back?
When I look back over the past year of my life, I’m blown away by it’s rapid passage into memory. A year ago, I never thought I’d find myself here. I never set out with an end goal in mind other than to make daily meditation a habit. That’s it. What happened then, and continues to happen now, is the manifestation of a better, happier, healthier me – on every conceivable level!
When I wrote earlier that meditation had changed everything for me, I meant it. Because I have a year under my belt, I have a better idea of what to expect a year from now. But I by no means can fully predict what will actually happen. And I expect more positive surprises await me. That’s what my recent past demonstrates. So, how do you get started?
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
– Chinese proverb
So, what are you waiting for? Just take the first step!
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
– Another Chinese proverb
