183 Days

Milestones are important. They feel good. They give us a chance to look back at our progress, ground us in the present moment, and offer hopeful anticipation for what's to come. I'm celebrating a milestone today. Today marks my 183rd consecutive day of mediation. If you're playing along at home, that's six months.

This journey started last year on the morning of June 8th. I woke up that day with a literal pain in the neck that started at the base of my skull and radiated down through my left shoulder.

This pain wasn't sudden. It wasn't from a physical injury. It had been building for a while. At the top of 2020, I noticed that my standard operating state of mind had gradually become angry, frustrated, and irritated. I was regularly pissed off at everything and nothing all at once. While I had a fairly good idea why this was happening, I was having a tough time putting my finger on a singular cause. My body was quashing this mental rebellion yelling, “Nope. We're not doing this anymore. We’re not going down this road. Here's some physical aches and pains to jolt you out of this negativity.”

My mental state had made it out of my mind and into my body. Neither cold nor heat were helping. I'd pumped myself so full of Advil that it didn’t seem to be helping anymore. As we had been (and still are) extremely strict in our household with social distancing due to the coronavirus, there would be no trip to the chiropractor or general practitioner. I would have to do something myself to deal with the pain.

On that June morning I downloaded the Calm meditation app. I didn’t immediately start using it. To be perfectly honest I wasn’t at all confident it would help. I had meditated at different points in the past, but it never stuck. The move to finally commit to meditation and start feeling better came at the end of August. By this time, I was at my wit's end and in serious pain. So, on August 29th I took the leap and what started out as a way to ease mental-turned-physical pain grew into something wonderfully unexpected with benefits well beyond my expectations.

In addition to feeling healthier, calmer, happier, and more focused, I could feel the benefits of meditation practice spread out across all my activities. Here’s just a few of the benefits.

General Benefits

• I was better equipped to bring more mindfulness to every aspect of daily life.
• Breaking goals down into smaller, bite-sized, achievable objectives became easier.
• The through-line of my thoughts, work, and creativity as well as how they were all closely thread together was clearer.
• A keen sense of clarity, confidence, and certainty came to both daily as well as long term priorities.
• The feeling of balance and grounding that I didn’t even know I was missing showed up.

Personal Benefits

• My workouts improved, becoming more productive, focused, and enjoyable.
• My self-esteem improved as I was keeping promises that I made to myself by way of working toward specific goals.
• This one is my favorite. I started to get that feeling I had when I was younger about something good happening right around the corner. The best way to describe it is a sense of excited anticipation for the future.
• I felt more able - and willing I suppose - to let goals unfold at their own pace, becoming less anxious about end goals and more focused on enjoying the actual work the goals required.

Professional Benefits

• Daily practice brought a sense of ease and a conversational tone to my work with clients in Zoom sessions, phone calls, and even emails.
• My communication overall whether presenting, speaking, training, or acting had a new feeling of spontaneity, living in the moment, and an air of play.
• Scene work in acting class and in auditions became infused with a deeper trust in my prep work and rehearsals which led to a sense of freedom in performance.
• I felt more trust in my creative instincts to guide me to the right action for me personally and in building characters.
• There was a liberation from old habits which freed me up to have more fun and live in the present moment.

Oh yes...the crick in my neck disappeared and my shoulders loosened up. In a way I’m thankful for them having come along as I’m heading into the next six months with a deep breath, a focused mind, and an excited spirit. Bring on the next milestone!