This morning, like most mornings, I got up at 5:30, got a shower, and went across the hall to my guest room to meditate. I have a little cushion over there and a Himalayan salt lamp that's less jarring than the overhead light.
As I've mentioned before in this blog, I use the app Ten Percent for my meditation. It was recommended to me by my coach, and it has been invaluable in helping me develop a meditation practice, something I was never able to do before. Most days, I plop down on my cushion and sit for 10 or 15 minutes, listening to a guided meditation by my favorite teacher, Joseph Goldstein. It grounds me, and gets me ready for my insanely busy days. At the end of each meditation, because we live in an achievement-oriented world, the app tells me what my meditation "streak" is. (It usually never extends past four days, because I'm an imperfect meditator. And human.) It also tells me how many "mindful minutes" I've racked up—how many minutes I've spent meditating since I started using the app. Today, that number was 673.
That struck me. It's (literally) an odd number, but it is also sizable. 673 minutes. Eleven-plus hours. I've sat on my little cushion (or my yoga mat, before I stole the cushion from my daughter's room) and looked inside my mind and focused on my breathing and sought some sort of higher understanding. That's certainly not nothing. Seeing that number, I felt a little flush of pride. I guess I'm officially one of those people who meditates now, a person I honestly never thought I could be because of my crazy monkey mind and restless legs.
It was just one more indication that small actions, over time, add up. Several days a week, 10 or 15 minutes here and there, and suddenly, I'm at nearly 700 minutes of meditation. And counting.
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