At the start of 2016 I determined that a page needed to be turned and some of my lifestyle habits needed to be reevaluated to a new level of heath and well being. However, the idea of eliminating chocolate chip cookies out of my life is most likely an unachievable goal. I tell you I have tried. I have made or purchased low sugar, low fat, gluten free, whole grain, and no egg varieties. It seems to be a waste of time, energy and money. Instead, I decided to try to change other behaviors in my life and work around the cookies. In doing this, I started meditation. It turns out there are several apps on meditation I can download to my smartphone that have free trials before purchase. My daughter helped me out in this experiment. She and I exercise an adequate number of hours amount per week so non-compliance for aerobic activity really was not the problem. What I felt instead was that there was so much daily stress in my life and what seemed to be missing was the deep sense of calm or quiet that I remember having.
One day my daughter showed me one of these meditation apps and we decided to follow the plan. It took only ten minutes of time and used quick animation videos, on occasion, to help illustrate the point of that day's session. At first it seemed funny and uncomfortable. It was hard to believe that taking just ten minutes a day of guided reflection could make any difference in the stress level of one's life. But after doing it for close to the ten days I really do believe it has made a tiny difference. If only just to give me a pause before I make a knee jerk decision about something. For example, I was in a hurry to get to a class for which I was late and did not remember to pack a lunch. I was going to run through a fast food drive line to buy food that was quick but unhealthy. In the short time it took me to drive to where the fast food restaurant was located I had taken an extra minute to reevaluate whether I really needed the fast food or just go home where I can make a healthy lunch. I chose to go home and probably saved some money and calories. I attribute that decision to the meditation because before I started meditating I am pretty sure I would have gone out for lunch.
Taking the time, even just for a moment, to include another thought rather than just moving along on auto-pilot is the purpose of meditation. This time it was a rather non-serious crisis but big poor choices are just a lot of small decisions added up. I have had an enormous amount of stress in my life over the past few years and probably made many poor food choices. I could run marathons and not fix the overall problem of too much stress. But taking ten minutes to decompress and learn how to ignore distractions or be less critical of myself and others might just allow the better decisions to come to light.
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