Another week of meditation down, though I don’t have much to add to what I’ve written last week. I feel that I’m improving, but want to try a small changes.
Managing the Monkey Mind
The progress I’ve made comes with getting my mind to settle down when I need to, particularly around bed time. This may be due to most of my meditation practices have been just before bed, one of the changes I want to make.
Adjusting my practice to the morning or mid-day can allow the opportunity to focus in when the day starts to become hectic. In other words, when meditation might be most beneficial. I did try to meditate this morning, and barely made it five minutes before I pulled myself to prepare for work. This ended up becoming idle time, and I ended up being disappointed that I caved.
Meditate More
The other change I want to make is to set a longer timer. Currently, I’ve been shooting for 10 minutes, though some days I haven’t made it that long. One of my excuses is that I really just want to get to sleep as soon as possible. The prior change will prevent that.
I’m going to shoot for 25 minutes every day, and might try to get at least one day of an hour. Spending extended periods of time managing my focus should help me do so outside of meditation, be it at work or doing chores.
Random sculpture I saw on a recent walk. At this angle, it almost looks like it’s starting to cross it’s legs and sit down for meditation.
After a week of meditating every day it’s tough to say what the impact is, if any at all. For now, I think I’ll stick to what exactly I’ve been doing and the progress I’m making.
Mastering Mindfulness
There’s probably an image that comes to mind when hearing the term meditation. It’s likely a monk looking guy sitting perfectly still, maybe he has his hands out at his sides or they’re just resting on his lap. You might even hear an “owmmmm” as he concentrates. I can’t lie, this is still what first hits me when I think of the word.
Practicing meditation comes in a lot of different forms. There’s guided meditation, mindfulness meditation, transcendental meditation, and the list continues. What I’ve been practicing for the most part of this week has been mindfulness meditation, I think.
Most often, I practice just before bed. I sit on the floor with the lights out and try to attain as much silence as possible. Then, I start a timer for 10 minutes and focus on my breathing, trying to let my mind remain empty. As thoughts arise, I let them pass and bring back the emptiness. It’s said that this practice is like doing reps for your brain. This metaphor has me seeing myself doing hundreds of bicep curls with 2 lbs weights in hand with how often my mind runs rampant.
Seeking Guidance
Another popular form of meditation is guided meditation. I’ve done this practice a few times, but admittedly kind of hate all the ones I’ve done recently. When I first learned about meditation, I started with guided practices, and remember liking it more.
The place I do really enjoy guided practice is at the yoga studio where I currently take classes. I’m not sure if it’s the presence of an actual person, the yoga I just finished, or the general environment, but I actually like the few minutes at the end of class where I can let my brain go and just listen to the instructor.
A Nighttime Walk
A type of meditation, at least in my definition, I’ve been doing for a while have been long walks at night. Going back to the idea of wrangling thoughts, this was kind of the opposite approach. I let my brain loose.
Allowing my brain to jump around from topic to topic without any restraint kind of tired it out before bed. More often than not, I’d be able to close my eyes for sleep and I thought myself out. The “not” unfortunately was sometimes my brain used the walk as a warm up and was about to start the sprint, as I tried to sleep.
For the next week, my plan is to focus on the mindfulness approach, especially as I’ll be traveling and away from my precious yoga classes. My hope is that a consistent practice will lead to longer periods where I can cage my “monkey mind.”
The last few weeks have given me a chance to step back and find my bearings on the important things. I started out chasing random ideas that I didn’t even care about just to do something. Luckily, I was given some good advice and stepped back.
There was a moment in the past few weeks that I struck new inspiration. A new project was unfolding, one I actually cared about, and I made a solid plan. Unfortunately, I found out what I was seeking to make already existed, so I downloaded it. The idea was an app to tell you what credit card should be used at a given moment to take advantage of any rewards programs.
It was fun to feel engaged in a project again, and was fine with dropping it after finding it already exists.
I wasn’t planning on making a long post today, as the nature of not doing a trial leaves little to mention. The main goal of this post is simply to announce the next trail – daily meditation.
The payoff plan for my student loan. I don’t know if I can describe the satisfaction of seeing this chart…
Last week, I shared the three pillars I lean on when it comes to life. Wealth is a particular area I’ve found myself invested in as of late. Personal finance has long been an area of interest, especially this one particular area, financial independence.
Discovering FIRE
I first learned about the financial independence, early retirement movement, or FIRE as the cool kids call it these days, through Mr. Money Mustache. His blog was a huge inspiration to start my own, as well as a hefty amount of trials since the beginning.
Admittedly, I was lucky that I found myself with a decent base after graduating college. I had a fairly good salary and I lived in a cheap city. After finding the blog, I was amped to turn things up to the next level.
Learning more and changing my perspective on a lot of things seemed a lot easier than working for another 50 years. I happily embraced many of his practices, such as biking or walking to destination, reading more, and even trying to DIY solutions to my problems.
Losing the Spark
At the beginning of this year, I found myself starting a new job. With this change, I was luckily to be making a bit more money. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the opportunity as well as I could have. Rather than maintain my already comfortable lifestyle I bought some “upgrades” and let myself start slacking off.
There would be months I didn’t pay attention to my finances at all. Instead of investing it or taking a chunk out of my hefty student loan, I lazily kept it around or spent it without thinking.
Getting Back in the Groove
Recently, I’ve been on a huge kick to get my act together. One of the first things I did was determine exactly what I would need to do to pay off my student loan by next May. Seeing $0 in my spreadsheet was one of the most satisfying feeling’s I’ve had in a long time.
To stay on track, I’m busting out some old tools. Mint is probably going to be the biggest one for me. I’m hoping to utilize the budget tool to make sure I stay on track with all of my expenses
These days, instead of looking around for a widget or gizmo to buy when bored, I find myself reading MMM or even the even more intense Early Retirement Extreme. I personally don’t know if I care about the “retire early” piece of FIRE, but having to take money off of the table of worries is certainly something worth pursuing. I’m hoping getting this student loan out of the way opens up the opportunity to take my savings rate to the next level.
Trying Out Before Buying In 