Can You Stick to a 30-Day Meditation Challenge and Transform Your Mindset?

Mindfulness allows us to live in the present moment on purpose. One way of being mindful is to meditate. In an effort to be more mindful and present in my life, I have decided to attempt to do a 30-day meditation challenge. Currently, I am on day five of the challenge and have only completed two days but I hope to start doing better. I have found it hard to cram it in the mornings on the days I work sometimes. Overall, I do enjoy meditation and look forward to being more consistent. Below are a few forms of meditation I intend to use throughout the challenge.

Focused Attention

I think I could really benefit from practicing focusing my attention better. On the first day of the challenge, I did a focused attention meditation and I found that it made me more alert than some of the other meditations that I have done. Later that night, I was sick and kept coughing which made it difficult to try to sleep on top of the fact that it was contributing to a headache. I decided to do the exercise from the focused attention meditation and it helped me focus on my breath rather than the anticipation of the next cough and I was eventually able to fall asleep pretty quickly! For the meditation, I would count as a breathed in and then out up to ten and then start over.

Mindfulness

I tried out a mindfulness meditation today. There was a lot of focus put on my breath, the contact between me and the chair, and all that. Sometimes I forget to pay attention to these things or forget what it feels like to be in my own body so I liked doing the mindfulness meditation. The one I did today was also only five minutes long which was a good reminder that meditation does not have to be super long, which is great for days when I have less time.

Body Scan

I haven't done a body scan meditation for the challenge yet, but I have done plenty in the past so I'm familiar with it. Body scan meditations are nice because it tunes me into what I am feeling in my body. I like that it makes me feel more aware of different parts of my body that I don't usually pay attention to. I think it will be fun to try out more body scan meditations and see how they may vary even though they are similar in the idea and purpose.