Small Daily Changes

Just got inspired reading this blog post from Zen habbits: http://zenhabits.net/change

The idea is Nothing will really change in my life unless I make a daily change

So what will be my daily changes in the coming month of April? Here they are:

1. Mediate at least 5 minutes in the morning
2. Eat breakfast mindfully
3. Exercise daily (walking, biking or gym)
4. Some music daily with Anne Sophie & Luda: singing, guitar, dance, music
5. 1 hour study for the HTML5/CSS/Javascript exam
6. at least 10 minutes daily for finances and administration

Looks like a lot. Let's see if I can keep it up! Starting today March 31. I've created a Google Dosc spreadsheet to track my daily progress.

Just did a 5 minutes meditation to start off this experiment!

...


This was a great day!

Did two 5 minute meditations
Went for a 2-hour walk on the beach with Luda, AS, Lena & Vadim
Made the eierkoek dessert! Everyone liked it!
Met Elsan (an Italian-Indian guy)
Performed Pushkin's fairy tales (Lukomor'e & Fisherman and the golden fish) with Anne Sophie & Vadim
Meditated before going to bed
Read the first chapter of Secrets of JavaScript Ninja, great book on JavaScript from the creator of jQuery!
So on this first day of my 1-month experiment I accomplished 6 out of my 7 daily change activities! All except the mindful breakfast.

30-Day Meditation Challenge

I've been on and off meditating and wanting to meditate for years. There are many benefits to mediation, which I will not discuss here. Suffice it to say that it can be good for both your physical and mental health and for learning more about yourself.

In order to develop my meditation into a lasting, daily habit, I am embarking on a 30-day meditation challenge and I invite you to join me! The rules are quite simple: meditate at least a few minutes every single day for the coming 30 days. In fact I already did this once last year, and I really enjoyed the challenge, but the habit didn't take root at the time.

Because different people understand different things under meditation, it's up to you to choose your meditation technique. I'll be using non-religious, but Zen-Buddhism-inspired meditation techniques developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn as part of his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. In essence, it's about sitting mindfully, following your breath and taking mental note of what's going within your mind and body.

So if you wish, please join me in this endeavor and share your experiences!

To help you start, I've shared a number of guided meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn:  https://docs.google.com/#folders/folder.0.0B2tp0bSwDZS4ZWM2Y2VkMTItMGRmNy00OTEyLWI3OTAtYWYxNTkxOGE1YjI5
These meditations explain what it's about and guide you in how you can meditate in various ways. Good luck!

30-Day Meditation Challenge

Ever since I started reading Erich Fromm (one of the biggest influences in my life) at the age of 17, I've always been drawn to meditation. I have this deep rooted idea that meditation must be a great and probably indispensible tool in personal and global development. If we wish to advance further on the path of developing our intrinsically human abilities to think, love, feel, if we wish to develop compassion and a sense of oneness with the world, meditation should be the key.

In the past 20 years I've made numerous attempts to start meditation practice. To name a few, I tried concentration exercises; I did a meditation course with the following of Shri Chinmoy while living in Minks, Belarus and then in Oslo, Norway; I followed a meditation course and then practice with a Zen Buddhist monk in Leiden, Netherlands. However, sadly enough, I have not been able to develop a long lasting meditation habit.

Inspired by Steve Pavlina's idea of 30-day trials to try out things and develop habits, as of today I am embarking on the 30-day challenge of daily meditation. I'll be meditating daily as I wake up and maybe also before I go to bed. I'll be  using some guided meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Let's see if I can turn this into a daily routine going beyond the 30 days.

I've already meditated several times in the past couple of weeks. Today early in the morning I did my first in this series of 30 meditations. It is not easy, the mind is wandering all the time, and I sometimes even miss the instructions. However, according to Jon, it's OK. It is the nature of the mind to wander, think, daydream, jump from one thing to another. The crux of the meditation practice, as I understand it now, is to be able to observe the mind doing so, to realize that we are not the body or mind or thinking, that we can watch and study those things within ourselves and learn from them. It is actually quite amazing. The important thing is to carry on with the practice no matter what. And that's why a 30-day challenge is such a great idea!

Last year I pursued a 30-day journaling challenge, and I did write an entry in my journal for 30 consecutive days, but after that I stopped. Let's see if this attempt will be more successful!