It’s no secret that I have my struggles mentally, like we all do. I suffer crippling self doubt at times, I can feel anxious. I’m a creative, and my imagination is what enables me to do what I do, but it isn’t always a blessing. Sometimes my thoughts run away with themselves. Sometimes I genuinely struggle.

One of my team said a few months ago that his son had been using Headspace and said it was a game changer. I’d heard of it, I’d even tried it before. Truth is, I’ve tried meditating a few times and failed miserably.

I even once researched why we often struggle with things like mobility and meditation, and it said we struggle because there’s no external validation. You go to the gym for a few months and people notice. You meditate and no one’s any the wiser. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but that’s what I found.

I’ve always had a very overactive mind. I’ve always found a way when told no. I don’t sit still, I want to be doing all of the time, and I struggle with boredom when life doesn’t feel like it’s moving fast enough. Often I’ll even start to create problems to solve that don’t need solving.

So let me say, don’t think I have it all sewn up, because I have just as many mental challenges as everyone else. I could write an entire blog on that alone, but that’s not what this is about. This is about meditation.

Why we struggle with things no one else can see

I made the commitment to stick to Headspace for two months. This blog isn’t about Headspace by the way, it was just the platform that helped keep me accountable, which is often what we need. That external validation problem I mentioned, nobody claps when you sit still for ten minutes, so you have to build the accountability in some other way. For me, that was committing to an app and a set number of weeks before I let myself judge whether it was working.

I’ve been doing it now for around five weeks, and it has been great for me.

Clearing the desktop

It sounds stupid doesn’t it, somehow starting my day sitting completely still in silence, alone with my thoughts, has been a game changer. But it has.

The way I think about it, my mind is a cluttered computer desktop, and throughout the day it gets messier. Meditation is me spending ten minutes in the morning clearing it all up, putting the files away, letting my processor rest and reset, ready for the day.

Let thoughts pass like clouds

One of the biggest lessons for me was to treat thoughts like clouds. Let them come, don’t try to stop them, but also you don’t need to hold onto them. Let them pass just as a cloud does, there’ll be another along soon. Often the issue isn’t the thought itself, it’s that we hold onto certain thoughts for too long.

You can’t force it

Another big lesson has been that when we try to force feeling grateful, we often don’t actually feel it. We have to sit and not consciously push. The same can be said for being present. You can’t grip your way into it, you just have to sit there and let it happen.

It’s not just me saying it helps

I’m not the first person to notice this, and it isn’t just a feeling I’ve made up to justify sticking with an app for five weeks. The research backs a lot of what I’ve felt.

Studies on stress consistently show meditation lowers physiological markers of it, and there’s decent evidence it helps with anxiety too, with the biggest improvements often seen in people who start with the highest anxiety levels, which tracks with an overactive mind like mine. There’s research showing it improves focus and memory in as little as thirteen minutes a day over eight weeks. Sleep studies show meditators fall asleep easier and deal with less insomnia. There’s even evidence it can help lower blood pressure, particularly in older adults.

I’m not sharing any of that to turn this into a science lecture. I’m sharing it because it’s reassuring to know the thing that’s quietly helped me isn’t just in my head, no pun intended.

Still learning

For me it’s really helped, and it’s something I’ll keep doing, hopefully for the rest of my life. I can run marathons. I can hold a handstand. Turns out the hardest training I’ve done in years has been sitting completely still and doing nothing at all.