I Meditated For 100 Days Straight, Here’s What I Learned

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” — Dalai Lama

All my life, I have struggled with anxiety. In varying doses, it comes and goes in waves. From an early age, I was seen as a ‘shy kid’ who stuck to what he knew. I come from a separated household as an only child with parents who live a quiet lifestyle. My dad, a Portuguese immigrant who moved to the UK as a teenager, struggled with the same issues growing up. He would often relate to my problems with stories from his own adolescence, which as I grew older, made it strikingly obvious how like-minded I was with him.

However, over the past 2–3 years, I’ve found myself rarely suffering from anxiety or depression. I went through a very turbulent second year of university before this which had me at my lowest points in life. An amalgamation of relationship struggles, grades dipping and being at a crossroads of discovering my true identity left me with panic attacks and feeling hopeless during many nights. I’ve looked back on these times through many different lenses; regret, remorse and doubt being the strongest. More recently though, I’ve learned to reflect on it with pride. Without going through this period, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. For context, I finished my third year of uni with First Class honours, landed a cushy graduate job doing what I love, continued to pursue many creative endeavours from music to fashion, and ticked off a bucket list items including backpacking around Asia.

It goes without saying that on the outside, these are all remarkable things that I am so grateful to have achieved. But the one thing that trumps them all is not material based. I am at the best place mentally I have ever been, and I owe a very large chunk of that to the practice of mindfulness.

I discovered mindfulness during that rough patch when I was 21, but used it very infrequently. More as a ‘medicator’ that I’d turn to when I was feeling anxious. That would be the theme over the following two years. It wasn’t until last year as the pandemic hit that I started looking more into the practice and ideas around it. I began to watch more videos on the subject, listen to podcasts and audio books, and started to embrace the teachings and lessons passed down through generations. I became extremely invested in it and found myself meditating regularly, although I would often miss a few days throughout the week.

Back in June, Yes Theory (a channel who I attribute a lot of my determination to), released a video on the topic of meditation. Thomas Brag spoke about how meditation for 1000 days straight had helped him to be in the best place he’d ever been. He set the challenge for viewers to join him with 100 days of meditation, and make it a daily ritual in their lives. Intent on taking that step up, I decided to join in on that journey. 100 days later, here I am with a perfect streak.

I could probably go on forever discussing the things I have learned about myself, human instinct, the world etc., but I’ve decided to boil it down into 5 key take-aways:

1. You can’t change the outside world, but you can change your reactions

For me, this was the most impactful lesson an anxiety sufferer could ever learn. Too many times have I been caught up in something outside of my control. Rumination and being anxious about anxiety has been a common theme in my life, the latter especially in the most recent years. Looking at a situation and thinking “Oh God, this is going to make me anxious isn’t it” even before anything has happened became the norm. It was after learning this lesson that I noticed this pattern of behaviour, and began to train my mind on overcoming it.

It’s quite a simple lesson, yet the hardest part is remembering and practising it. That goes for a lot of things in mindfulness too. Being able to recognise when the mind is caught in rumination about things outside of your control and harnessing it back is truly a skill meditation can train. By being present and focusing on the here and now, we let go of the things that are beyond us.

2. It’s about being comfortable with thoughts, not fighting them

One thing I found myself doing very often when I started to meditate is I would become hostile towards my mind any time I noticed a thought. I would thwart them out as I looked to it as a “NO THINKING ZONE” during sessions. However, the more I meditated, the more I began to realise the skill is not in banishing any thinking, but rather to see when the mind wanders and being able to bring it back. As I will explain a little later, meditation trains your mind in techniques of handling situations in your daily life. By acknowledging thoughts that will inevitably arise, you’re able to see them, let them go and continue with your day. If you set your mind up as a “NO THINKING ZONE”, you won’t learn how to notice thoughts and properly assess them.

3. Meditation is the catalyst to employing mindfulness throughout your day

This comes in the form of constructing ‘mindful moments’. It’s like learning any new skill; you take a training course, better your understanding of it and then start using it in your daily life. The same goes for meditation. The techniques taught train the mind for you to take onboard and use outside of that session. The benefits aren’t found during those 10 minutes, but rather throughout your day as you experience the world with all five senses attuned.

I noticed this regularly after the first couple of weeks. Waking up in the morning and feeling the full experience of making a coffee, eating lunch with a focus on the food, or going for a bike ride and observing the motions my body created. It’s that moment of stillness in the mind. You’re not caught up in worrying about a meeting coming up tomorrow, or reflecting on a tricky conversation with a colleague. Instead, you’re fully immersed - at least for a moment - in the here and now. Some of the ‘happiest’ days I’ve had over the past 100 were also the ones my phone recorded the lowest amount of screen time. Checking in with the body, breaking patterns of impulse or boredom to experience the world around you. To me, those are the most fulfilling moments you can have.

4. Treat your meditation routine in the same way you would treat the gym

The similarities between mindfulness and physical exercise work in parallel if you think about it. Every session requires you to dedicate some time every day to improve your state of being. Like muscle training, meditation actually grows helpful parts of your brain and shrinks the amygdala (responsible for anxiety, among other things). Finally, you finish every session feeling better in knowing you’ve taken the time to better yourself. It’s incredible that so few people see meditation in the same manner as physical exercise and I constantly encourage everyone to interpret it this way.

The comparisons don’t stop there. People’s attitudes towards both seem to work in three ways:

1. You don’t practise them.
2. You practise them when you feel you ‘need to’, but stop once you don’t ‘need to’.
3. You practise regularly as part of a (near) daily routine.

The last two attitudes are the hardest to shift between for many. Once you’re aware of the benefits, you’re more than likely going to give it a shot. However, unless you’re an incredible scheduler that lives and dies by the rota (for context, I’m not), you’ll likely find it difficult to immediately add it to your routine. The truth is, having both exercise and meditation are arguably essential aspects of a daily routine that creates a positive wellbeing. The way I was able to make that leap into a routine was by immersing myself with the practice of mindfulness. I watched videos, listened to podcasts and read books from some of the most influential people in order to inspire myself. It wasn’t a chore though, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute and continue to do so now. If you’re able to discover more in the world of mindfulness, it makes this transition so much easier.

5. Not only are you doing this for yourself, but also for the people around you

“The achievement of being selfless does not stem from generous actions, but the ability to make a less selfish decision” — Me (kinda), after hearing former monk and Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe talk about selflessness.

As humans, we bounce off each other. I’m not talking about physically, but on an emotional level. If you put yourself in two rooms, one filled with sad people, the other filled with joyful, I’d wager you’d feel a greater sense of happiness in the second. When we see our friends happy, we tend to feel a little happier ourselves.

This is what meditation can help us to achieve. By being more mindful and creating a better sense of inner joy, we radiate that positive energy to those around us. It comes back to the life lesson of ‘surrounding yourself with the right people’. Despite the fact I sometimes look at that statement with a raised eyebrow, one thing I can take from it is that being someone others want to have around them is a huge positive. In return, you may often find your friends/family feeling more upbeat around you, and in the business world, it can often impact your attitudes towards work.

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So, 100 days down and forever to go. Ironically, I’ve probably been through the most stressful month of the past few years. Frantically trying to sort the logistical nightmares of moving house (with a 24 hour gap between tenancies), recording and producing an album, organising out-of-city gig and festival plans — all whilst juggling a 9–5 job that required a lot of up-skilling for projects. However, I’ve rarely ever felt that stress take hold of me. Even when it did, it never lasted too long.

You shouldn’t go into a meditation with the attitude of measuring its success. Truly, the way to measure your success is by reflecting on your life after finding yourself in regular patterns of mindfulness and noticing how much better you feel.