FINAL DAY of The April Challenge: Daily Meditation & Performance (30/04/22)
Reflections, lessons & announcing my May Challenge.
My report for Saturday 30th April 2022 - the final day of my Daily Meditation challenge.
This report structure will be a little bit different. I’ll start with my reflections & learnings from this challenge in the form of:
My lessons & reflections from carrying out this challenge,
My improvement points if I were to replicate the challenge,
My practical actions I’m taking into the future even after this challenge has finished.
I’ll then talk about my May challenge, and finish with my ‘experience’ of the day (as I do in all posts).
April Challenge Reflections:
When I set out on my Daily Meditation challenge at the start of the month, I set the objective to complete Joe Dispenza’s meditation protocol from ‘Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself’.
His protocol involved 4 cumulative Phases, with each Phase being added weekly:
Phase 1: Opening The Door To Our Creative Self
Step 1: Induction
Phase 2: Prune Away The Habit Of Being Yourself
Step 2: Recognising, Step 3: Admitting and Declaring, Step 4: Surrendering
Phase 3: Dismantle The Memory Of The Old You
Step 5: Observing and Reminding, Step 6: Redirecting
Phase 4: Create A New Mind For Your New Future
Step 7: Creating and Rehearsing
So, let me summarise 5 lessons from this challenge:
I was out of practice with meditation. Both in terms of creating the time for it, and in terms of being able to sit down and concentrate for the duration of it. Even the weird ‘head buzzing’ feeling I got initially from Phase 1 was a result of (I think) not having trained my ability to concentrate in a long time.
Guided meditation is a much better entry-level meditation than unguided. It can help us to:
Build the habit of sitting down and meditating in a way that requires much less effort than an unguided meditation.
Training our ability to focus our brain in a specific way (training very specific ‘brain muscles’ e.g. visualisation)
Doing so in a safe way (a guided meditation can prevent us from spiralling into rumination by ‘guiding’ our focus with specific instructions)
The Visualisation practice outlined by Joe Dispenza is very powerful.
Phase 1 was very useful in teaching me how to create the ‘inductive’ state whereby our brain waves slow down and our subconscious becomes more receptive to guidance. For more info on the Phases, see this post.
Phase 2 was not as useful for me - I’m very used to labelling, declaring and surrendering my emotions. However, it was still very cathartic after doing Phase 1.
For more info on what I did in Phase 2, see the Parting Notes in this post.
Phase 3 was very cool - I especially liked the ‘Change Game’ exercise and visualising myself responding to situations where old emotions crop up by using the ‘change’ instruction.
For more info on what Phase 3 entails, see the Parting Notes in this post.
Phase 4 was the most valuable to me - creating my visualisations of my ideal self and how I would express myself was clarifying, associating certain images (e.g. a certain financial amount, hitting a tennis serve) and embodying them with gratitude was incredibly powerful, as was the final process of trusting and ‘asking for a sign’, knowing that these visions are happening.
For more info on what I’m visualising in Phase 4, see the Parting Notes in this post.
Meditating for 50 minutes was just a bit too much for me still. The jump from 30 minutes (just about doable) to 50 minutes was massive. Not only did I get a bit restless physically, but finding 50 uninterrupted minutes during the day was a challenge.
I think dedicating 15-30 minutes per day is realistic at this stage, given how much of my day outside of work I awish to spend prioritising my physical fitness & sports, as well as my relationship with my partner.
Proud of myself for meditating for 30 days straight. That’s the longest streak I’ve ever had, I think.
Let’s see if I can keep it going - my goal is 5 days per week of the Phase 4 stage of the meditation (21 minutes) and minimum 5 minutes of mindful meditation on the other 2 days.
Keep trusting the process. The reason I loved Phase 4 is that it gave me dedicated time to reinforce my belief in my visions, instead of my doubts. When left to our own ‘protective’ mental habits, we tend to focus on our doubts and what could go wrong with our goals (especially when we’re tired).
Doubt takes up a lot of mental bandwidth. Not only does it take away our presence and ability to enjoy a moment we’re experiencing, but it also saps our energy for tasks/activities we wish to do later.
This meditation helped me to nurture my belief - and, being honest, I had an incredible month honouring my clients, hitting some great milestones in my running & tennis, and really being present for the blessed journey I’m sharing with my partner.
My average day score for how fulfilled & satisfied I felt in the month of April was 9.7/10 - the highest I think it’s ever been.
Not that it was a month without challenges - there were many (my digestion issues & pain, overwork, and my partner’s illness flare-up). But my response to them felt so much more grounded, connected, present, and bolstered by belief. I am so deeply grateful for this.
2 things I would improve on if I were to do this challenge again in the future:
Set aside dedicated meditation slots. It’s hard to do given how variable my schedule is, but just deciding on timing a day in advance would have been immensely helpful.
Create a dedicated meditation location. Moving between meditating in the park, in the garden, and in my study was not ideal. Joe Dispenza actually does say that we should try to meditate in the same spot to mentally associate it with the ‘induction’ state we enter through Phase 1, thus making it easier to induce t that state in future meditation sessions.
I would love to have a ‘zen meditation room’ one day. For now, meditating in my study is acceptable - a nice break between client session, perhaps.
2 Action Points from this challenge that I will take with me into the rest of 2022:
Meditate daily for at least 5 minutes. I’ve shown myself that 15-20 minutes daily was possible. 5 minutes is the bare minimum. I’d love to cultivate this habit.
Phase 4 was my favourite portion of the meditation. I’m setting myself a challenge to use the Phase 4 guided meditation section (~21 minutes) 5 times a week as part of my meditation protocol.
Comments on past challenges I’ve done in 2022:
January Challenge: Eating Whole-Foods Plant Based
Still eating plant-based and feeling strong. Mostly whole-foods. Some dark chocolate and olive bread. Include protein powders in my morning oats breakfast.
Body in good shape - did a personal best half-marathon time a few weeks ago (1:37:42) and still keeping up with weights training. Also won a tennis tournament yesterday :)
February Challenge: Sleep Optimisation
Too variable. Sleep before midnight on about 3 nights a week, but the other 4 veer into the 00:30 - 1:30am range. Want to keep working on this.
March Challenge: Reading
Deprioritised. Not as huge a priority this month as the time I’d allocated to it was replaced by the meditation protocol.
Want to get more ePub books in iBooks. It’s so much easier for me to read extracts on my phone during the day than picking up a paperback book.
So, what’s the challenge for May?
May Challenge: 100K Running in May for Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal Charity
For the month of May, I’ve decided to run 100km, having taken inspiration from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children 100K in May challenge.
It’s an incredible cause…but just as I was about to create my JustGiving page, something inside me hesitated.
The Ukraine situation.
I’ve felt helpless about it from the very beginning.
I still feel helpless now.
But doing something small is better than doing nothing.
So, I’ve decided to run for the Disasters Emergency Committee Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.
I’ve created a link to my JustGiving page here.
The aim is for us to raise £500. Let’s see what we can do. (I’ll be donating too, of course!)
(I’ll be doing a future challenge for GOSH - I can’t think of a better cause than treating unwell children!)
So, what will this challenge entail?
Minimum of 100km run over the month.
I’m adding the challenge of amassing 500,000 steps total in the month of May (an average of 16,130 per day).
Continuing to train in the gym 3x a week (one lower body day, one upper body day, one gymnastic rings day) and aiming for 2 x tennis hits a week.
Why is this a challenge?
I’ve not run 100km in a month since 2018.
I’m still going to be committing to doing 3 x gym sessions a week and 2 x tennis hits a week.
I’m still in ‘peak season’ for work, so it’ll be a good time-management challenge to incorporate all of the above.
Doing something small for Ukrainians being forced to leave their homes makes me feel 1% better as a human being.
I’m not just going to be running, but I’ll also be making a donation myself regardless of how the challenge unfolds.
If anyone would like to sponsor me/contribute a donation, please donate through my JustGiving page.
So, that’s the May challenge. Let’s see how it goes!
My Experience (Saturday 30th April 2022):
Reflections on My Meditation Challenge:
Meditation Session
Description: Bonus day of Phase 4 of Joe Dispenza’s 4-Phase Meditation Program
Duration Meditating: 21 minutes
Just doing Phase 4.
Meditation Position: Sitting upright on a seat in my study.
Time of Starting Meditation: 22:35
YouTube Link To Guided Meditation Audio for Phase 4: Here.
Reflections:
All summed up above.
Wins & Losses Summary (Saturday 30th April 2022):
5 Wins/Highlights
I won a tennis tournament. Will post about it in tomorrow’s Parting Notes. Will now be representing David Lloyds Finchley in the Regional Finals. Wooh.
Managed to catch my parents before they went to the airport. Always nice to give them a final goodbye.
Did 4 rounds of alternating hot-cold shower. My legs needed it - hamstrings utterly destroyed after leg day on Thursday & 3 hours of tennis.
Lovely walk in Hampstead Garden Suburb with my partner. Had a lovely time exploring a different neighbourhood and the Hampstead Heath extension.
Lovely movie date night with my partner. We watched Ice Age! What a throwback.
1 Loss, Lesson & Action
Loss: Deciding on the Challenge for May. Spent way too much time debating options.
Lesson: Plan challenges in advance? Actually, perhaps dedicate time to go with the flow - I wouldn’t have come up with this May challenge had I planned it in advance (couldn’t have predicted a war at the start of the year). Very grateful, as I feel very aligned with it.
Action: Set 1 hour on the final day of each month dedicated to coming up with challenges. Make a list of challenges to choose from.
We’ve made it to the end of the April Challenge! Thank you so much for reading - I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Hope that you have an amazing week ahead. Now to go to sleep…
Until tomorrow,
Kam