I was listening to an interview on the radio and I heard someone talk about how we’re losing our ability to concentrate and focus and that we’ve become professional “scanners”. We scan articles, emails, and even texts that are sent to us by our loved ones. And we’re getting information wrong because we are scanning. It’s affecting our comprehension levels too. So this guy said that if we just read for 10 minutes a day, uninterrupted, from a physical book, we would see our focus and comprehension levels go up almost immediately. I wanted to test the theory so I embarked on a 30 day challenge to read at least 10 minutes a day.
I must admit I’m kind of a junkie when it comes to challenges. I do 30 day challenges ALL THE TIME. Whenever I feel like I want to get disciplined and do something, I simply challenge myself for 30 days. It has worked really well for me in the past because for whatever reason, I always stick through the challenge. Here are a few challenges I’ve done over the past few years:
30 Day Squat Challenge: I have done this one several times. Every time I feel like I’ve fallen off the wagon with exercising, this is an easy and effective way to get motivated and get back into a routine. You start off at day 1 with having to do 50 squats and then every day the number of squats increases until you get to the 30th day and you have to do 250 squats all at once. Intense.
30 Day Early Rise Challenge: I felt like I was going to bed later and later and so I wanted to kick start my biorhythm and move my sleeping hours back a little. Every day for 30 days I woke up at 6am. I know that might not be hard for some people but it was SUPER hard for me. And one of my rules was that I couldn’t take a nap or go back to sleep after waking up. This was REALLY hard for me but I did it and I’m happy to say that I now get up between 6am and 7am every morning now.
30 Day Phone Diet: This 30 day challenge was created by me. I had an idea to have some kind of restriction on my phone usage every day and by the end of the 30 days was hoping that a few of the things I did during the month would stick and I would alter my phone usage. Since doing the challenge, I’ve NEVER went back to having notifications on (that was the challenge for day #1, turn off all app notifications). And I’ve been WAY more conscious of my phone usage and when it’s really starting to effect me and those around me.
For the first day I thought this book was apropos because reading it for 10 minutes felt like meditation itself.
My AWESOME friend Ben Kenyon gave me this book and I love it. I love that Ben is someone who is always trying to improve himself and help those around him. He knew meditating would help my life.
In the book today the lesson that I got from it was, and I quote…
“The truth is everyone is great at meditation because it’s our natural state. Saying you’re not good at meditating is like saying you’re not good at breathing. Or a fish saying they’re not good at swimming. It’s impossible.”
I just recently started mediating and realized that just doing it was doing it right. Russell Simmons (who by the way was the last person I thought would ever write a book on meditating!) says you can do it in your car or even in your bathroom. It doesn’t have to be the way everyone else does it. Basically he’s like, just do it and you’re doing it right