I’d tried getting into meditation a few times over the years. I’d heard so many positive things about it, it always made me think it had to be worth a try. It costs nothing after all! At the time I never really understood the science behind it, and I think this prevented me from becoming fully bought in. It acted as an obstacle to me habitualising it, and the lack of consistent practice meant I never seen any of the expected benefits. It was always very stop start, until it fell off my radar altogether, consigned to my mental dustbin of failed bright ideas.

Fast forward a few years and suddenly the covid pandemic turned the entire world on its head as it ripped through it like a twister through a prairie during tornado season. Unprecedented, unparalleled, and unpredictable. It’s brought chaos and disruption to all of our lives for going on two years at the time of writing this. 2020 seemed as if it just disappeared, as if it flew past unacknowledged as we were all just trying to get through it and doing our best to survive. 2021 wasn’t much of an improvement. We started off cautiously optimistic, but the different variants creeping out of the woodwork have demonstrated that things won’t be back to ‘normal’ for a few years. Even that isn’t guaranteed.

Everyone’s experience of the pandemic has been unique, and everyone has had to try and navigate through it in their own way. I’ve been very fortunate. I’m one of the ones who has come out the other end stronger, more resilient, and with a newfound enthusiasm for life which I intend taking full advantage of. The biggest contributory factor to this has been meditation, and it would be selfish of me not to share some of the lessons I’ve learned from a year of practicing daily. If only one person decides to try it and obtains any benefit from it, it’ll have been worth the effort I’ve invested in writing this.

From a timeline perspective, although my meditation journey started in January of last year, I’ve deliberately chosen to kick off from the start of lockdown as there’s some important context in there.

About a fortnight after the first lockdown began, like everybody else I was still in a state of bewilderment. It felt like a bad dream, a poorly conceived joke, perhaps even a global training drill. Whilst still trying to work out what the hell was going on, I was presented with an unwelcome distraction in the form of a mystery illness. I’ll not delve too deep into the specifics as that’s not the point of this article, but what I presumed to be a viral infection that would be gone within a week, eventually took hold of my system with symptoms so severe there were days I couldn’t even get out of bed.  The worst of the symptoms lasted six months, during which a protracted medical process involving various procedures and specialists returned no diagnosis. I lost my job as I was unable to commit to a return date. It was a terrifying situation to be in, and one I really struggled with. I think a big part of this is because I’ve been very fortunate so far in life, and until then hadn’t dealt with anything resembling proper adversity. As a result, I was mentally ill equipped to do so.

That’s the doom and gloom part done! Around November time, I started to notice an improvement. Whilst I was unwell, I had lost interest in anything that required a degree of concentration. I was sitting one night looking for something to watch on Netflix and stumbled across a series called ‘A guide to meditation’. I was curious, and decided to watch it. The explanations around how meditation facilitates physical changes in the brain, and the raft of emerging scientific evidence around its efficacy were truly fascinating. At the end of each episode, I would partake in the short guided meditation.

At first, I found it difficult to clear my mind of any thoughts. It felt like an unnatural state, as if the lack of busyness in my head meant something was wrong, and my mind would quickly revert. When this happened, I would become despondent, and critical of myself for lacking the mental discipline to stick with the program. That’s when the penny dropped – the discipline lay in persisting although it was difficult. The mind drifting wasn’t indicative of failure, but giving up because it’s ‘hard’ was. So I kept trying. Whenever I found myself drifting, I would acknowledge it, and attempt to refocus. The more I kept it up, the longer I found I could keep a clear mind, and I became better at identifying when I was drifting and pulling myself back to a mindful state. I continued to gradually increase the duration of my sessions until I could comfortably meditate for forty five minutes. I made a commitment to put aside time to meditate every day. That was almost a year ago, and here are the results.

The most significant benefit has been the disappearance of the anxiety that has plagued me for decades. This, although inconceivable to me (still!), has been a real game changer. I had long since accepted this is something that would be with me for the rest of my life, and it would always be about managing rather than eradicating it. It’s a dreadful thing to have to endure, especially when its constant, you have nothing to point towards that’s causing it, and can’t therefore do anything about it. I’ve tried exercise, therapy (multiple times!) and medication. I’ve read more self help books than I care to remember. Whilst all of these have had some varying degree of success (exercise being the most effective), it’s been negligible compared to the effect of meditating regularly. Even the word transformational feels somehow muted. What is even more impressive about it all is that it has managed to do so in the complete absence of my go to mood stabiliser. Running has been the most effective of the other mediums over the years. Although it never provided a long term solution, it gave me an adrenaline filled escape for however long for I was out. It makes sense that my distance of choice was the marathon. When I had to stop running three years ago I felt as if my world had collapsed. It was such an intrinsic part of me, I felt lost, as If I’d been stripped of my identity. Meditation has given me an alternative means of bringing balance. It has changed my mindset so now I tend to focus on what I have. The inability to run seems a lot less significant when I think of all the things I can do.

There’s a multitude of other stuff that could be linked to the removal of the anxiety, or discrete benefits of themselves. I’m happy to accept them either way!

For long periods when I was unwell I couldn’t face getting out of bed. Now I’m genuinely excited to see what each new day brings, and full of gratitude and appreciation for it. I’ve become the kind of guy who sits outside to watch the sunset, stands in the middle of the street pondering the shape of the clouds and speculating as to what they might resemble, sits in the forest in silence listening to the chatter of the different birds, or sees the beauty in a plastic bag fluttering around in the wind. These are all real life, and regular examples.

As well as living in a state of perpetual high alert, I’ve struggled with Imposter Syndrome over the years. I never knew what this was until a couple of years ago, and it wasn’t until I read a couple of articles about it I realised I ticked all the boxes. In a professional sense, I’ve always felt any success I’ve had was down to me riding my luck, and had a niggling sensation that I was going to be ‘found out’ and exposed as some sort of fraud. Like the generalised anxiety, this has left the building. A deeply internalised sense of inadequacy has been replaced with an enduring sense of confidence unlike anything I imagined I could attain. I used to sit in meetings with my head down, hoping to avoid eye contact and god forbid someone ask me a question! I’m now always willing to put myself out there with contributions and ideas, and volunteering for roles I’d have avoided as I perceived them to be beyond my range of competence. I find myself enthusiastically embracing situations that would have previously sat well outside my comfort zone. When I found myself out of work back in 2019, it was a particularly stressful time for me. My anxiety and general lack of confidence meant interviews were a torturous ordeal. I would spend days obsessing about it in the lead up, and the night before was always one devoid of the sleep I needed to be able to perform at my best. Having lost the job I did get through illness, I found myself in the same position in June of last year when I felt I had recovered sufficiently to go back to work. The difference this time was that I’d been meditating for six months by this point. The contrast in my experience was incredible. I barely thought about the interview in the preceding days and found myself coasting through interviews, and crucially, believing my own hype. I’ve been back at work now for six months, and I’m now seeing the benefit of the confidence uplift every day in my job.

I’ve noticed an improvement in my concentration levels. My tendency to become easily distracted, whilst still present, is less of an impediment than it used to be. It happens less frequently, and I tend to become aware of it sooner if it does creep in, allowing me to take a deep breath and refocus. Possibly linked to this has been better powers of recall. My memory seems to have improved, both in the immediate sense, and longer term. I have far more clarity over long term memories which had been a bit cloudy. It feels as if my brain has been repaired, or given a performance improving workout!

I’m able to get to sleep without any difficulty, and generally sleep very soundly. Before the bike accident, I used to conk out as soon as my head hit the pillow. The spectre of anxious thoughts preventing me from sleeping were normally combatted by the fact I’d have buried myself in training, and the physical exhaustion would always be the winner in any war of attrition. This all changed once the ability to train was removed from the equation, a situation I still find myself in. The lack of physical exertion during the day meant I began to find it challenging to get to sleep. Once I did fall asleep I would be up and down like a yoyo during the night. The meditation now means that I can completely switch my mind off, on demand, at bedtime, guaranteeing a solid restorative sleep to set me up fresh for the next day.

I’ve always been a bit of a procrastinator in the past, putting stuff off until the last minute, which was counterproductive as I’d feel anxious about not completing a task in the lead up to eventually doing it anyway. Whilst this hasn’t completely gone away, it has diminished significantly. My explanation for this is that I no longer have a fear of making mistakes. I think in the past I put stuff off through a fear that I wouldn’t complete it to a sufficient level of quality (questioning my competency again!). Now I’d much rather just get stuck in and persevere if I don’t get it right straight away. The perfectionism which fuels the procrastination has also become less of an impediment. I can send a text with a grammatical mistake without having to correct it these days (Its liberating – you should try it).

I used to be a slave to complex ‘to do’ spreadsheets, where in all honesty I probably spent more time updating the sheets than I did working through the actions on them. I don’t really use lists at all now, other than in work. I’m much more content to just go with the flow, without that ever present itch that I’ve missed something, or feeling like a failure as I’ve not ticked off a lengthy list of tasks. Ironically, I’m much more productive as a result, it’s just that it’s not documented in the illusory safety net of a list to prove to myself I’m ‘achieving stuff’.

I’ve left the best for last. The biggest transformation I’ve seen is with regards to creativity. For years I regularly described myself as ‘not having a creative bone in my body’. Since I started meditating, the creativity has flowed like water from a hose. I’ve always loved to write, but for years my preference was for my subject matter to be factual. You could of course argue that the writing is a creation of itself, even with factual subject matter the words, and opinions contain an element of subjectivity, they bear my stamp, I created them. This is of course all true but writing fiction has always seemed a bit out of reach for me. The idea of writing something from scratch, where you create the subject matter from the infinite range of possibilities available to you and develop the concept through the continual flow of creative ideas inspired by those that came before them. The experience itself feels almost meditative, the mind fixed in the present, caught up in the creation of the story as attentively as you hope a reader will be. Over the course of the last year, I finally realised a long standing ambition of mine by writing a book. An actual work of fiction, 100k+ words that may not be unique, it might not even be any good, but it’s original, and entirely built on my experiences, my thoughts and my feelings. I even broke out the drawing pencils and designed the cover for it myself!

Lastly, I find myself regularly, without the slightest hint of inhibition, dancing around the house, and singing at the top of my voice. I never sang previously, certainly not randomly, and most probably never outside the context of a football game, where to be fair I would roar unashamedly, my voice consumed by the sixty thousand others surrounding it. I once stated I would never partake in karaoke. I’ve almost fallen out with people close to me for trying to push me to do it when I’ve been out. Now I wouldn’t hesitate, and have actually done so, for the first time in my life with my niece and nephew over Christmas. That subconscious barrier preventing me from moving out of my comfort zone seems to be gone, and its opening up opportunities for me to experience different things, things that when I am trying are making me realise who gives a shit what other people think of you if your having fun, and not harming anyone else.

Let me be very clear. I’m not touting it as some magical elixir that will work for everyone. Just as I started off by alluding to the fact that everyone has had their own unique experience of the pandemic, everyone will experience meditation a different way. Some may find it difficult to practice, others may not see the same type of benefits I have. Some may find it easy and reap the rewards in abundance. I can only speak of my experience, and hope that anyone who decides to try it on the back of reading this article has a similar experience.