25 Years of Peace – Year 2
2 years into my journey, I’ve never missed a day of writing down something that brought me peace. It’s interesting to notice some of the themes that have arisen.
The same people, over and over, bring peace. Those people get tons of my time. I write their names down a lot.
Freedom comes up an awful lot. I optimize my life for freedom, and the fact that I have it brings me peace.
There’s a list of random things that bring me peace. This list is just a subset of the random things that brought me peace over the last few months:
Old people doing things (having purpose and taking action)
Tenacity
Bitcoin
Growing business problems
A good cup of coffee
Relaxing
Unique opportunities
Leverage
Systems
Health
The most-listed item, however, was sleep. When I get a great night’s sleep, the sky is bluer, the grass is greener, everyone is kinder, and I am happier. When I don’t get a good night’s sleep, I feel attacked more often, I have less patience, I feel less optimistic about the future, problems seem more difficult to overcome than they actually are, and I feel less productive during the day. It’s safe to say that quite a bit of my life now revolves around sleep.
6 months ago, I started eating fish twice per week, minimum. Every diet test I had taken told me to eat more fish, so I committed for 6 months. I feel amazing the day after I eat fish for dinner, especially salmon. I never noticed it before, but I’ve got superhuman energy the day after a fish dinner. It just so happens that my Oura sleep score positively correlates with my eating fish, and since adding more fish into my diet, I list “sleep” more often. Now, I eat fish often 3-4 times per week, and go out of my way to go to restaurants that serve it.
My second year began with a new prescription. Meditation. I still write down something that brings me peace every day, but I knew I needed more. I still had too many thoughts.
I had tried meditation many times before and, as is often the case, got uncomfortable, got bored, got busy, and forgot about it until the next time I heard someone say something about meditating. Then I would think “I really should go back to doing that” and proceed to get busy and forget about it. My prescription for my 26th year was going to be that I was going to meditate every single day, along with writing down something that brings me peace.
When I started, I had two types of meditations. The first was just sitting and closing my eyes. No mantras, no music, no technology to measure meditation success, just me and myself. The second was one I learned from my aunt, which says:
“I am happy. I am well. I know peace.”
“You are happy. You are well. You know peace.”
“All beings are well. All beings are happy. All beings know peace.”
I did these two meditations for a while. During the latter, I would replace “you” with a person, and I would dedicate that round of it to them, then I would release the dedication, think of a new person, and start it over.
Then, I started going on walks. Walking meditation. Long drives. Driving meditation. Journaling. Writing meditation.
I had developed all sorts of different meditations because I wasn’t always in the mood to do one particular thing, but I was almost always in the mood to do something. It also makes it easier to be easy on myself about it. I don’t need to force-fit a meditation, which is the last thing you want to do with meditating, when I can do a different activity. Sometimes, if I have way too much pent-up energy, even a run (with no music) counts.
It’s been successful, too, because my time each day spent meditating has increased. In the beginning, there would be days I didn’t want to meditate, so I would close my eyes for one minute and check the box. Oftentimes, now, I’ll do two forms of meditation each day.
I listen to music in the car far less often. I find myself sitting in a chair and doing nothing more often. I leave my phone in the other room and stop wearing my watch (after I close my rings) because I don’t need the stimulation. My brain slowed down.
I never missed a day.
I set a reminder on my phone that goes off every day at 8:30 AM and 8:30 PM. I’m don’t turn off the reminder until I’ve meditated.
I have significantly fewer thoughts now, and a large part of that is due to meditation. The first few months were difficult. All sorts of junk thoughts would pop into my head. At first, I fought them.
That didn’t work.
If I tell you not to think of a zebra right now, I bet you’ll think about a zebra. Then, I began accepting them, and they went away.
Now, when I meditate, I have a different problem. A thing I actually need to do will pop into my head, I’ll accept it (out of habit), then when I’m finished with my meditation, I’ve forgotten the thing I needed to do!
My second year in my 25 years of peace was one where my mind became quieter. For that, I’m grateful. When I don’t want to meditate, I know I need it most. When I feel stressed, I’ll meditate on that stress, sometimes for hours. When I’m done, most of the time, my stress has faded and my peace has returned.
I am much more effective at work. When I started my 26th year, I was in the office doing things 50-60 hours per week. Now, I work far fewer hours, and I get way more done. I’ve also discovered that I can achieve 5-6 hours of focused, flow activities each day if I meditate for over 20 minutes between noon and 2 PM, often when I’m most tired during the day. Right now, I get more done in a day than I used to do in a week.
My decision-making is better, and so I spend far less time on wasted activities. I’m much more effective, and sometimes my time spent meditating is time spent not doing busywork to alleviate my stress.
Sometimes, my time spent meditating is time spent simply clearing my mind and allowing new thoughts to enter.
Meditation was only part of my year. I spent much of my year focused on truth as well.
I found that the truth makes the mind very quiet. It is, and that’s it. There are no more “what ifs,” “but waits,” and “well, maybes.” The truth is the truth: case closed.
In the process of discovering truth, I opened several cans of worms that will each, individually, become their own posts.
On the day that I’m writing this, my 27th birthday and the beginning of my third full year of peace, I’m not adding any more daily prescriptions. I’m keeping the two I’ve got: meditation, and writing down something that brings me peace. I am, however, adding a good habit and removing a bad habit over a 6-month time period.
I’m removing my phone an hour before bed. There are two reasons for it:
It reduces the quality of your sleep (maybe it’ll work as well as the fish!)
I can meditate before bed.
In the search for a clear, calm mind, what better way to sleep than to meditate before bed?
I’m adding writing into my life, and will be publishing a blog post every other week. A total of 13 posts between now and April 18th.
I’ve found that writing helps me achieve clarity of thought. In a search for truth, writing allows me to clearly articulate the words in my mind. While the post may cover any topic from business to personal to philosophy, it’s a hobby, and it’s a prescription.
12 to go.