As I said in my last post, I’ve made a commitment to practice mindful meditation for five minutes a day and report back on my experience.

Observation #1: I sometimes make simple tasks more complicated than they need to be.  Before I actually sat down to meditate on day 1, I spent five minutes testing all the ring tones on my timer to find the “right” one. I ended up selecting Windchimes. I also wasted some more time trying to decide where I should sit for my five minutes of mindful breathing. On the couch in the living room? In the armchair in the bedroom? Outside on the deck?

Already so mindful, and I hadn’t even gotten started yet! I congratulated myself for paying attention to the automatic internal chatter and began to feel a little smug about my advanced self-awareness skills. Maybe I should do more than five minutes a day? Could I benefit even more, in less time, by skipping over the basics—which I already know—and advancing to the accelerated course?

This line of thinking led to my second observation.

Observation #2: I get impatient. I don’t like being a beginner. But it’s better in the long run to spend time building a solid base before adding onto it.

Observation #3: On both the first and second day, despite knowing I’d committed to practicing meditation daily and realizing I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t follow through with my plan, I almost forgot to do it. I wasn’t avoiding it. I just didn’t think about it. The behavior hasn’t become habitual yet, and to make it routine I’ll have to create reminders for myself—maybe set an alarm on my phone or schedule it to follow an already formed habit, like brushing my teeth in the morning.

After my heightened awareness during the premeditation period, the actual meditation sessions were a little anticlimactic– not unpleasant but not particularly restorative, either.

I’ll have to see where it goes.