Bit of a smoother start today. I got up after not a great sleep and did Day 4 of the Waking Up course through the app. It’s hard to remember what was said during the video (not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing) but I don’t feel like my mind wandered too much. I did remember Sam (Sam Harris narrates the course) talking about focusing on sounds and how you can meditate in even the noisiest conditions. This made me think about how I should meditate more in the city during work hours, especially if I have missed a morning meditation.

After work, I stumped up the cash and bought a years subscription of the Headspace app. It will work out pretty cheap if I use it (or a complete waste of money if I don’t). I decided to start the Acceptance pack and did day 1. Prior to this, I got overly stressed out looking for my portable hard drive (which I eventually found) but doing the meditation managed to help relax me a bit.

The Headspace meditation seemed to focus on a meditation technique called Reflection. The pack started with the below text. There is a video you can view if you select the Acceptance pack.

5 Minute Journal:

• I am grateful for…
  • Health
  • Stable job
  • Good group of friends
• What would make today great?
  • Blog
  • Meditate
  • Enjoy a healthy lunch
• Daily affirmation, I am…
  • A good person who deserves happiness
• 3 amazing things that happened today…
  • Found my hard drive
  • Went through some old photos
  • Good some good blog work done
• How could I have made today better?
  • Reached out to a friend for lunch/been more sociable at work

Goal: Meditate 20-30 mins every day for all of January.

For my first challenge I’ve decided to go for meditating. I’ve dabbled with meditating in the past and it seems to be beneficial, the most obvious effect seems to be better sleeping.

Why: Like most people I was skeptical about meditation, thinking it was wishy washy new age crap. However there is a ton of research showing the benefits of meditating and unlike other crystal healing type stuff most practitioners are happy to go under scientific testing. Some resources on this can found here:

• https://samharris.org/podcasts/111-science-meditation/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation
• https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/your-brain-as-laboratory-the-science-of-meditation/

How: There are a couple of strong, simple resources available online. The 2 main ones I will be using will be:

• Headspace (https://www.headspace.com)
• Waking Up (https://wakingup.com/)

Both of these are available online and have apps for android and iOS

Headspace is one of the most popular meditating websites about. It boosts over 1 million subscribers and has hundreds of hours of content. You can select a pack for targeting a specific problem such as depression, self esteem, focus, sleeping or anxiety. Alternatively there are simple guided or unguided meditations. A full access subscription is $12.99/mo (US) or $95.88 for a year. If you don’t want to pay you can sign up for free and try the first 10 basic sessions. The free package also includes:

• Breathe Mini
• The first session of every course 
• Kids Calm course (all ages)
• All Obstacle animations
• Everyday Headspace (3 sessions) 
• Sleepcasts (3 sessions) 

Headspace are currently running a special until 1st February for $58 for a full year.

Waking Up is another meditating service started by neuroscientist Sam Harris. I don’t have as much experience with this yet and while it isn’t as verbose as Headspace there is a 50 day meditation ‘course’ and about 20 video lessons. For free you get the first 5 days of the course and the first 5 video lessons. After that, a subscription is $7.99 US/month or $59.99 US/year.

The app is easy to use and it might actually be a benefit that there is less choice. I’m going to run through the 50 day course although I don’t see the benefit of a subscription after this is up.

Keep an eye out and I will post updates daily on progress for these over the next 30 days.

Side Quest: 5 min journal. As a side quest, I am going to do a 5-minute journal every day. This is basic gratitude training, more details can be found here:

The Five Minute Journal – Original Linen

I will be answering the following questions daily:

• I am grateful for…
• What would make today great?
• Daily affirmation, I am…
• 3 amazing things that happened today…
• How could I have made today better?

I’ve decided to set up this blog to help me make 2019 a year where working on my mental health is my main priority.

I’m 34 years old now and have spent more than half my life depressed (since about 16). I often fall into the habit of deciding to make all these life changes but never actually follow through with it.

With this blog I am going to set myself a set of challenges and stick to them by blogging once a day, and see how they affect my mood during and after completion. A typical challenge will be around 30 days, some longer, some maybe shorter. I also plan to add in some smaller side quests as well.

Some of the challenges I am looking at are (subject to change):

• Month 1 – Meditate daily (20-30 mins per day)
• Month 2 – Eat super clean
• Month 3 – Digital detox
• Month 4 – Him Wof techique (cold therapy)
• Month 5 – Maximum sleep
• Month 6 – Exercise every day for 30 mins
• Month 7 – Self journal 

If anyone has any other suggestions that they feel worked then let me know!