At the beginning of a new year, many of us make resolutions. We decide to exercise more, eat better, learn something new or change a habit that no longer seems useful.
So here is another possibility for 2022: 100 consecutive days of meditation.
Why 100 days?
There is nothing magical about the number. It is simply long enough to require some commitment and short enough to have a clear finish line. One hundred days gives us an opportunity to establish a regular practice and, perhaps more importantly, to observe what happens while we try to maintain it.
My own meditation practice hasn’t always been consistent. There have been periods when I practised regularly and periods when I stopped. When I stopped for a while, I sometimes noticed that I became more irritable, less patient and more easily caught up in whatever was happening.
Over the years, I found it useful to give myself a defined period of practice. Sometimes it was a month, sometimes a season, sometimes even three lunar cycles. Having a beginning and an end helped me return to the cushion without turning meditation into another enormous lifelong project.
So why not try 100 days?
The idea is very simple: meditate every day for 100 consecutive days. The length of each meditation is less important than establishing the continuity of the practice. Choose something realistic. There is little point in deciding to meditate for an hour every morning if you already know that your life will make that almost impossible.
Five minutes done is probably more useful than sixty minutes endlessly postponed.
You can keep a simple record of your practice. Mark each day on a calendar, keep a short diary or use a reminder on your phone. Not because collecting meditation days is particularly important, but because it can help you see the pattern developing.
And then watch what happens.
There will probably be days when meditation feels easy and days when it doesn’t. There may be mornings when you sit without thinking about it and others when the mind produces an impressive list of reasons why today should be an exception.
I’m too tired.
I don’t have time.
I’ll do it later.
Missing one day won’t matter.
That can be part of the experiment too.
Rather than treating resistance as failure, we can become curious about it. What happens when I don’t feel like practising? What excuses appear? What am I expecting meditation to give me? What happens when it doesn’t give me that?
One of the things that has kept me interested in meditation over the years is precisely this opportunity to become more familiar with my own habits and reactions.
We all develop patterns. Some are useful. Some perhaps less so. Often we don’t notice them until something interrupts them or gives us enough space to see them more clearly.
Regular meditation can provide an opportunity to look.
That doesn’t mean that after 100 days we will become permanently calm, patient or wise. I certainly wouldn’t promise that. Nor does completing the challenge mean that every meditation will have been peaceful or profound.
Some sessions may be boring.
Some may be restless.
Some may consist largely of wondering how much longer is left.
That’s meditation too.
The interesting thing is not necessarily whether we become better meditators during those 100 days. Perhaps it is simply what we begin to notice by showing up repeatedly.
What happens to our relationship with practice?
What happens when enthusiasm disappears?
What do we learn about our expectations?
What do we notice about the mind when we sit down day after day?
And what happens on day 101?
I don’t know.
Perhaps you will continue. Perhaps you will change the way you practise. Perhaps you will decide that meditation isn’t for you. The point of an experiment is not to know the result before we begin.
So this is my invitation for the beginning of 2022.
Choose a realistic amount of time.
Sit every day.
Keep a record if it helps.
Notice the enthusiasm, the boredom, the resistance and the excuses.
Try 100 days and see what happens.
