637 Days of Meditation: What It Did To My Brain

Autumn 2019. 13 year old me is in the car with my mum, listening to the radio.

The host was doing some sort of interview about mental health, and the guy mentioned something about meditation.

My mum said “oh, that would be nice! maybe that would help you with school, with stress and exams”

And at that moment, I said “hell nah man, what’s this goofy ahh shi”

Well obviously I didn’t say that, or I would have got my ass whooped, but I was thinking that for sure.

Then fast-forward a few years to February 2022.

I’m sat in my room on a Saturday night (because I was a loser)

I was on my phone on YouTube, and stumbled across a “self-improvement” video, where the guy mentioned meditation.

And so I thought “oh, not this goofy shit again”

But then I looked at the guy in the video - he looked cooler than me. stronger than me. happier than me.

And I thought “fuck it, let’s try this for a month, and see what happens.”

That month turned into nearly 2 years, and I can honestly say that meditation has changed my life - but not in the way you might be thinking.

So what actually is meditation? That seems like a pretty important question to answer for a video on this topic

So a lot of people don’t actually even understand what it is. I know when i was younger, I thought it was some sort of mad monk-mode hypnosis-typa shit where you go into a trance and start levitating or something.

No.

It’s quite simple really. If you just close your eyes right now, and try to really focus on your breath. As in, really focus on every single part of the breath. Focus on your chest expanding when you breath in, the air moving out of your nose when you breath out.

Just try it now, for literally 5 seconds. focus on your breath.

Now if you actually tried that now, and weren’t just staring at my face for 5 seconds, you’ll have noticed that almost instantly, some sort of thought came into your head. You started thinking about what you’re going to eat later, or some random TikTok you saw earlier.

So all meditation is, it’s when that happens, you just bring your focus back onto your breath. and keep doing that every time you get distracted.

That’s it, ok? pretty simple

So now we’ve got that out of the way - what’s actually the point?

So most people assume meditation is just to “calm you down” or whatever. Which is 100% true, but that's just the short term benefit.

The big mistake most people make is they will try meditation once, they won't feel much of a difference, and they'll say “oh, well, that didn't even do anything, meditation doesn't work for me”

but the real power of meditation is in the long-term benefits.

when I first started meditating, I didn't really see any benefit at all for the first few weeks. but I literally just made the long-term commitment to say “I'm just a guy who meditates now”

I made it a part of my routine, a part of my identity.

then after a few months, I could really see the benefits.

So, here are the 3 biggest changes I felt happen to me from meditating for nearly 2 years. Number 3 is the most important, which you probably haven’t heard before.

The first benefit is focus.

that's what Meditation really is - it's training your focus.

focus is like a muscle - the more you use it, the stronger it will get.

so when you're meditating like I said before, and you feel yourself getting distracted, you can use your focus muscle to bring the focus back onto your breath - it's like a bicep curl for your brain, for your focus.

so what I've found, after practicing meditation for so long, is that now when I'm studying, or doing homework or whatever, and I realise I'm getting distracted, I almost treat it like a meditation.

but instead of bringing the focus back to the breath, this time I bring it back to the task that I'm doing.

In today’s day and age, focus is becoming more and more important.

With the rise of short-form content, everyone’s attention span is getting absolutely destroyed. Most people can’t even focus on a 30 second tiktok without getting bored or distracted.

But since I’ve been regularly meditating, I find it a lot easier to focus, even on things that I usually would have found boring (eg. homework)

So training your brain (through meditation) to be able to focus intensely even for as little as 30-45 minutes is almost a superpower. It will put you ahead of 90% of people your age.

It will get to the point where you get more work done in 1 hour than most people would in 1 day.

If you put in the work to train your focus.

The second benefit is willpower.

So since I have been regularly meditating, especially after the first 6 months or so, I found it a lot easier to resist temptations. For example, holding myself back from eating the chocolate, and instead eating the healthy food. Doing my homework instead of going on social media or watching p*rn.

This is because several studies show that regular meditation, even 5 minutes a day, actually increases the volume of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex of your brain - which is the part of your brain that makes logical decisions, and plans long term.

This is the part that says “no, you can’t have that chocolate, because you want to be healthy in the long term.” “no, you have to study now, otherwise you will flop all your exams”

But it even decreases the volume in your amygdala - aka the monkey brain - which is responsible for falling into your base instincts.

So it weakens the part that is telling you “but I want the chocolate nowww” “but the exams are so far away, let me go on Insta and see some asss”

The part that is obsessed with instant gratification becomes weaker, so it is easier to focus on your long term goals.

The third benefit I have found, which is arguably the most important, is kind of difficult to describe.

I guess it can be summarised in the word “presence”.

When you fixate on the past, you feel depressed. When you worry about the future, you feel anxious. You can only really feel at peace when you focus on the present moment.

So when you meditate, what you are trying to do is focus in on the breath - the present moment - instead of letting your focus drift to thoughts about the future or the past.

You are training your brain to stay in the present moment.

So I have found that now, after meditating for so long, I find it much easier to focus in on the present moment.

When I’m spending time with family or friends, I don’t have all these anxious, overthinking thoughts ruining my experience. I can just push them to one side, and hone in on the present moment.

And this really helps you to enjoy the moment. You can actually appreciate what you have right now. You can really listen to what the other person is saying, without overthinking.

This is the antidote to stress.

But another thing I’ve found is that I’ve gained this ability to just observe my thoughts and emotions, without indulging in them. When something happens to make me angry or sad, I can zoom out, detach, and just observe this emotion pop up.

When something really bad happens to you, when you feel really down, you can just observe this emotion appear - almost like a scientist, saying “how interesting, this emotion of sadness has appeared”.

This is really crucial, because it stops you from becoming consumed by the emotion.

It lets you hold back, and make a logical decision instead of an emotional one.

If you’ve just had a really bad day at school, maybe someone yelled at you, or you got rejected or whatever, then you come home and want to just drown out the emotion by eating junk food and scrolling.

Instead, you can detach, and just observe this emotion, then decide what the best course of action is.

It’s kind of a difficult one to explain until you experience it.

But the key to meditation, like I’ve already mentioned, is to do it long-term. I only really started seeing any benefits after a few months of consistently meditating for about 10 minutes a day.

So right now, just make the commitment to yourself - that from now on, you are going to meditate every day. For the rest of your life. 5 minutes, 3 minutes, whatever it is.

Download the app medito, go on the “daily meditation” section, and literally select the shortest time possible.

Just say that to yourself - “I’m someone who meditates now”. Even if you see no results at all after a few weeks, a few months - trust me, just keep doing it. In a few years, you will be a different person.