Genius Hour Blog Post 4

Hi everyone!! Thank you for returning to my Genius Hour project blog to check out how meditation went for me this week! I am very sad to say that unfortunately, meditation was not very successful this week and so I was unable to reach the goals I had set out for myself from last week. While meditation was working really well for me the past 3 weeks and I did feel it was having a positive influence on my stress levels and wellbeing, things just did not click this week and I feel like I took a step back. The main reasoning for this is that I was sick all week and therefore I was unable to really make time where I was able to meditate in quiet and without interruption. My sickness really prevented me from settling in and meditating most nights this week and I am frustrated this happened because it disrupted the flow I was in with meditation.

Pinclipart. Sick Emoji. pinclipart.com. Accessed October 6, 2019. https://www.pinclipart.com/pindetail/iJwRRJ_download-new-emoji-icons-transparent-background-sick-emoji/

From this week I learned that I struggle to meditate amongst chaos and I really do find it most effective when I can take some quiet time to just focus on myself. I think this is typical; however, as meditation requires quiet and introspection, so the chaotic evenings I had with being sick did not lend themselves to a successful environment for meditation. It is too bad because I believe that meditating would have helped calm me and reduce the amount of stress and uneasiness, I felt from being ill, but I was just unable to achieve the appropriate level of calm and peace to meditate.

Being sick and unable to successfully meditate was obviously the biggest challenge that I faced this week. In many ways, it feels like a lost week and I obviously was unable to work towards my goal of completing self-guided meditation. With that in mind, my steps for next week and where I go from here are to reset myself, get back into the meditation groove, and lastly completed a self-guided meditation session. I will need to start with guided meditation again, most likely with the Headspace app at first because that has proven to be the most effective form of meditation for me. Then in the next few days, I will look to move away from guided meditation before hopefully achieving my goal of a fully self-guided meditation session. All the while, I will keep track of my mood, wellbeing, and perception of stress levels.

Headspace. Headspace Logo. commons.wikimedia.org. Accessed October 6, 2019. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Headspace-logo.jpg

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you at my next blog post! Fingers crossed this week is more successful than the last!