meditation

A daily mind clearing exercise that’s a productive alternative for those who struggle with meditation.

I just discovered a note I saved in Evernote in 2013. I was doing a quick search about writing habits and boom, three or four great articles I had previously saved showed up in my search. Including the site 750 words.

It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but I decided to give the 750 Words tool a shot. This is really a tool for people who would like to improve their writing but don’t want to constantly try to publish things on social media or writing sites like Medium.com.

750 words will help you create a healthy writing habit by tracking your daily word count and writing habits. The cool thing is that it’s really a great way to simply clear your mind in the morning by writing any random stuff that’s in your head down on paper. I also think it’s a nice alternative to meditation especially for people that have lots of voices and ideas floating around their heads especially when they’re sitting still with their eyes closed. Here is my first example in the raw. Speech to text flow of consciousness grammatical errors included.

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How a free app and 5 minute exercise for the brain is like a reboot for your day.

By Brad Beckstrom

For years I’ve been reading about professional athletes, coaches, CEOs, artists, writers and others I admired, who meditated daily. I’d read about meditation and written about my experiments with it in the past. I wanted in on the benefits of meditation and mindfulness and I’ve been trying to make it a daily habit.

The Problem

To be honest, I struggled with it. The longest streak of daily meditation I’ve had was five days, five minutes per day. Surely I could spare 5 minutes a day for this life changing habit? I was really having trouble silencing my ADD tendencies enough to get started and stick with it.

My problem was trying to meditate in silence. I learned quickly that the way my mind works is trying to fill any silence with thoughts. I’ve tried to train myself to silence these thoughts and banish them as they appeared. My meditation experiment included interesting tricks like envisioning these random thoughts as Post-it notes floating through the air and then being crumbled and tossed as I tried to clear my mind and focus on my breath. So, that’s what my meditation looked like, breathing sounds and Post-it notes full of thoughts and to-dos. I learned that’s how meditation often begins, helping you understand how your mind works so you can silence stress and negative thoughts. I was still having trouble with it as my stream of thoughts just became more visual as I sat in silence with my eyes closed.

How I Fixed It

750 Words will get you writing.

A daily mind clearing exercise that’s a productive alternative for those who struggle with meditation.

The 5 Minute Body Scan.