January’s theme is to be present, and in this friendly challenge I wanted to share with you my most favorite way to teach myself how to stay in the moment.

January Challenge

MEDITATE

You might roll your eyes. (I did when someone first told me to try meditating.) You might groan and say that’s a waste of time and it’s too hard to focus. (I definitely did that too.)

But from one person who loves multitasking and checking things off lists and getting things done to another…

Meditating is absolutely the way I trained my mind to focus, to be present, and to calm myself down when I’m feeling overwhelmed. All of those things help me be more productive in the long run.

But: I am not a meditating expert. In fact, I made this my monthly challenge because it has been a long time since I’ve actually sat down and done it!

Meditating reminds me to be kind to myself and helps me focus — not necessarily in the moment (it’s supremely hard for me to meditate properly!), but because the techniques it teaches you can help you in other moments where you most need to focus or be present.

So my challenge for us this month is: try at least one meditation session! Personally, I’ve found using Headspace to be the best way to learn or try to meditate for the first time. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, but it’s an app that just guides you through the process and I think it’s the best introduction I’ve tried. It has a lot of free sessions you can try in order to get the hang of it (or get back into it, like me!).

I’ll be checking in over on Instagram about how the challenge is going for me, and I hope you’ll join me and let me know if you’re trying it too! At the end of the month, I’ll post a wrap-up here with some reflections from all of us on how it went. It might be tough, it might be easy, but we’ll try it together!

Have you ever tried to meditate before? How’d it go? Do you have any other meditation apps or tools you like to use?