How Mindful Meditation Saved a Wannabe Writer from Quitting the Game

I started my mid-life crisis right on schedule, around the time I turned forty. I’d been trying to figure out how to be a writer for two decades at that point with little to show. Meanwhile, I was married and had two kids, two cats, two dogs, and all the chaos that goes with it.

I’m not complaining and have no regrets (at least no regrets I’ll discuss here).The frustration triggering the crisis was my ineffectiveness as a writer. I thought my writing was good enough, as in quality, but not writing enough, as in quantity. If I wrote more, I thought, then success would follow.

I won’t discuss the overconfidence in my ability here; that can wait for another blog entry.

The struggle was in finding time to write, especially quality time, which I define as being quiet, free of distraction, and in an environment that encourages writing. I was able to carve out chunks of time, but I couldn’t string them together in a meaningful way.

The frustration grew into a chattering of voices in my head. Some mocked my efforts while others shouted for me to chase get-rich-quick schemes.

That voice in my head wanted me to quit writing forever.

Luckily, I stumbled on the concept of mindful meditation. Up until that point, I’d only heard about mantra meditation, and mostly in the context of making fun of it. Something about the idea of sitting quietly while focusing on breathing sounded really good to me.

That’s the point of mindful meditation. The way I learned is that you sit in a comfortable, quiet place and pay attention to your breath. Thoughts will intrude but your task is to let them float away as quickly as they arrived. Return your thoughts to your breath.

It’s normal for the intruding thoughts to arrive. It takes practice to return your thoughts to your breathing. But over time, it becomes easier.

You don’t have to think about your breathing. You could think about an object in the room, or a color, or perhaps the tick-took of a nearby clock. Anything simple is fine for your focus.

The fun thing that made it accessible for me was that as little as five minutes made a difference. You can hang in there longer, and sometimes I did. Sometimes it was shorter, like if the dog or cat or kid wanted attention, and managed to find where I was hiding. Most days, though, I could steal those five minutes.

The boost I felt was a combination of the joy of sending my intruding thoughts away for a few minutes, plus teaching myself to focus on something, and the accumulation of wins by doing it daily for many days.

Mindful meditation isn’t a cure-all. I can’t pinpoint to the exact moment, or the exact features of my mind I improved by doing it. The truth is that it’s one part of many things you need to renew or improve your creativity.

It’s a gimmick, but it’s a gimmick that worked. You can achieve the same effect by a number of other techniques (which I’ll discuss in upcoming blog posts). In fact, I tried a number of them, and don’t currently use mindful meditation they way I once did.

It’s not so much finding what’s right for you—but that’s definitely part of the process. It’s about finding what’s right for you as your mind evolves and your talent grows and your daily routines expand to include various creative activities.

When we try to grow or renew our creativity, especially while having a family and a day job, we end up juggling a lot of things at once. Finding the meditation technique that works for your phase of life.

Mindful meditation is easy to start and keep going. It worked for me, and I hope it helps you grow and evolve your creative practices.