#16 Confessions of a Meditation Addict

Kelly sums up her journey from monkey mind to meditation teacher, sharing the highs and lows leading up to her daily fix.

What’s the point of meditation?

What does it mean to have ‘space between thoughts’ anyway?

What if you're not a 'morning person'? Is it cheating if you stay under the covers and ‘beditate’?

Download this free PDF of journal prompts  to help you explore any resistances to meditation and reflect on your how your mornings are currently flowing.

Hear Kelly's Morning Segment Intending With Positive Affirmations in the free Insight Timer Meditation app or listen right here on the Insight Timer website.

Amazing things happen when women come together to work on their lives together. Join Project WE here!

Get the free Project Me Life Wheel® to help you step out of auto-pilot and into higher levels of conscious living.

Read the Transcript for this Episode below:

 Episode 16 of the Project Me Podcast.

Hi, I'm Kelly Pietrangeli, the creator of  MyProjectMe. com. This podcast is designed to be an entertaining, lighthearted, inspirational, personal growth journey.  Each episode goes in a mostly chronological order as I piece together the books, modalities, people, and experiences. that have fallen onto my life path exactly when I needed them.

And how often I resisted the very things I needed the most or didn't see the gifts contained in the challenges until later.  By sharing my stories, I hope to inspire you to reflect on your life path. What are the seeming coincidences that have led you to where you are today?  What are the hidden gifts within your challenges?

And what magic is out there waiting for you as you let go of resistance and follow your own breadcrumb trail?  At the end of each short episode, there's an opportunity for you to reflect on how my story relates to your own life. You'll also find a PDF of journal prompts in the show notes or in the podcast section at myprojectme.

com.

Hi guys, welcome back or a big warm welcome if you're new to the show. I'm still here in a holding position at an Airbnb in London while my husband and I continue to await the travel ban into Spain. To be honest, I'm not minding this at all. Just being in a new part of London and in a different home feels like kind of exciting during this lockdown.

In 2020, we got to know every square inch of Hyde Park, and now we're super close to Regent's Park, so we've got some fresh walks to explore. Yesterday was a gorgeous sunny day, and we walked to Primrose Hill to take in the panoramic views across London. We also had a one week surprise visit from our 18 year old son.

He was recovering from tonsillitis and needed a good dose of parental love and some healthy meals and early nights. University life and his student accommodation seems to involve a lot of heavy partying in each other's rooms since everything else is shut. So he's learning the hard way about what happens to your health when mama's not there with curfews and nutritious meals.

Because the lectures are all pre recorded online, there's no set time to be up, and his body clock was a mess and he sleeps so late.  I never used to be a morning person, and in fact, that I'm not a morning person was the story I told for decades. I would not get up a minute before I needed to, and I was the queen of the snooze button.

That leads me nicely into this week's story. Here we go. Episode 16,  Meditation.  It was something I began hearing more and more about in the early 2000s. It was meant to be really, really good for you, but nobody ever explained it beyond that. And I really didn't get it.  In my Shivananda yoga classes, we'd close our eyes and go quiet.

And that did feel really peaceful. But when I tried to do it at home, it just felt kind of pointless. I had a lot of stuff to get done, and I didn't see how sitting around thinking about it was going to help.  I heard somewhere that it was good to meditate every morning, first thing after you wake up. And to do it using a special meditation cushion on the floor.

And to do it in front of an altar made up of things like a candle or incense, flowers, prayer beads or crystals. Again, I didn't know why this was a good thing, but in 2005, I duly bought the special meditation cushion and created a makeshift altar on my bedside table.  I dragged my tired butt out of bed to sit on that cushion and face my altar, and I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing.

Nobody told me precisely how long I needed to do this, so I kept opening one eye to look at the clock. I was freezing. I pulled my duvet off the bed to wrap around me, even though I wasn't sure if that was actually allowed.  I was so tired. I had a two and five year old at the time, and I was doing this at the crack of dawn in hopes of getting this meditation thing done before they woke up.

Did I mention I'm not a morning person?  My new morning meditation practice lasted two days.  A couple of years later, I was studying to be a yoga teacher, and now I really felt like I should be mastering this meditation thing. I enjoyed the peace of it on the yoga mat, but back at home, it was another story.

All I could think about was remembering to defrost the chicken for dinner and sign the swimming lessons forms for the kids.  My monkey mind was all over the place, and no amount of sitting around in silence trying to focus on my breath was making any difference.  I remember asking my friend Susie, what exactly is the point of meditation?

I mean, I know it's supposed to have amazing health benefits, yadda, yadda, yadda. But well, what do you get out of meditation? And she said,  meditation gives you space between thoughts.  And I was like, what? Oh, okay.  And it simply did not compute into anything my brain could comprehend.  In episode nine, The Power of Now, I talked about the meditation teacher who let me off the hook by telling me I could meditate anytime, anywhere, even with my eyes open, even while driving by simply relaxing my forehead.

It's impossible to think a negative thought with a completely relaxed forehead. Try it right now.  Relaxing my forehead every single day became my meditation practice. It was something tangible and doable and it instantly brought me into the present moment over and over throughout my day. So I dropped the actual sitting on the floor cross legged version of meditating and practiced relaxing my forehead, which felt really good.

And then fast forward nearly 10 years later to 2014.  My friend Natalie sent me a link to the Deepak Chopra 21 day meditation challenge. It was a collaboration with Oprah Winfrey, and every morning she gave a short inspirational intro. Then Deepak guided the way for 15 minutes.  I already love Deepak Chopra for his book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success for Parents.

Suddenly, I had an impetus to meditate every morning. I was doing a challenge, I was doing it with a friend, and there was something to listen to. I didn't know you could be listening to something while you meditated.  Now, instead of fighting to keep a clear mind, I simply pressed play and soaked in his beautifully delivered words of wisdom.

And there was something else that suddenly shifted my attitude around morning meditation. I wasn't bothering to get out of bed.  No more sitting on the floor, cross legged, freezing, and uncomfortable in front of an altar. I was staying in bed, under the covers, super cozy and comfy, meditating.  I began referring to it as my morning beditation.

And I did feel like a better version of myself during those 21 days. I felt more connected to myself. My husband, my kids, and everyone I came into contact with,  I stopped telling that story that I'm not a morning person, and I just set my alarm for 15 minutes before I had to wake the kids up for school.

And I just did it.  And I was so much nicer when I woke the kids up.  Instead of barking orders at them to get up, get dressed, hurry up for breakfast as I was rushing around myself, after my morning meditation, I was in a different head and heart space. I would go into each of their rooms and gently sit on their beds and rub their legs through the covers and say, good morning, sweet boy.

I mean, how much nicer to wake up to that than the sound of my grouchy voice barking at them from another room.  Then I'd go to the kitchen and I'd lay out breakfast calmly and they'd show up in a good mood and be cooperative.  I also stopped playing breakfast radio in the kitchen and the new calm silence made room for nice conversations.

Previously, I'd get so irritated if they talked over a news story I was trying to hear.  This 21 day meditation challenge was miraculously changing our mornings.  I completed the 21 days and felt really chopped with myself, but then it ended. And so did my daily meditation. And so did our beautiful mornings.

I went back to hitting snooze, getting up grumpy, running late, and blaming the kids for being uncooperative.  Until a few months later when Deepak would run another 21 day challenge. It was on and off like this. He would run a challenge. Everything was good. In between the challenges, I was back to my old me.

I remember I wrote a blog post for Project Me called, My Date with Deepak, talking about my love of his 21 day meditation challenges. If you've been following the Project Me blog for that many years, you might remember that. I remember I started hearing from others who were loving them too. We all couldn't wait for the next Deepak series to come out.

Later I bought the whole meditation series so that I could carry on and do it myself in between the challenges, and that worked great. Until I get a bit bored with it all and I fell back off the wagon. In the last episode I told you I need variety in life. I can't do or listen to the same things all the time or I just lose interest.

I was growing bored of my beloved Deepak.  Then I started hearing about meditation apps.  I decided to try a few different ones with the view of writing a blog post for Project Me with my reviews of each one.  I tried Headspace first, as that seemed to be the most popular one, but as much as I think Addy Pudicombe is amazing, I got bored with his voice really quickly.

I also tried Calm, but I didn't feel inspired enough to want to take out a monthly subscription, and the free unlocked stuff was very limited.  Then I hit on the oddly titled Insight Timer app. Apparently named because it originally featured only a timer with music and an ending bell so meditators could know how long they were meditating.

But now the app was so much more than that. There were thousands of different meditations, all unlocked, no subscription, all different links to choose from, from a minute to over an hour and everything in between.  Rather than one voice, there are males and females in many accents and styles with or without background music on a huge range of topics.

There was also a unique sense of community. When you complete a meditation, it shows you a map of how many other people were meditating with you all over the world. That number keeps increasing as more people discover the app.  I was able to create my own group in the app, and I called it the Project Me for Busy Mothers, and it became a place for us to share meditations and talk about how to fit meditation in around motherhood.

There was a counter to keep track of consecutive days, and I didn't want to lose my winning streak. So I went beyond the 21 days I'd done before, and I headed into 31, and then 60. I do remember missing a day, and the whole thing going back to zero, and that feeling of, oh, crap.  But then, so much of what I was learning there was about self forgiveness and acceptance.

Not getting upset, and taking a deep breath, and simply starting again.  So that's what I did.  I thank my morning meditation practice for completely transforming our mornings long term. And then it moved beyond that.  It really was like reading a few pages from an inspirational personal growth book every single day and I felt myself becoming a better version of me with each short session.

I was doing a lot less future tripping and past looping as I learned to begin living more in the present moment.  I completely stopped the awful habit of clicking straight through to social media, the news or emails first thing in the morning. Getting into alignment before action is now something I teach.

When we are in alignment, life flows with so much more ease.  And when we recognize we're out of alignment during the day, it really is as quick and easy as pressing play in a two or three minute meditation to realign your energies.  There's this quote I love that says, meditate for 30 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, and then meditate for an hour.

It's true. The busier we feel and the more we think we don't possibly have time to meditate is exactly when we need to do it even more.  Everything that needs doing will happen with so much more ease and flow when you do this.  When the CEO of the Insight Timer app was struggling to keep up with all the cost of running this app, he put out a message to all users, and I learned that his name was Christopher Plowman from Australia, and his mission was to keep the app free and available for all.

He had an idea to create some paid 10 day courses within the app so that those who could pay for those would be helping to keep the app free for everyone.  By now I was absolutely hooked on the app and the idea it could be in any danger of disappearing as well as my desire to support the app that finally got me into a daily practice made me very willing to buy a course and then go on to buy an annual upgrade to access all the courses and create playlists.

I really am like a kid in a candy store every morning and I went from forcing myself to wake up 15 minutes earlier to wanting to wake up 30 minutes earlier so I could have time to meditate and journal and have some quality me time to start my day the right way.  I have officially dropped the I'm not a morning person story years ago.

I don't even have kids at home anymore to wake up for every school morning, but my body naturally wakes up early. It's ready for its daily fix.  Yes, I am now officially a meditation junkie.  I'm sure there are worse things to be addicted to, right?  I am looking at my stats in the app right now, and it says I first used the app in January 2016, and I have clocked up a lot of hours.

Are you ready for this? 784 hours. That's 4, 700 minutes  and it says  1, 616 days. Good grief. And let's see, my longest consecutive day streak was  573 days in a row.  I remember distinctly when that streak got broken. I was camping with my family on an island in Mexico, completely off grid, off grid. My phone had no connection and I remember at first I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to lose my streak.

And then I was like, Oh, well, what can you do? And it woke me up to the beauty of unguided meditating. You know, the old fashioned way I'd been trying to do from the start.  I'm sure some meditation purists will say that pressing play on a guided meditation every day is not really meditation. And I'm not going to argue with that.

All I know is that the insight timer app has made me a better person. 100 percent absolute truth.  Those meditation teachers have taught me so much how to love myself more, how to love others more,  how to be non judgmental. I mean, sometimes I press play on a meditation and my first thought is, oh man, I don't like their voice.

But I have learned to let go of judgment and simply hear their words. And some of them have gone on to be my favorite meditation teachers in the app. Like Kenneth Soares, I remember when I first heard his voice, I was like, who's this guy? He now sends me to sleep with his soothing sleep meditations. I am so much less judgmental of people now.

Like if I meet someone new and they kind of have an odd voice or an accent or anything that would kind of maybe make me a little bit judgmental before. I just see them for who they are, so the app has really helped me in that way too.  Oh, and I finally understand what Susie was trying to tell me all those years ago when she said, meditation gives you space between thoughts.

Before, I had no space between thoughts, so I couldn't even fathom what that meant.  What I have learned is that by not fighting against the thoughts that will inevitably drop in during meditation. But just gently noticing them and letting them go, they eventually do slow down. And in that space between thoughts comes an incredible wash of peace.

It's that space between thoughts that gives us the opportunity to witness our thinking mind and to choose which thoughts are worth thinking about and which ones to let go of. Like releasing balloons floating off into the distance.  Is that space between thoughts that allows us to pause before reacting?

Is that space between thoughts that feels spacious? Like a welcome breather from the overactive mind, constantly pondering, wondering, reacting, judging everything as being either good or bad.  The more we practice noticing our thoughts in meditation and gently letting them go like balloons drifting off rather than getting hooked up in them, the more we can also do that in our daily lives.

Now I get it, but I have no idea if anyone who hasn't experienced this space between thoughts can even grasp how wonderful it feels. I know I couldn't have before.  If morning meditation feels impossible for you right now, is there a way of slipping one in later in the day? Pressing play on even a three minute guided meditation is a great habit to get into in the beginning.

And when you find you have 10 spare minutes, you can get into the habit of clicking the meditation app instead of automatically clicking Instagram or whatever your favorite time suck is.  And when you're treating yourself to some project me time, You can add in a longer one.  Having an evening candlelit bath with essential oils and a guided meditation is so lovely.

And there are bedtime stories and meditations for kids, which are a perfect way to get them into it from a young age. What a gift for them to grow up with meditation being just a normal part of life.  So, if my younger me was to ask me now, What is the point of meditating? What would I tell her?  I'd say, Meditate.

Dear, dear Kelly, becoming a daily meditator will change your life.  You'll find inner peace amongst outer chaos.  You'll become less judgmental, less reactive. You'll be so much calmer.  You'll sleep better, feel better, be a nicer person to be around. You'll speak nicely to yourself.  You'll forgive yourself, drop perfection.

Look for the good in any situation.  You'll be a better mother, better wife, daughter, friend.  Owen Kelly. You're never going to believe this now, but you yourself are going to go on to become a meditation teacher in the Insight Timer app.  What?  Yes, that's right, folks. I now have a meditation in my favorite app.

I am absolutely pinching myself. I never thought I had the right voice to record a meditation. It wasn't even something I considered, but then from my high vibe journey program, I really wanted a specific morning meditation that covered what I was teaching, how to set yourself up for a positive day ahead using segment intending and positive affirmations.

So, I recorded it and chose some music and sent it to my podcast editor, Marco, and I asked him to mix it a certain way and he did his best with what I gave him and I knew it wasn't perfect. I felt it was kind of good enough and I added it to the program and it got really lovely feedback.  So much so that Alice in Australia said, Why don't you get it onto the Insight Timer app so we can access it easier and others can enjoy it too.

My inner mean girl was like, Oh, I'd need to rerecord it. It's absolutely not good enough for Insight Timer. But then my inner warrior woman, her name is Sasha. She said, Go for it.  So I submitted it. And when I got an email from insight timer to say it was there and published, I was leaping around like I was when I got my book publishing deal.

I mean, what an honor. And it's had nearly 400 plays to date and 64 five star reviews. And it really is surreal that the girl with the monkey mind who didn't get the point of meditation is now an insight timer meditation teacher. and is an incurable meditation addict.

Dear listener, relax your forehead.  Take a long, nice, deep breath in  and let it out with a sigh.  I'm going to ask you some questions and I'll put these and more into a PDF of journal prompts for you in the show notes.  How often do you experience space between your thoughts?  What does it feel like when you do?

How are your mornings?  Do you set yourself up for the day ahead by getting into alignment before action? Or do you tend to start with the news or social media or jumping straight out of bed into doing mode?

Do you have a daily meditation practice? If so, reflect on the benefits this brings you.  If not, Reflect on the potential benefits you could imagine it would bring you.

Do you feel any resistance to meditating?  Are any of those simply stories you're telling yourself about what you think is or isn't possible or how you think it should be done?

What might happen if you drop those stories, let go of those resistances and simply gave it a go in your own way?

What time or times of the day feel like they benefit from a meditation or a meditation break to realign?

What might you do to bring more meditation into your life?

Thanks for listening to the Project Me podcast. I'd love to hear if you meditate, and if so, what the benefits have been for you, and if not, what your challenges are around it. You can find me on Instagram, Kelly Project Me, or Facebook, Project Me, Kelly P. Or drop me an email. Hello at my project, me. com.  You can find my new insight timer morning meditation by searching my name, Kelly Pietrangeli in the app.

I have a group there called project me, and you're warmly welcome to join in. There's a link to my meditation there in the group too.  My interested list for the next round of my High Vibe Journey program is starting to fill up. I don't yet have the start date set for this, but email hello at myprojectme.

com to get onto the interested list and I'll let you know first.  If you're not on my newsletter list, that means you don't have the free Project Me Life Wheel tool. So hop on there at myprojectme.  com or again, email me and I can add you in that way.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and keep those wonderful five star reviews coming.

I'm so grateful.  Next time, I'm going to talk about tarot cards, my aversion to them, and what in the heck is going on in my life now with them. It's crazy. I'll get that recorded as soon as I can. I also have an exciting guest coming up. I haven't had any guests yet on the show. I manifested this guest within minutes of thinking about them.

It's an incredible story and I'm so excited to share that with you.  Until next time, open your heart, open your mind, and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.