Admittedly, I didn’t always do ten minutes. Some days were hard, some days were busy, oh right, then there was a pandemic, and some days I just couldn’t be bothered. But no matter what, I always did some meditating – be it three minutes or just a few breaths.

More often than not, I did complete the ten minutes and while even these were sometimes torturous, I did have days where I felt I could sit for hours on end with the guided meditation.

Eventually, I even did away with Andy’s voice all together – preferring to sit in silence. Regardless of how I felt that day or how hard it was, I made sure to log into the app and record that I had done some form of meditation that day.

Forget the yearning for enlightenment and inner peace. At this point, I was being plain competitive and like a kid aiming to receive an award for perfect attendance, I just couldn’t ruin my perfect streak.

Then at 286 days in (that’s almost nine and half months, about mid-way through September), the unthinkable happened. I went to log that day’s meditation and was greeted with a cheery cartoon figure congratulating me: ‘One day’s streak!’

I had missed a day.

I know it happened at 286 days because I still have the crawling email I sent to Headspace’s headquarters, explaining that I know I’m supposed to be shedding all earthly concerns and that recording a running streak really shouldn’t be part of my end goal, but I was really trying for the full year and had come so far and was there anything they could do? One kindly reply from Norman in tech support later and my streak was reinstated. He also included some reading about attachment and how meditation is meant to be a lifelong practice – yes Norman, I know you’re absolutely right – but I couldn’t help it. I was thrilled to see that tiny cartoon figure light up once again.

In the end, I did it! In January of this year, I completed 365 straight days of meditating. So, what happened? Well, I didn’t begin levitating. No beam of light shone from the mountaintop to illuminate the truth, and I most certainly have not reached nirvana. And no, I haven’t decided to give up all my earthly belongings to embrace the life of an ascetic.

“Meditating for 365 days straight changed my life, just not in the way I expected it to”