Morning Meditation and Other Good Routines

I have wrote something about my routines before, but I also promised to go more into detail about one of them. I meditate every morning for a few minutes. It’s not a big success story and it’s not something that has made a huge difference at least so far. But I’ll tell you more below. I’ll also update you on the current surfing and weather conditions.

Atom – start small and keep it simple

The app I use for my morning meditations is called Atom, as I told you in my post about workcationing. It’s main point is that to form a routine, you need to start easy and simple enough. That’s why even after almost six months, I still only do an average of eight minutes of guided meditation every morning. Which is really perfect for me, since waking up even earlier is not something I’m eager to do.

As I already mentioned in the intro of this post, I haven’t noticed anything mind blowing so far. I still struggle almost every morning with even the short meditations and I haven’t noticed any big changes in my life. But that’s not something I even expect really. And the struggle is a part of it. I try to think of it like going to the gym for the brain. You need to practice the concentration muscle too and when the concentration slips, turning it back to the chosen focus is the best kind of mental weight lifting.

The guided meditations have taught me a lot about how the mind and attention work. Also the small articles about the theories behind the apps approach have been interesting. There’s some repetition with the meditations and articles now (I haven’t bought the pro-version yet), but that’s ok. The articles go beyond meditation too and go deeper into how habits in general are formed. It focuses on a theory about how you can successfully keep good ones going and be more aware of the ones that are not so helpful.

Weather and surf updates

The weather has been the same, lots of rain, but some short sunny breaks in between. Last week it also got cooler, but now we’re back to 20 degrees during the day. The wind has gone down a little, but there’s still more than in September. Surfing here at Baleal is still concentrated on the smaller beach (Prainha). The bigger one is still pretty useless. The day before yesterday there was some glimmer of hope and a few surfer’s were trying it out. I went surfing on Wednesday and Thursday this week, but took a break yesterday. The swell was uncomfortably high and since my week at work was not so comfortable either, I decided not to risk it.

I went for a quick session today too, but since the tide doesn’t work early, it was really crowded. So it was barely one bad wave today and out. I’m hoping that tomorrow there’s something available on the big beach too. That would make it so much more comfortable.

A Baleal sunset from Wednesday to cheer you up

Last Sunday I took a bike ride around the Peniche peninsula with my Swedish neighbor. It really is a beautiful spot. The waves were really big, the wind hard and since the peninsula ends in cliffs almost all the way, there were some impressive splashes and lots of flying salt water.

Peniche cliffs and big waves
Other news

Work this past week was not too pleasant. Something happened last weekend that needed a lot of fixing this week. I can’t go into any details here, but it was a shit show… I even had to work a couple of extra hours and the days were way too full. Hopefully next week will be a slow return to normal again. I could really use it.

I had a really nice run on Tuesday, but my right heel has been a bit sore after that. Maybe my next run should be with shoes and on a sand road. It could be that barefoot running on the beach needs a break now. That really is a shame, because I can’t remember ever enjoying running as much as I do that. Luckily the heel hasn’t been a problem for surfing or surf skating. The latter has become a nice routine now too. Not quite daily, but almost.

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