Benefits of Meditation + Doing a 10-Day Silent Vipassana Course

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:  Today's episode is sponsored by me. Did you know you can now shop my favorite remote work tools, video production equipment, and travel accessories directly from your Amazon account? It's true. Just go to TravelingwithKristin.com/amazon to check out all the products I use and love.  

Kristin:    00:00:50    Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Badass Digital Nomads. And this episode is not an interview. I'm gonna experiment with a few different types of formats because it's the beginning of the new year, it's the beginning of the new decade, and it's time to just start new. This first podcast of the year is going to be about meditation and specifically Vipassana meditation. So I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about what I'm doing these first couple weeks of the year because it's something that I've never done before. If you followed my writings on Medium or some of my live streams on YouTube, on my travel channel, on Traveling with Kristin and also on Instagram quite a few times, I have talked about the benefits of meditation and how much of a struggle it was for me to create a consistent meditation habit. So I've tried to meditate for as long as I've known what meditation was, so at least 10 years, probably more.  

Kristin:    00:02:01    And I technically failed miserably at it because I could never really do it. So I would always say I wanted to meditate, but then when push came to shove, I just wouldn't do it. So finally, what helped me to start a daily meditation practice, which I have now crossed 900 days of meditation, um, in my app, is an app called InsightTimer. So if you don't know how to meditate or you're unfamiliar with it, or if you do know about meditation, but you've never been able to do it, just like me, I recommend checking it out. I pay for the paid version. I think it's, I don't know, 20 or $30 per year, but there's also a free version. There's a few different levels, but I started off with the free version and I moved up like two different levels since then because I do use it every day.  

Kristin:    00:02:54    But basically it's the world's largest meditation app. I think it has the most users or people spend the more time on the InsightTimer app than like any of the other meditation apps combined. And it's a really good way to take your phone habit <laugh> basically, and convert it into a meditation habit. So instead of tapping open Instagram or your email first thing in the morning, you can tap open the InsightTimer app. They have a daily insight that's like you can do five minutes or 10 minute. Um, they have tens of thousands of meditations in their library. So you can do everything from sit silently to listen to recorded meditations. And I've tried Headspace, I've tried Calm, I've tried all of those. InsightTimer is where it's at. Um, I will link to an article by the CEO of InsightTimer or the founder in the show notes because he explains what they're doing and why it's different.  

Kristin:    00:03:48    But so shout out to them. This is not sponsored by them, but I just really like using it and meditating has brought so many benefits to me. Even doing it anywhere from one minute to one hour a day, I would say that is pretty much my range. So I force myself to sit for at least one minute. Usually it's like 10 or 20, maybe 30 minutes, and sometimes as long as an hour. Um, sometimes a little bit more, but it just depends. Um, but some of the benefits that I have noticed are just being more centered and my ability to focus and work has really, really increased. Like I can sit down and work for like four or five, six hours on one thing without getting burnt out. And I really think that it's from meditating. I've also noticed that I am less reactive to things.  

Kristin:    00:04:40    Um, things that I would've complained about in the past or things that would've annoyed me, I just move right past it. Usually, not always, I'm not perfect. But I would say those are the two biggest benefits. I don't even wanna say peace of mind because I think that's too cliche or generic. Um, but I just feel calmer, more centered, more focused, and less reactive. And I trust myself more. I trust myself to be able to follow through with this habit. So long story short, since I have known about meditation over the years, I kept hearing about something called Vipassana Meditation and Silent Retreats, which are these usually 10 day silent retreats where you practice Vipassana meditation, which is a style of Buddhist meditation. I actually have never done it before. I'll report back when I do it. But basically you can go to one of these retreats anywhere in the world.  

Kristin:    00:05:41    They're all free, they're donation based, they're pretty much any country and you have to apply in advance, but you can sit, that's what they call, you go to a sit, you basically meditate for more than 10 hours a day, 10 days in a row. So it's like over a hundred hours of meditation in 10 days. And there are a lot of benefits that come out of this. I am not going to comment too much on that because I haven't done it yet, but if you're curious, you can Google it. It's called V-I-P-A-S-S-A-N-A. And there's a lot of interesting stuff online about it. But basically you go to this retreat and you cannot use your phone. You can't bring a book, you can't bring a journal, you can't talk for 10 days and you can't, and you're just meditating basically for 10 days. So I have decided to start off January 1st, 2020 with a Vipassana retreat in British Columbia in Canada, in a town called Merit.  

Kristin:    00:06:52    And it's near Vancouver a few hours away. And this will be my first Vipassana retreat. So I will be silent for 10 days and I'm bringing this up on the podcast just in case people have never heard about it. If you feel like something that you're interested in or something that resonates with you, I encourage you to look into it because I'm sure it's not for everyone, but it's for some of you. And I don't know if you can ever be fully prepared to do something like this, but if so many people have been through it and they've survived, I'm sure we can do it too. Um, but I also bring it up because I know that people have a lot of New Year's resolutions and the older you get, maybe sometimes the more jaded you are with this whole new year, new you kind of process.  

Kristin:    00:07:43    And so I just wanted to share meditation as a habit that I've had now for consistently almost every single day for two years. And this habit has helped me reduce stress while traveling. It's helped me be more present when I'm in a given destination in nature. And as I mentioned before, it's helped with my work and with my focus and things like that. And it just helped me feel like more resilient in the face of whatever life is throwing at me. And this is a really small thing. If you commit to doing one minute of meditation per day, and if you're logging it in your app, you can create a chain of consecutive days that can give you momentum that you then won't want to break. And there's a lot of science behind starting habits. So I recommend the book Atomic Habits if you haven't read it yet.  

Kristin:    00:08:35    I think I forget who writes that, but that is a really good book for just starting small in the new year. And yeah, meditation is something that could help anybody. It's, you know, it's non-denominational. It's not a religion, it's something that you can do anywhere. I've meditated on subways, buses, trains in airports, and airport lounges on airplanes. That's a really good place to do it when you're about to take off or before when everybody's boarding, that's a great time to meditate, <laugh>. And also, um, before you get to 10,000 feet because you really can't do anything, you can't use the internet, you can't use your computer. I guess you could listen to music or something like that, but, um, uh, yeah, meditate, that's a good time to do it. And so I'm curious about what everybody's plans are for 2020. So if you are subscribed on YouTube, on youtube.com/digitalnomad or youtube.com/TravelingwithKristin, or if you're in my Facebook group, long-term Digital Nomad Success, or if you're following me on social media at Traveling with Kristin on Facebook and Instagram or at wheres Kristin on Twitter, then drop me a message, drop me a pm, tag me.  

Kristin:    00:09:53    Let me know what are your plans for 2020, what are your goals? What's on your to-do list, so to speak, and what's on your travel bucket list? But this episode of the podcast is just to introduce you to the fact that this meditation experience exists to kind of keep it in the, um, in the realm of possibility for you. And also to offer the one app that has helped me form a meditation habit over the past couple years after trying and failing at it for more than 10 years. So if mindfulness or meditation or anything like that is on your to-do list or your list of New Year's resolutions for 2020, then I hope that that helps. And for that reason, since I will be completely silent and off the grid basically for two weeks, um, I'm not going to do any interviews during that time.  

Kristin:    00:10:52    So I'm just going to record a couple of solo interviews or solo interviews, uh, with myself, uh, solo episodes, uh, talking about a couple of, um, of topics that I think you guys will find interesting as we start the new year. Uh, one episode will be about my predictions for how remote work is going to change daily life for everybody, remote workers and non-REM remote workers included in the next upcoming years and decades. And then I also am going to record an episode about where I traveled in 2019 and my top destinations and top travel tips and things that I learned, um, during the past year so that you guys can take that with you into the next year. And another note, basically on the same token of slowing down at the beginning of the year, reflecting on where you've been, what you've done, what you wanna do, and how you want to feel, how you want things to be in the new year.  

Kristin:    00:11:54    I had the option of batching and recording some interviews before I left, but I just felt really, really busy and I felt like that wasn't the best choice. Like sometimes the best choice is not to push harder and get everything done, it's to take things off of your schedule and off of your to-do list. So I really love just connecting with you guys directly this way as well as having the interviews. But, um, in 2020, think about maybe instead of adding more resolutions and more stuff to do, think about maybe replacing some things that aren't serving you anymore or taking some things off your list and adding things that are more important, kind of like applying the 80 20 rule to your life. Because as we get older, it seems like our to-do list and everything we have just keeps growing and growing and growing and we'll never catch up.  

Kristin:    00:12:53    And it can be exhausting to add like new goals and new resolutions and new plans to the list when we maybe haven't finished all of the other stuff that has been on our list for a long time. So maybe that's something else that you might wanna look into. Cutting some stuff out, dropping a few things and making sure that your priorities are really clear, um, so that you can go into the year feeling calm, cool and collected and just excited about what another lap around the sun has to bring for everybody. So again, if you are interested in this or you have any questions, uh, feel free to message me on social media. Of course, I won't be there while I'm meditating <laugh> and also Google the Vipassana meditation. I will link to it in the show notes. And I will also link to my articles on meditation and the InsightTimer founders mission and vision for how they're using that.  

Kristin:    00:13:59    So lots of people ask me in the live streams and, and on social media, like how I started meditating and what app I use and what my habits are with that. So I'm happy to share that with you guys and see you in the next episodes. And then we'll be back with more interviews later in January. Ciao for now. Oh, another thing, if getting a remote job is something you want to do in 2020, I have just created a brand new guide to finding remote jobs in 2020. And you can download that in the show notes or at TravelingwithKristin.com. It's on the homepage. So I hope that that helps you guys out too. All right, guys, talk to you soon. Bye for now and wish me luck. Thanks so much for listening to help support this podcast and help it grow. Please leave a review in the Apple Podcast store and send this or your favorite episode to a friend for weekly travel videos, live streams, and even more interviews. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channels at youtube.com/digitalnomad and Traveling with Kristin. See you soon.  

Kristin:    00:15:39    BP is working to bring more lower carbon energy to the uk like developing offshore wind, and we are keeping oil and gas flowing from the North Sea. It's, and not all, that's how BP is backing Britain. While today we're mostly in oil and gas, we increased the proportion of our global annual investment that went into our lower carbon and other transition businesses from around 3% in 2019 to around 23% in 2023. bp.com/andnotall.