21 Minutes For Success

21 Minutes For Success

"Alexa, set a timer for 21 minutes." 

The first minute is used to settle in and then the remaining 20 minutes are used to drop into a flow state. 

By setting aside a few 21 minute blocks each day for what's most important, I have seen incredible results. In this post, I'll explain how I got started so that you can better commit to your healthy habits, 21 minutes at a time. 

How I Got Started - Seated Meditation

The idea behind '21 minute blocks' started with my seated meditation practice. I set a goal to meditate every day for 20 minutes. To do that, I would put my phone on airplane mode and set a timer for 21 minutes. This gave me a minute to fidget and get into position. 

20 full minutes for stillness is incredibly rewarding and does wonders for your mental health. The reason I chose 20 minutes is that I find the first 10 minutes are all about quieting your mind and dropping into the flow state. Then the remaining 10 minutes you get to experience the benefits of the flow state (or deeper meditation) and practice maintaining your awareness within that heightened state. 

Why Setting A Timer Is Important

I've often heard people say that they meditate and stop simply when they feel like it. While that may work for some, I've found the stop whenever method to be incredibly distracting for my mind. I can't drop in because I am constantly questioning, 'How long have I been sitting here? Has it been long enough? Should I get up now?'.  By setting a timer, you are simplifying. 

You no longer have to worry about how long you have been meditating or whether you should get up. Your mind has a simple task - sit there and be still until the timer goes off. Removing the decision of when to stop enables you to focus on being present and increases your mental toughness to stick it out until the end. Even if 21 minutes feels longer than you would have chosen for that day, breakthroughs come when you push yourself past the edge of comfort. 

21 Minutes For Other Tasks

After finding success with 21 minutes of meditation, I begin to build other positive habits 21 minutes at a time. 

Journaling not only helps to clear the mind, but it also can be productive if you are an author with a specific goal. With the desire to write a book of poems, I decided to set a timer for 21 minutes and sit down at my computer every day and write. Most sessions I did little more than move my fingers over the keys. They were therapeutic brain dumps, but far from anything I'd want to publish in a book. However, ~10% of those sessions, by simply being at the keyboard I would stumble upon something. In those sessions, the 21 minutes was long enough to get completely engrossed in the flow of the task and when the timer went off, I would simply turn it off and continue writing. With longer creative tasks, I recommend using the 21 minutes to find the flow and then riding that flow for as long as you can once you're there. 

That's what I did and now thanks to the 21-minute method, I have published multiple children's books on Amazon.

21 Minutes for Mental Resilience & Dancing 

I begin to add in other techniques for self-improvement. I read a lot about Zhang Zhua, an ancient Taoist standing meditation, and now do that every morning for 21 minutes. Zhang Zhua (or "Stand Like Tree") is like mediation only you stand in a physically challenging position. Therefore, you can watch your thoughts as you are in a state of discomfort and learn to take things one breath at a time and increase your mental toughness. 

However, 21 minutes doesn't have to be boring or hard. You can use it to learn any skill. For about 2 weeks, I set a timer every day for 21 minutes, turned on Spotify and danced. In that time, with the help of YouTube videos, I learned to Moonwalk! That's a fun skill/party trick I'll have in the bag for a long time now thanks to the 21-minute method. 

How Do You Find The Time?

You may be wondering where I find the time to do all this. Well, if you add it all up 21 minutes for meditation at night, 21 minutes for tree meditation in the morning, 21 minutes for writing, and 21 minutes for dancing that's only one hour and twenty-four minutes. We can all find that time. Wake up 1 hour earlier and cut out one 30-minute Netflix show, boom, you've found the time. 

Also, start in steps like I did. Pick one positive thing to do for 21 minutes and then add more if you are enjoying the process. 

Anyway, that's all for this article. My 21-minute timer went off, so I'm done writing for the day.