I think maybe!

I am a fan of the information-age truism called Bettridge’s Law of Headlines, which states, “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” For some of you it will hold true in this case, but not everyone.

Registration for Camp Calm’s fifth season opened earlier today. Another group of eager, fledgling meditators is forming, and naturally I’d be thrilled if you would consider joining it.

Over the past two years it’s become increasingly clear to me that I’ll be spending much of my life trying to get people to try meditation. When you are an enthusiastic advocate for something, it’s easy to be long-winded. There are so many great things to say, so many reasons to give.

So I thought about how to be short-winded instead. What would I say, for example, if I had to restrict my mindfulness evangelism to one sentence? 

I think that’s a worthwhile project for a writer. I’ll be working on this important sentence for a long time. Honing, polishing, tinkering and rebuilding. In a decade or so it will be absolutely riveting.

For the moment, this is what I’ve got:

If you meditate ten minutes a day, you will freak out a little less often.

That little bit of time learning to be mindful will result in fewer eruptions of work- or school-related panic, less brooding, milder levels of dread, fewer internal (and external) diatribes, and many more occasions when things feel even-keel and a-okay.

That is a pretty good deal. Ten minutes of an activity that’s harder than watching TV but easier than most people’s jobs, and you will almost certainly experience fewer bad moods and fewer bad days.

Assuming you spend seven or eight hours sleeping (or trying to), you have about 100 or so of these “ten-minuteses” per day to invest in a lifestyle. Work and other standing obligations will claim most of them, but aside from that we still have a number of ten-minuteses to invest in whatever activities we think makes our lives easier.

So this habit we’re considering constitutes less than 1% of a normal daily schedule, and boy does it pull more than its weight. Meditation is the army ant of the lifestyle habits world.

Why ten minutes a day? Well, I think it’s a long enough session that it produces considerable benefits, and short enough that it still seems quite doable, even for those of us who insist we have no time at all (even if, while at that very moment, we are reading a blog on the internet).

Once you reach the modest but important benchmark of a solid ten-minute practice, you are a daily meditator, and you can take it as far as you wish.

If you come to this little project with the modest expectation that you will invest ten good minutes a day, and in return, avert a bad mood or three every week (although I think you will see many more rewards than that), it’s hard to argue that it’s not worth it.

I will refrain from saying “And wait! There’s more!” even though there is.

I guess I snuck a lot of extra supporting sentences in there. But that proposition can suffice on its own—you can invest that small amount of time, and gain a skill that lowers reactivity, and spares you the fallout of the self-defeating behavior goes with it.

You can register for Camp Calm here.  UPDATE: Camp is full! But there will be another season this Winter. Get on the mailing list to be notified. We’ve got a good crew so far, new faces and some old veterans, already making friends in the discussion forum. The price is the same as the last time, $69 USD*. [How does Camp Calm work?]

If you would like to learn to meditate, but not take the camp, just email me and I can point you to some excellent resources in your local library. The how-to information is out there, but it’s nice to have community support and a bit of hand-holding until you are doing it daily.

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*VAT may be added for EU residents.

Photo by Bobby Burch. Thanks Bobby.