Helping or just habit?

 About 6-7 years ago, I was diving into this making myself better stuff. I was in a place where I beat myself up constantly, was never happy with myself, and was just generally miserable. Although I didn't really understand the extent to which I was miserable. When asked I would say I was happy, and I did have moments. At the time I was looking for help. I came across a guru and the things he said made sense. He said; you have to talk nicely to yourself, self-care is not hot baths and pedicures, it's taking care of your mind and your body; it's doing things that may not seem like self-care but in the end are. One of the things he highly promoted was meditation. His whole mantra boiled down to, if you don't have control of your mind, your thoughts, your actions, you will never truly find/get the things you want. It made a lot of sense, a whole lot more than the rest of the world saying do nice things for yourself, speak affirmations every day, blah, blah, blah. So for a long, long time I followed him. I tried to do exactly as he said and it did help a whole lot. I started meditating. Now that was hard. It took me a long time to really get into it and to develop the habit. But once I did I found that I really enjoyed it. The clearing of the mind and the focusing on my thoughts for 10 minutes were one of the best parts of my day. For almost 7 years I have meditated every single day. In all that time I only missed 1 day when I was sick with COVID.  And it was good. Really, really good. I felt myself calming down. I found that I was able to talk myself down from things. I found that the world in general didn't bother me so much. It was good, it was working, and I kept it up. For almost 7 years. Recently I have noticed that it's not working as well. Instead of focusing on clearing my head, I find myself prepping things in my head. Planning things I need to do. Many mornings when that gong goes off, I jump up and hit the ground running because I've already got things in my head. At first I thought I was slipping in my diligence during meditation. So I tried harder. And it didn't work. I found myself frequently ended before the 10 minutes was up because I was essentially done. It really made me wonder, but I kept at it for a few reasons. 1. I knew it was good for me, even if I had to battle it. 2. I had the longest streak going on my meditation app - 300 days. I've had long streaks before, but always the app would screw up and I'd have to start over. This time the app held and I kept going. The streak number started becoming more important than the meditation. I would end my sessions early, but then had to make sure that it counted towards my streak. There were days when I was super busy and needed to start working right away, but I could not let that streak end. There were times when I even considered letting the timer run while I did other things. This is when I realized that the streak was more important to me than the actual meditation. Right now is my meditation time and I don't have the app running. I'm a little antsy because that streak is going to die today and it's freaking me out a little. Anyway, the other day I was listening to a podcast and he was talking about meditation. He did it for a long time too and said he doesn't do it much anymore as it doesn't seem to benefit him. That got me to thinking. Was I just going through the motions because I thought I was supposed to? Was the meditation actually helping me anymore? There were many times when I felt like the meditation was a chore I had to do and I actually resented it a bit. So was it still a helping or had it just become a habit? I mean as habits go, it's not a bad one. But I don't like to do things just because that is what I do. I like to know why I'm doing things. I was telling myself that the meditation helped, but did it really? So I've decided to test my theory and I've stopped meditating. I will try it for a few days, maybe this week, and see how I feel. If I feel like I need it back in my life, I'll start up again. If I don't, I won't. I do feel that meditation is a good thing and extremely helpful but I also don't think I necessarily need to do it every single day. So I guess I'll find out. Off now to get some things done.