How to form a meditation habit (the answer isn’t as boring as it sounds)
Hands down, the most common response I get when I tell people I run a website that offers guided meditations is some version of the following:
“What a great idea…..I love to meditate…I know I should do it more…..its just that I can’t ever find the time…..”
What I would like to say in response to that is what I know to be true – that it is ridiculous that out of 1440 minutes in each day, there aren’t 10 tiny minutes you can’t carve out to do something that just about everyone and his uncle agree will make you happier and healthier. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Sadly though I can’t respond like that because there are quite a lot of days that I can’t seem to find those 10 minutes either. (And coming from someone who has literally dozens of the world’s most gorgeous guided meditations at her fingertips is even more ridiculous.)
I’ve done a bit of research into what it is that makes it so difficult. Here for example is a wonderful article from the Huffington Post by Ed and Deb Shapiro about the barriers that are sometimes in the way.
What I can say for sure is that the mydiamonddays subscribers who meditate regularly are those who do it every day at the same time, pretty much no matter what. In other words, they have built meditation into a habit. Take Ingrid for example one of our most loyal subscribers. She wakes up, makes herself a cup of tea and then meditates. Every single day.
I do know she gets a lot of pleasure out of the meditations as she often leaves comments but when I asked her how she developed the habit, she just says “it just never occurs to me not to do it.”
Wise words…
Being 2012, however, there is a newly released App that is designed exactly to build habits. It is call Lift and here’s the blurb.
Sometimes you have big goals, like changing your diet or running your first marathon. Other times you are missing a basic habit that sounds trivial but has eluded you for years (yesterday, 105 Lift users celebrated their new flossing habit).
Sometimes goals already have the support of in-person organizations paired with detailed advice. What what do you do when you’re away from the organization? Or if the advice is too daunting?
One Lift user thought going to a weekly meeting and counting every calorie was more effort than he could give to weight loss. Instead he adopted an “eat low-carb lunch” habit and lost 15 pounds.
Sometimes good advice doesn’t travel well. I love my dentist, but his advice fades the second I leave his office. We had a leader of a Zen Center email his solution to this problem, “We love meditating at the center, but always struggled to keep up our practice individually. Now with Lift, the support of the center goes home with everyone.”
Thank you for sharing your words of wisdom. I feel the strong need for both daily exercise and meditation in my life, the first of which I rarely do, and the second, which I’ve never done. I’d never heard of Lift, so thank you for sharing that.