How To Make Meditation A Habit

How can we make meditation a habit; a habit that nourishes us for years to come? When we first hear of meditation, we sense it is a good idea. Yet, with our busy, fast-paced modern lives, meditation often falls to the wayside.

We just… “don’t have time.”

Or do we?

Join Michael Mackintosh and Arielle Hecht, world-recognized meditation teachers for this special podcast on how to make meditation a habit.

Michael and Arielle offer gentle, easy guidance on creating a meditation habit, and sustainable.

Transcript

Today on Spiritual Recharge we will be exploring how to make meditation a habit. We will talk about ways to create a new meditation habit or upgrade one you have and this will allow you to ground in a meditation practice every day even if you're busy or not feeling well. You will learn how you can upgrade this practice daily and get better and better each week. Just has to start small, Ease and grace and how meditation as a habit will have lasting impacts on your life. So our warmest welcome to you, Thank you for your beautiful presence and now we'll hear from Michael. Congratulations for being here wanting to bring meditation deeper into your life. You're going to learn exactly how you can create a beautiful practice that brings you so much joy in your life every day between Aral and myself we have over three decades of regular daily meditation practice. That's many many many days and at one point we had to make a decision that we would like to do meditation and so it adds up and adds up and adds up and it changes our whole lives. So meditation has so many benefits let's just talk about a few of the things that you can look forward to by doing more meditation. Would you like to share something Aral? What are the benefits of us doing meditation? What are the benefits for you personally? What are the benefits for you personally? There are so many benefits of meditation there are also so many types of meditation as well. What we share in spiritual recharge is this meditation practice of connecting to the supreme's light and it's a way of remembering who we are connecting to that experience beyond this life and that experience in consciousness that gives life to physical life. It's consciousness it's our spiritual presence that gives life to matter and reconnecting with that consciousness and awareness every day is completely transformative. The divine is known as the purifier and so the more we receive and connect and take in that light our past patterns negative habits negative things we've picked up along the way are cleared and we're able to ascend to return to our highest state of consciousness which I think everyone listening to this that must be deep deep in your heart of hearts what do you want otherwise I'm not sure you'd be listening to a podcast on spiritual recharge. So there's just all of those benefits are profound and of course there are other forms of meditation forms of meditation that just help us to relax feel grounded feel centered to be here now to be present and mindful and enjoy our lives rather than letting our lives pass by without experiencing them. So those are just a few thoughts and benefits of meditation. Yeah there's so many benefits you know meditation makes us feel good in the moment so even just feeling good having good vibrations in and of itself changes the whole color of life you know if feeling terrible and depressed and stressed out even if we have a great life and can't appreciate it but when we feel blessed when we feel like we've attained everything then even if things are crazy we can still see the humor of it so meditation helps us feel great gives us clarity of mind it has the capacity to increase our concentration to overcome stress that we have to prevent us from experiencing stress to overcome anxiety to have a beautiful day because when you set meditation in the morning you are preparing the ground for the rest of your day so you're setting yourself up for success before you've even started on the occasional days where i don't do meditation in the morning very if we have to get on a plane or something and i haven't had my normal practice i really notice the difference it has to be said so it really sets us up for success and it actually helps us remain sane rather than losing our minds as well so we could go on and on the whole call about the benefits of meditation but just think about it for yourself why do you want to do meditation what would you like to get from it what would you like to feel differently and you can continue thinking about these things because the more you feel and know about the benefits that you're going to get personally the more you're going to do it and i want to start by busting a myth this is really important to to take this to heart a lot of people think well you know i tried meditation but i'm not very good at it this is very common i'm not very good at it my mind won't stop coming up with thoughts i can't sit still it's too hard these sort of things i'm not good at it i'm not spiritual enough i'm i'm i'm too old i'm too young you know whatever it is so and there's this idea that there are certain people who are naturally good at meditation you know so if you meet meditation teachers we're meditation teachers and other teachers you might think oh you must have been spiritual your whole life oh you probably just were doing meditation because your parents or something something something but what you'll realize this is really important to understand nobody is born good at meditation everyone has a mind everyone has thoughts everyone can feel restless it's actually we're all in the same position in the beginning and when i started meditation i was 18 i was previously was doing drugs and going to parties and listening to music and all this stuff and i wasn't really doing anything spiritual so when i started meditation i had no idea what i was doing and even when i asked other people in the meditation class what am i supposed to do they didn't give me proper proper feedback so not only was my mind crazy i also wasn't told how to do it which was of course slightly concerning but because i carried on going anyway and i started to notice my thoughts and i started to create thoughts and gradually gradually gradually i was able to experience radically different states of consciousness beautiful states of deep deep peace and wonder and love and bliss that made me keep coming back for more and nowadays i normally do one or two hours meditation in the morning and you know i used to think 10 minutes was too much for me but i just like it so much that when i'm sitting there i might as well just sit a bit longer a bit longer i noticed it tends to be around two hours or hour and a minute just because it's so wonderful right but i was absolutely awful at it in the beginning and the only difference is practice practice practice practice and it's not actually even that hard once you get in the hang of it and we're going to share with you some some methods but the key thing to keep in mind is that anyone at all and become very very good at meditation if they're just willing to put in a little bit of effort just a little bit and do it again and again and again starting one day at a time so whether you're literally right at the beginning or whether you've been doing meditation for a while we can improve and we can have a wonderful experience gradually gradually gradually step by step by step and i think what michael mentioned earlier that it is about feeling good now you know it's it's beautiful in and of itself to feel connected to your deeper self feel relaxation to feel love in your heart feel joy and peace in your mind these are all beautiful things now and the more you experience meditation you practice the more these feeling states become like a physiological habit your body and brain get used to those beautiful feelings which in and of itself is invaluable i think we all want to feel good it's also a place meditation is a place you can come home to when you're not feeling good it's a place where you can be with yourself and feel held by the divine held in this energy of love and it's a place where you can release and heal the negative feelings the things that come up on our journeys as well so in and of itself there is so much value and and so much light and i think one of the most powerful aspects of meditation is that it's not something that's just reserved for sitting on your meditation cushion it's a state of mind and heart to bring into your entire life and this for me has has been a profound aspect when i first started i was very much compartmentalizing which i think a lot of us can do and in our culture it's like we have our time on our in our meditation and then we leave and we have the rest of our lives and and they can be very different so another aspect of meditation that we'll share more with you about is just how to bring that state of consciousness into your entire life yeah and you know what i think they would like to know from you how you got started and what your experience yeah and how you've improved over the years see i get to be on the spot in this podcast because michael does a lot of the preparation so i get to be spontaneous um okay well i was thinking about this recently that i was thinking about what what inspires us to start meditation or start a spiritual practice and i was tuning into that and thinking you know for a lot of us it is pain a lot of you listening here what got you started might may have been quite often it is a very challenging experience pain something that happened in your life something that happened to you something going on and so i think that's true for maybe pretty much all of us to to some extent and i was thinking when i started it was interesting because when i was younger i had i had like material worldly attainments you know experience those things and i ultimately was feeling there is this emptiness like surely life couldn't just be about you know these things the world values like there's more to life than the mall yeah there's more to life than the more your parents shopping oh the mall he has an accent i didn't know what he said the mall yes shopping wealth relationships um achievements all of those things the world values anyway i i didn't i just felt there was an emptiness there and i didn't grow up with any spirituality and so when i found yoga it was just incredible to me that there was this whole inner world and spiritual connection that i could experience so i would say that's what got me started it was more of a meditation and breathing in child pose and yoga that began my journey and i just had this deep interest to continue exploring meditation and yoga and the divine and myself and and just delve into all of that and so i guess in answer to your question it was just that that desire in my heart to know and to feel and to experience what's true i remember in college i would walk by this big sign um big writing i would be on the campus early in the morning university of texas at austin and it said you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free and that deep desire to experience to know on this deep level truth is what brought me to meditation i think ultimately and sustains my meditation journey wonderful wonderful so we're going to share with you a very step-by-step practical method proven method that can allow you to create or improve a meditation practice guaranteed every single day because one of the things that makes a difference is that when we make something into a habit then it builds momentum and it kind of sustains itself after a while so there's a big difference between doing meditation like once a week or doing it regularly and ariel made an interesting point about bringing that consciousness into our lives because really the point of meditation isn't actually doing meditation the point of meditation is a shift in consciousness and ultimately once we've made that shift in consciousness permanent then there's no need for any meditation at all so in a way we're doing ourselves out of the job so so just understand the reason we talk about daily meditation practice is because it shifts the consciousness daily and then it becomes a part of your way of being rather than some segmented thing that you do in a place at a particular time it has no connection to anything else shifting consciousness so first thing we mentioned this a little bit earlier you might want to get a pen and paper if you don't have one because just writing these things down is going to help you remind yourself afterwards so the first thing is why do you want to meditate just really tune into it what is your motivation sometimes it's we're having suffering and pain anxiety stress can't sleep and that's fair enough that's a good place to start and then after a while you have relief from those things but you still get the benefit of feeling good so you want to carry on for a different reason so just knowing what you want to do meditation for is really helpful because there's no point doing things if we have no no purpose for them once you know what you're wanting to get out of it the second thing is to think about what type of meditation practice or habit are you wishing to develop what you want to do so there's silent meditation there's guided meditations there's all sorts of different practices there's lots of different styles of meditation so there's all kinds of things what we personally recommend is doing guided meditations to begin with because they're easier that's the reason and then you can do your own meditation you can do it now if you want but you can gradually build up to mastering your own meditation later and we're going to do some wondrous new sessions on different types of meditation we're going to do a little series that's right i'm telling ariel now she's looking at me she's like what do you mean a series no because as i was going through this today i thought we can't really teach you all the different types of meditation on this session today because there's too many types but we want to teach you how to do different practices because there are all kinds of practices and they all have different benefits so to begin with just think about what type of meditation would you like to do well if you don't know then then listen to some of our guided meditations on spiritual recharge dot com we have tons of free meditations so just think about just go through them click on different ones look at the titles see whatever one you like whatever you like whoever you like listening to it doesn't matter just pick something that resonates with you people often email r and i and send us these messages about how much they appreciate listening to our meditations every day a lot of people listen to them every single day and so you know it brings us a lot of joy to to be able to provide that so and if you don't like our meditations for whatever reason then pick somebody else's but the point is to get started doing meditation in some form so just think what is a type of meditation that i could do every day just write it down or think about it because once you know then all of a sudden the whole thing becomes much much easier and we're going to teach you some different practices in the coming sessions the third thing is once you know what you want to do and why it's important the third thing is to create what we call a ridiculously easy version of your meditation practice because what happens is we might say for example i want to do an hour and a half meditation every day which is great that's a wonderful aim but what happens if you wake up late or what happens if you have to complain or what happens if something else happens you know and you can't do it what are you going to do then what normally happens is people just don't do it at all they say you know what i want to do an hour and a half and i can't do it so that's it so i have to wait till tomorrow it might not even be an hour and a half it might just be a 20 minute session 10 minute session they say you know i'm too busy i'm not going to do it and then the next day comes around and they forget to do it again forget to do it again and then you're out of the practice so we need to have a really really really really manageable simple version of our practice for whenever we are having a strange day or we're feeling sick or something something something is going on so for example let's say you want to do a 20 minute guided meditation normally but you wake up late or you know the dog comes and smashes up the house or there's something happened this like the fire in the house or do you know what i mean or something happens you know what i mean someone tries to bulldoze your house like we don't know what's going to happen right so you okay okay i can't do the whole thing because i'm running around the house taking care of all this stuff but what could you do it might be that you sit for one minute once you've taken care of whatever it is that you need to do or two minutes and you just sit there and you just practice a mantra or you do a little short guided meditation we have some five minute versions of meditation so they could be a five minute version you could say you know i haven't even got five minutes i'm gonna do half of five minutes even if all you did was press play listen to 30 seconds or a minute and then stop and get on with your day that is actually a success it's a great success because you continued the practice the habit and then the next day because you did it the day before the next day you're gonna be like you know what i've got more time now so i'm gonna listen to the whole thing i just want to emphasize this do a ridiculously small version even if you think it's silly because it adds up and it adds up and it adds up all right it might be you sit down on your meditation cushion and then you stand up and you say hooray it was a success that that's enough that's enough do you want to add anything to this ariel anything to that tips for making meditation a habit no anything from what i've just shared so far i think that's great i have some things after i think it sounds good so then the the fourth thing is once you have your meditation practice and once you've got your really easy version the next thing is when when are you going to do it when are you going to do it right when we have the when then yay have it sandwich for sandwich for creating habits i'll just give an example when i wake up then i'll go and freshen up in the bathroom and then i'll do meditation and then and then to celebrate yay i'm going to make some tea or go for a walk or put a gold star on my calendar or something something some celebration that you'll feel good anyway but you're going to give yourself an extra little gift or it might be when i'm on the train but some people travel by train to work when i'm on the train then i'll put my medicine my headphones on and listen to the guided meditation and then i'll celebrate with some special cakes or something you know afterwards before i get to work or whatever it is right so when then yay it's always cake celebrations for michael even though he never actually eats cake i never eat cake let's talk about i like the idea of cake quite a bit i don't eat sandwiches either but i like the idea of them so yes actually this was what i was thinking of talking more about so the wind is so important and really getting clear on the time of day first thing in the morning is a really powerful habit because you're setting the you're setting your mind and your consciousness and the flow of meditation for the day so even if that means setting your alarm just 10 minutes earlier or 20 minutes earlier that can give you the space that perhaps you didn't have before and also being really clear about where i think it's super important to have a sacred space and even if you don't have a specific room or this big space in your home no worries most of our meditation corner or meditation areas are like corners in a room you know that that which is fine you can do deep meditation and even a certain area in a room and make it beautiful make it sacred have music playing have a candle have essential oils a seat that's comfortable and lovely perhaps some spiritual reading you have some some books that are inspiring that nourish you all of these things help a lot you can also have an image of light we have these images of light all around the house and we will include a link to some of those images with this podcast so you want to create the environment and don't allow yourself to have the excuse oh i don't have enough space i can't do it in other places in the house create a corner i mean my goodness i think i've had times where it's been like a closet like a big walk-in closet yes i have had a few of those so no excuses here you can definitely create some sort of sacred space and you charge that space with the meditation with the spiritual energy and that in itself will support you in and deepening in your practice yeah that's another benefit of doing it daily is that you really charge the space like i have a meditation cushion over here and it's when i sit down on that cushion it's powerful it's got a good vibration because i've sent sat on there specifically and only for meditation it's nice to have a little spot where you don't do anything else at all except that in that particular place because then what happens is that you psychologically trigger the memory of whatever you were doing previously when you sit there i've got candles i like to light my personal practice if it's useful is that i get up go to the bathroom you know splash stuff on my face and then come back with some water light a candle i've got these lovely candles put on my i've got this massive meditation picture which has a light in the middle of it and i turn it on i've got a crystal bowl with another light in it and i turn that on and then i have some essential oils and some rose spray it sounds quite elaborate when i say all out but each of these things and sometimes i put music on sometimes i don't but when the whole scene is set up nicely it just gets us in the zone and we of course can maintain this state of consciousness beyond that nice little situation but if you make a little ritual out of it then it becomes even more powerful it kind of brings you into that awareness as soon as you set the thing up so the fifth thing is once you have figured out what you why you want to do it you know what you're going to do you know when you're going to do it and you have an easy version then i recommend gold stars gold stars get yourself some gold star stickers gold star stickers get a calendar and every day that you do your meditation you get a gold star you get your own gold star and it doesn't have to be gold it could be purple if you prefer whatever color you like and you put it on the calendar and it marks your progress and you look back on it and you think oh wow i've done meditation every single day for six months before you know it then it becomes a year and then it becomes a really strong part of your practice part of your life so that that that's an easy way to keep going because then then you stay on point and what happens is after a while you can't help yourself but do meditation and you you're naturally pulled into it just like we are with other habits we have so it's such a beautiful thing to do and if you want even more encouragement then you can get yourself a meditation accountability partner somebody who's your friend or family or somebody online or whoever it is and you can just have a chat about how you're doing and you can send a little message saying i did it today hooray or you can send a picture of your of your stars to each other and you can see how you're doing and you can talk about meditation and things so it can be useful to have somebody else who encourages you and who you encourage them so if you do these things you will have a solid practice that you do every single day isn't that wonderful so wonderful and just a few more tips that can help is having an evening meditation habit this can be super super short maybe you just sit back down in that spot you sit in the morning and it could be one minute where you just take a moment drop in to let go intentionally let go of everything that happened this day anything you need to learn being willing to have clarity and awareness around that and to surrender your day to the divine just have that moment of check-in of clarity of connection before you go to bed and you can visualize yourself waking up and having meditation in the morning so you're setting yourself up for this meditation practice flow morning evening again even if it's one minute it's the habit of connecting of grounding of tuning in that is important that's wonderful advice the evening meditation is hugely important and makes a massive difference to the morning whatever you do before you go to sleep affects your dreams so what i personally have found most helpful is i have this um what's it called a crystal bowl and inside the crystal bowl is this little led light that i can turn on and off with a little remote control you can get them on amazon and so it makes everything nice this golden color because it's inside the this bowl and i i have it on it has a timer i have on 15 minutes as i'm lying in bed i just have this timer on really low the really low light and it'll go off after 15 minutes by itself and i just practice meditation and practice going into the light going into the light and imagining the morning being the best over for those last 15 minutes and then i fall asleep and that practice allows me to get up feeling great if i don't do it for some reason like i'm tired or i forget to do it or something i won't wake up feeling quite the same quite amazing the the final thoughts as we're falling asleep the door is open to the subconscious and whatever is going on it drops down into your subconscious mind and it goes to work the whole night so if you're imagining waking up fresh and inspired that's before you go to sleep your subconscious is preparing you the whole night so it's a huge huge huge difference it's quite easy to do you can use the same thing for healing the body or for coming up with ideas you know a lot of times people have mentioned this method that if they're struggling with something they imagine the solution to their problem as if it's already done and then when they wake up in the morning the idea flashes in their mind so this is a very very powerful time of day first 10 minutes as you're falling asleep and also the last 10 minutes as you're just drifting off and first 10 minutes when you wake up in the morning or you can say the most powerful time of day so what's going to happen if they do it ariel if they do this how will they feel i think that's a nice segment into what i was just going to say actually i think one of the great benefits of doing this practice again even if it's one minute in the morning in the evening it the practice the mental habit of connecting in settling in grounding spiritually connecting that's important and one of the great benefits the more you do this is that you'll find yourself starting to connect throughout the day it will be this meditation habit will become this retreat inside of yourself this place you can come back to this anchor this way to center and realign and reconnect and i feel the more this occurs the more this experience of meditation contemplation throughout the day that is the beauty that is being aligned and awake for your beautiful life and being able to bring your full presence so that's one of the great benefits is that it'll start happening more um i think it's really powerful for healing it's powerful for anxiety for panic for fear for stress for depression for grief for when we're confused or we just can't seem to figure something out so meditation brings clarity you know we just take some time away from whatever it is give yourself some space give yourself some time for meditation and and things become right things come back into alignment so those are just a few a few ways that meditation can help you so deeply and i invite you to explore this question for yourself how can meditation help me what's going on in your life right now that you would like more healing with more um you'd like to feel better you'd like to feel happier lighter so tune into what your intention is what would you like to experience because the more that's clear you will call that into form which so that's the most powerful experience ah yes so we're so blessed meditation is is completely life-changing and neither of us will be where we are today without it no doubt about that so it's it's one of those things that gives back so many billions and billions of times more than you put in that i would i would put it as literally the most important thing to create a habit in in or out everything else you know there's lots of habits you could create but this is the top one because it makes everything else better so this is the practice so why do you want to do it what are you going to do what type of meditation what's the really easy version that you can do even if your house is burning down so it's good to have an easy version so you can always get that gold star and then once when are you going to do it what show it when then yeah you have it sandwich when are you going to do it when then you're going to do the meditation and then what are you going to do to celebrate it's good to have some sort of celebration could be dancing around could be eating something make sure it's a healthy celebration and then once you've done that then you give yourself a gold star don't underestimate the power of these gold stars they're very motivating we're all big children really and and then if you need help and you want to kind of connect with somebody else then get a accountability partner and if you do all these things you will have a solid reliable meditation habit i just like to add a ps what could distract you from your meditation habit perhaps the cell phone so unless you're using the cell phone to play music or listen to a meditation you may find it helpful to have it out out of the room if you find it's distracting you especially you have the notifications turned on with the dinger you know that will be quite counterproductive so have the phone away unless you're using it you could also go old school i have ipod and i love them so rl's brought out the existing stash of ipods that exist in the world oh they're still quite a few uh so so anyway what if the cell phone or if there's something else that could distract you from the meditation just consider those things so that you create a container for yourself that's fully supportive of you going deep and connecting in there are so many forms of meditation i am feeling like we really just brush the surface uh so we will continue to delve into making medicine habit understanding different types of meditation so that you can practice what nourishes you most that's beautiful yeah i mean ideally get yourself a light alarm clock so that your alarm clock wakes you up with light rather than sound and remove your phone from your bedroom it's if you haven't done this yet then it's a great opportunity to have much better sleep much more wonderful morning and a much more joyful evening and turning off notifications on your phone as much as possible it's a very good idea because we're getting distracted too many times by things that don't really matter that much so meditation is wonderful wonderful wonderful thank you for listening to this and we have some questions here which will take in our q a part of this of this uh podcast so next time we're going to be sharing more about different types of meditation that you can practice on your own and have a wonderful experience oceans of love we hope this has filled you with renewed inspiration and encouragement to ground in a meditation habit so much love to you and we'll connect soon you you