How to Make Your Meditation Practice Consistent
One of the hardest parts of meditation (particularly in the beginning) is keeping it as a daily practice. It's too easy to let a day or two go by that then turns into a week. So I have a surprisingly simple and effective way for you to ensure you never miss a day. This audio is part of the Q&A session of our weekly Mindful Mondays Live talk on the Insight Timer App every week.
Transcript
This is a challenge for us all,
Is keeping that daily practice.
And it's really important that we do keep it as a daily practice,
Because as soon as it starts to fall off,
We kind of tell ourselves,
Oh,
Well,
Next week I'll start again,
Next week I'll start again.
And for a lot of people,
They don't start again.
They even will say to themselves,
Well,
I tried meditation,
It didn't work for me.
And didn't realize that,
No,
You just had a little lapse in your practice.
It does take a while to make this as a daily practice.
But I do find to keep it as a continuous practice so we don't get caught in that gap where maybe it becomes too long and we just don't go back to it and we try something else,
To commit to a minimum of one minute of meditation every day.
Like that being your absolute bare minimum.
And we can all do on Insight Time,
Or one of the reasons I love the Insight Timer app,
You can do that app interval and just have it set for one minute,
But maybe have your whole meditation set for,
If it's 15 minutes,
20 minutes,
30 minutes,
40 minutes,
Whatever it is,
And really honestly tell yourself like,
Hey,
I can get up after one minute.
That's totally fine.
Give yourself that.
Because some days you might actually only legitimately have a minute.
Maybe you're traveling,
Maybe you're late for work,
Something's happening,
You're like,
I really do only have one minute.
And that's fine.
But the hardest part,
The hardest part in meditation is getting to your cushion,
Getting yourself to the seat.
And sometimes if it's this,
Oh,
I've got to meditate for 20 minutes or an hour,
Whatever it is,
Our brain is not wired for us to motivate us to go and do that.
I mean,
We can,
We'll tell ourselves,
I'll go do the dishes,
I'll do the laundry,
I'll clean up,
I'll do a work project and feel much better about ourselves for having done that because we're activating our short-term motivation reward pathway.
So we've got to overcome that by telling ourselves,
Look,
I just am gonna do one minute.
And then our brain is like,
Okay,
All right,
You can go do it for one minute.
And most times,
If you legitimately have the time,
Once you've sat for one minute,
Again,
The hardest part is just getting to the seat.
If you've sat for one minute,
You are most likely to sit for maybe five,
10,
20 minutes,
Maybe the whole duration.
The hardest part is getting there.
But again,
If you only did that one minute of meditation,
Great,
Right?
One minute is better than nothing.
And you have the consistency.
So the next day,
It's not like,
Oh,
I didn't meditate yesterday,
So I won't meditate again today because I'll start next week when I have this,
When I'm not as stressed,
When I have this project over or something,
Right?
When I'm not as busy.
So it keeps the continuity of our practice together,
Which is really important.
And yeah,
Felipe,
Yeah,
The motivation.
Motivation is really tricky.
Our brain does not see meditation as anything that we need for survival,
Right?
And it's all about survival.
It doesn't care if we're happy or not.
Everything our brain does is to get us to survive.
And while it is interesting that I think meditation is helping us survive these days because of the amount of stress and anxiety and depression and loneliness that we are experiencing and disconnection that we are experiencing in our world,
It is in fact necessary for our survival.
But our brain doesn't see it that way.
And so we do need to come up with little ways to get ourselves to the cushion.
And that's okay to just say,
Hey,
I'm just gonna do a minute.
If you have seven days in a row,
You only do one minute of meditation,
You are gonna feel far better about your practice and you're more likely to come back on that eighth day.
So I always offer that to people.
Just commit to one minute a day,
Minimum.
The hardest part is getting there.
Most of the time,
You will meditate longer than that one minute,
But it really builds some consistency into your practice.
And for those of you that maybe do only meditate once a day,
Maybe you're just meditating in the morning.
And a lot of people start that way with just meditating in the morning,
But you're now looking to maybe deepen your practice a little bit and you wanna add on that evening meditation.
But that evening meditation or late afternoon is also really difficult for us,
Right?
To fit it in,
We're tired,
We've had a long day,
We've had a lot of commitments.
So just tell yourself,
Just one minute.
I'm just gonna sit for one minute and see how that goes.
Right,
And it really helps us to start building on that practice to making our meditation practice more of a foundation and overcoming our brain.
Our brain really talking us out of it,
Right?
And our ego for sure talking us out of it because our ego doesn't want us to meditate,
Doesn't want us to see what's going on in our mind,
What all those grasping thoughts are doing to us.
It doesn't want that,
Doesn't want you to be calm and to be settled.
And even on days where you're feeling really restless,
Like really stressed and you think,
I can't meditate today,
No way.
No way,
My mind is way too active,
I won't be able to do it.
Just tell yourself,
I'm just gonna sit for one minute and I'm going to be with these restless feelings.
I'm gonna be with the stress,
I'm gonna accept that it is here and I'm gonna be with it.
And maybe it's just one minute then of more deep breathing like we did in the beginning of our meditation today.
Really opening up,
Accepting the feelings that are here.
A lot of our restlessness and stress that also prevents us from meditating because we think I'm just not in the right state to meditate.
You're absolutely in the state that you should be in to be meditating.
That is what you should be doing more than anything is meditating.
So coming to it,
Coming to our practice and saying,
I'm going to accept how I'm feeling right now.
This is what we're trying to do is accept what's going on,
Not push back on it,
Not resist the restlessness or the stress or the feeling of maybe you're just your energy's a little bit low or you're feeling a little bit down,
You've had some bad news.
Really feeling and being with what's happening.
And by that I mean,
Breathing,
Taking really big inhales,
Opening up,
Creating space for these unpleasant feelings.
The feelings are real,
They're here.
That's what's happening right now.
The feelings are happening,
Right?
The thoughts that created those feelings,
That's not happening anymore.
But by being with the feelings,
Opening up and even saying to them,
It's okay that you're here,
Welcoming them,
Allowing them to be here,
Right?
So we take that second layer of tension that we add on top of whatever the tension is that I shouldn't be feeling this tension and we allow it to be,
Right?
So we inhale,
Create space,
Open up to it.
It's unpleasant,
Absolutely.
I don't deny it's probably unpleasant energy but it's just unpleasant.
It's a little bit uncomfortable,
Right?
The story is what makes it,
I can't sit,
I'm too restless,
There's too much going on,
Right?
But when you come and you feel your body,
You feel what's there and you allow it to be there,
It does dial it back a little bit and you're like,
Yeah,
It's unpleasant,
Right?
Still here,
Right?
Still the residual unpleasant feeling is here but it's tolerable,
I can be with this,
I can accept this,
This is okay and you just keep breathing into it and being with it and that's how you then get on the other side eventually of those feelings.
Not by looking for something to do,
I've got to distract myself,
I'm too restless,
I've got to do,
I mean,
I'll give you if you want to go to the gym before you meditate.
Now that's good to kind of get some of those stress hormones out of your system if that's what's going on but I would actually,
In fact,
I'd take that back,
Still meditate for one minute before you go to the gym because while going to the gym and getting that stress out of our system is good,
It does nothing to help us be with our unpleasant feelings and emotions and that's what we're trying to do is to be with what's happening,
Not with the thoughts,
The thoughts are a story and exaggerate it and at best,
Exaggerated story,
At worst,
An outright lie,
Right?
So to be with what's happening so we don't fear it,
Right,
So we're able to be with it.
One of the questions that comes up really often with meditators is,
You know,
I've been meditating for a while and everything seems to be going well until it doesn't and then I feel like I just,
I'm shocked,
Like we're kind of shocked that we're feeling,
That we're experiencing something unpleasant,
That we did get a little stressed,
That we did get a little bit angry,
We got a little bit emotional over something,
That we had a moment,
Right?
And this is,
Our expectations are not very realistic in this respect,
You're still gonna feel things.
I've been meditating for 24 years,
I still feel things,
I wanna feel things,
I don't wanna become a robot,
Right?
I wanna be able to feel and experience things,
Right?
But it's this idea we have that I come to meditate and I should never experience anything unpleasant again and that's just not realistic,
Right?
And you wouldn't even wanna live in a world like that by the way.
But the peace that we talk about,
That peace and stillness that is always here in the present moment,
It is even here,
Even when we're experiencing something unpleasant,
As long as we're not pushing back on it,
As long as we're not resisting,
If we're accepting what's happening,
There is still a peace in it and being able to be with what's happening.
