Hello and welcome to the session.
Invite you to take a seat will lie down.
Get yourself comfortable.
And close down the eyes if you wish Just begin by slowing down the breath.
Breathing in through the nose blow into the belly and slut.
Taking another slow,
Deep breath.
And then allowing your breath to return to its normal rate and when you're ready.
Turning your attention towards them.
Today we're going to be practicing Just a simple mindfulness.
But also talking a little bit about habit building.
Based practice of mindfulness is one of the core things that you can do.
For your health.
For your well-being.
Most everything.
And it serves the core of what I teach,
What I offer,
And what I practice.
It's actually quite simple.
You pick a meditation object.
Like the nose,
The breath of the nose.
And when your mind wanders.
You bring it back.
That's it.
So let's try this now.
Turn your attention to the sensations of the nose.
Focusing on the breath as you breathe in Breathe out.
When your mind wanders.
Gently bring it back.
Let's give it a try.
A goal isn't to empty the mind but rather to become aware of where the mind is at any one time.
He mind wanders.
You bring it back.
With love,
With compassion.
That's what the purpose is.
To become aware of where the mind is.
And bring it back.
It wanders,
We refocus this basic practice that we're doing now.
Could quite literally be.
The entirety of your meditation practice.
You set a timer.
In silence.
Pick a meditation object,
Like the sensations of the breath at the nose,
Your mind wanders,
Bring it back,
Your mind wanders,
Bring it back.
And you keep doing that until the timer ends.
And indeed later in this session.
We will do that for 10 minutes.
There are plenty of different techniques to try.
But this one,
Mind wanders,
Bring it back.
Based mindfulness.
I think serves as a useful core.
Maintaining your awareness of the breath.
Let's talk a little bit about how we can establish mindfulness meditation.
As a habit,
Or indeed any habit.
The first thing is that we need to become aware of the fact of our mind.
Awareness,
Acceptance,
Action.
Aware of our reality.
Aware of the tools available to us,
Like mindfulness.
Aware of the impact that they can have.
Increased awareness and focus.
We need to accept the reality.
It's a skill that we can learn.
If we apply ourselves daily,
It will make a change.
And then we'd do it.
That's great.
But the only way we can establish a habit is if we want to.
That sounds obvious,
But.
.
.
It has to be a truth.
Whole lot.
A strong why.
If you haven't already.
Consider the idea of meditation as a habit,
Or any habit you're trying to establish.
And come up with a strong reason why.
Why do you want to do it?
For yourself,
For your family,
For whatever reason that's strongly aligned with your values.
If you don't want it strongly.
It will not happen.
Write it down.
Important to realize that Maybe as children,
Your parents might have helped you establish habits,
Highlighting the reason why,
Motivating you.
Perhaps punishing you if you didn't.
Guiding you down a path.
As adults,
It's on us.
Self-led.
Self-led to direct ourselves towards the habits and therefore the life we want to accomplish.
We pick the path.
We step towards it,
But if we don't have that strong why?
It will fall away.
All habits are created,
Good and bad,
Because they gave us something.
They either got us to be or become or feel something.
Or helped us to stop feeling something.
To the habit that we want to implement,
Mindfulness will give us something.
Focus,
Awareness.
Attention.
It's a couple more things to consider when establishing a habit.
There is a lag between actions and results.
If you were to exercise every day.
It will take time for those results to show up on your body.
Similarly,
If you were to meditate daily,
It will take time for the benefits of meditation to show up in your life.
You almost have to have faith in the process,
Faith in the practice,
Faith in the instructor,
Faith in you,
If you do the thing daily.
The rewards will catch up.
But you have to have faith that.
.
.
You can handle that lag.
It will take time.
That said,
Missing a day is okay.
If you were to successfully exercise.
Six out of seven days of the week.
You would be exercising 300 out of the 365 days of the year.
Very successful.
So if you miss a day.
That's okay.
Get back on board.
And keep going.
Only way that you stop the habit is if you choose to stop.
Now,
Life will happen.
You may say,
I'm going to exercise daily,
I'm going to meditate daily,
I'm going to do whatever.
Life happens.
Learn from it.
How can you implement or change so that your habit takes priority?
Is your why strong enough?
Right?
Or have you maybe set the task as too long?
When you're establishing a meditation habit,
Or any habit in general,
People jump in real quick,
Real deep.
It's like,
I'm going to meditate for two hours every day.
Good luck.
You might be able to do that for a few days or maybe a few weeks,
But you're pushing away life to do this new habit.
The time that it takes to do this new thing has to come from something else.
You will have some slack in your life.
But you may not have two hours of slack.
So you will have to give up some stuff.
Thus the strong light.
You give up too much.
That stuff will push back.
And you will fall away.
So start small and build up.
People start meditating I recommend literally one minute.
On the timer every day.
Then two,
Then three,
Up to a level that they can do comfortably.
Comfortably for six months straight.
Not six days,
Right?
And in terms of when to do you have it.
When to exercise,
When to meditate,
When to do whatever it is.
Pig the behavior.
For example.
You may wake up.
Brush your teeth,
Go to the toilet,
All of that sort of stuff.
The habit of brushing your teeth is established.
At least I hope it is.
If you were to peg a behavior of,
For example,
Taking some supplements or medications to the brushing of the teeth,
It's an easy way to peg the behavior.
You're adding it to it.
You've got an established habit,
You add your new habit to that habit,
So it becomes a bigger thing.
With meditation you might go okay I do this this and that in the morning then I'll meditate.
It's just one of those things I do.
Or maybe as you drive home from work you park your car,
You do it in the car before you come inside.
You're adding the behaviour you want to something you already do.
And a final couple of things.
We are social animals.
My social creatures.
So get your family,
Your friends or the people around you on board,
Get them meditating with you,
Either in person digitally or at least talking about it.
And share what you're doing online.
I'm going to be meditating daily.
Tell people.
We want to be consistent to it.
And in terms of consistency,
You may find that you want to track yourself.
Get a yearly diary,
Yearly journal,
Whatever,
And put a little tick.
Each day.
Each day that you're successful.
Try and get that streak going.
That is the crux of habit building.
The main thing here though,
The thing that I want to really drill down with is a strong why led by you.
No one's coming to save you.
No one can establish the habit for you.
You have to make those choices.
Start small,
Have that strong why,
And keep returning back to it,
And if you fall off,
If you try to establish any habit or quit anything,
And you're going great,
And then something happens,
Don't beat yourself up.
It's not your fault,
So to speak,
But you can take action.
We are human.
We are habitual.
We like what we're doing.
So when we're trying to change something,
That takes a lot of effort.
It might take many,
Many,
Many,
Many,
Many attempts to quit something or to start something.
That's okay.
So be kind to yourself,
But look at it and go,
All right.
Was this a structural thing?
A life thing?
External thing,
Or was this an internal thing,
Something from my past,
Something that I need to address or consider or introspect upon,
Practice some intuitive guidance,
Some mindfulness on the self,
Whatever it is,
To understand why I self-sabotage.
Therapy,
Et cetera.
Address the problem.
Re-engage the strongline and get back on board.
So,
With that said.
The habit that I have worked hard to establish more than any other in my life is meditation.
Primarily a mindfulness based meditation.
But also some insight and self-healing.
But my core fundamental practice is mindfulness meditation.
So we're going to engage with a little bit of that the next 10 minutes together.
So I encourage you,
Once again,
Settle back in.
Turn your attention to the sensations of the breath.
Entering and leaving the nose.
Close down the eyes if you wish really paying attention to the sensation of the breath at the nose.
You know she mind wandering.
Lovingly.
Let's return it back to focus Let's begin.
Okay.
If you'd like to maintain the meditation you're more than welcome to do so.
But for everyone else,
Just gently returning back to their bodies.
Back to the session.
Back to their day.
Today we looked at the basics of mindfulness meditation.
Picking an anchor.
Like the breath.
When you notice your mind wandering.
We bring it back.
We'll explore mindfulness in depth over the next few sessions.
That's the cool practice.
You might want this.
Become aware of its wondering.
And you bring it back.
Just on the topic of habit building.
We just did.
10 minutes of mindfulness.
Track internally if that amount of time.
Is not enough.
Too much,
Or just right.
If you were to establish your own practice.
Play with the times accordingly.
Best amount of time to meditate.
Is the maximum you can do comfortably,
Every day.
Continually.
So that might be one minute a day.
It might be an hour a day.
Or it might be 10 minutes a day.
Whatever that is for you.
For me,
When I'm practicing by myself.
10 minutes.
That's a good amount of time.
My maximum is 30.
If I push to 30.
Life gets in the way a little bit too much,
Other obligations,
And I have to put it aside.
So I stick with 10.
10 in the morning.
And 10 at night.
Starting and ending the day with meditation.
That's my approach.
I would encourage you to find what works for you.
If you haven't already and you're looking to establish a habit of meditation.
Or whatever else.
Determine your strong why.
Write it down.
Share it.
Stick it on your wall so you can read it daily.
And then every day you'll look at that and go,
Oh,
That's why I'm doing this thing.
Remind yourself,
Remind yourself,
Remind yourself.
And when you look at the strong Y,
If it's not quite aligned exactly,
Get real specific.
You might start with a broad topic and then have a lot of dot points.
Spell it out for yourself.
To almost like us,
Our highest self.
Us at our core.
Us aligned.
Is writing a note to future us.
To busy us,
To tired us,
To triggered us,
To the part of us that wants to just.
.
.
Part of us did.
Can't be bothered.
All the different aspects of the self.
You get into that sense of self,
You write your strong why,
With all the reasons and counters,
You're almost playing a game against your future self.
Because this will be a thing that works for you and is aligned for you.
Try and do it daily,
And if you fall off,
That's okay.
Remember.
And then return.
Thanks for joining me.
And I'll see you in the next session.
