I love meditation. I love meditating. I love the fact that I have a regular meditation practice. I love having meditated each day. And I love that, at the moment, I’m on a long streak of meditating (103 days as of this blog post). Naturally, this gives rise to two questions:
- How did I manage to meditate every day for so long?
- How can I apply this streak of consistency and dedication to other habits I’d like to develop and maintain?
First, the how I did it: I use an app for meditation, which is not necessary (lots of people prefer to just set a timer, or just sit), but I like that it is one-stop meditation shopping. It times me, offers guided meditations for virtually every occasion (it’s the Hallmark of meditation apps) and keeps track of my meditation sessions in varied and excruciating detail.
However, the only data I really care about are how many days in a row I use the app for meditation. How long I meditate is not something I worry about, at least not right now. But how have I not missed a day (yet) in more than three months?
I often start the day with one of several waking up meditations, meant to be used in bed first thing in the morning (either 5 or 10 minutes). There’s also a 3-minute meditation called “Ten Good Breaths” that I’ll if I find myself super-busy from the moment I get up. I do it anyway quite often to reduce my anxiety level and help with transitions during the day. There’s a coffee meditation that I like, which I sometimes spend time with (5–10 minutes). My gold standard, though, is a 10–15 minute lightly guided sit, which I do about 4–5 times a week (in addition to the other ones).
In summary, I’ve got meditation comfortably nestled into my morning rituals. I don’t do anything else for my day until after I’ve meditated. And I’ve figured out how to make this happen, by doing it absolutely first thing and/or making it short enough that I have time just about no matter what happens.
I’d like to have more formal and more longer sits, up to 30 minutes a day, every day. For now, that’s a bit beyond me. I like two weekly live-streamed Youtube meditation sessions (Wednesday and Sunday nights) and occasionally join them. I’ve not managed to lock those into my schedule, though. We’ll see how this goes.
Second, the how can I apply this to other habits (like more physical activity): it’s clear to me from writing this (and reading just about anything on exercise habits) that finding a way to embed physical activity into my day is key to consistency. Tracy wrote in her recent blog post The Motivating Force of a Good Routine that she plans her work day around her physical activity when she can, rather than the other way around. Yes, of course! When we can do this (and yes, Tracy and I are lucky and privileged to have jobs with flexibility), putting exercise into its spot in the day from which it doesn’t budge makes it less subject to getting missed or overridden by other pressing tasks.
Now, establishing an activity as fixed in one’s daily or weekly routine isn’t as easy as typing it into a schedule. I’ve been trying (or sort of trying) for three weeks to set up a weekly Wednesday swim at my gym. Has it happened? Well, no. I could give detailed explanations, but the fact is, I haven’t figured out or committed or done enough (mentally and logistically) to get myself into the pool on Wednesdays. But I’m not giving up. I’ve got my lane reservation, my swim bag packed, and am clearing my schedule for an hour this Wednesday. Wish me luck.
Swimming isn’t like meditation. I can’t swim for 3 minutes or do it in my living room. But I can clear a path and set up a routine, which is what I’m working on now. I’ll report back on whatever happens.
