Mindfulness

11 Ways to Make Meditation a Daily Habit

11 Ways to Make Meditation a Daily Habit

While not quite "mainstream", over the past 30 years in the West, meditation has quickly begun to shift from being perceived as some “woowoo” practice for hippies by most to a useful tool which holds valuable benefits towards cultivating greater well-being.

Nowadays, people of all different backgrounds meditate from executives to employees, doctors to patients, teachers to students, parents to children, and people of all walks of life in between.

It’s no secret that the benefits of meditation aren’t permanent. Meditation is a practice, something which needs to be practiced regularly, if not daily, to gain consistent or continuous benefits from the practice.

And yet I’ve found that, in both my research and personal practice and teaching experience, very few meditators are able to stick to a consistent meditation practice. In fact, most drop off altogether because of their challenge with sticking to a consistent practice.

For years, I struggled to stick to a consistent meditation practice. I had experienced the beauty and benefit of the practice early on and knew what it did for me, and yet, I just couldn’t bring myself to stick to this thing which I knew was good for me (forget "good", let me speak truthfully: life changing). Something always got in the way, but rarely could I pinpoint it.

It took years before I was able to really deconstruct the central challenges that stood in the way of us and sticking to a consistent meditation practice and create a daily practice of my own.

101 Inspiring Mindfulness Quotes to Live By

101 Inspiring Mindfulness Quotes to Live By

Mindfulness practice, at its foundation, is simple and straightforward (at least, the how, actually doing the practice can be another story).

However, the practice of mindfulness is really our whole life. It's mindfulness practice which allows us to become more awake to our life as a whole and uncover countless insights that have a real and significant impact on the quality of our day-to-day life.

For this reason, mindfulness practice touches every aspect of our life. It includes what goes on within us, from the story we tell ourselves in our day-to-day life with thoughts and imaginations and the myriad of feelings we experience such as fear, anger, and sadness to the sensations we feel in the body and how the mind and body are really interconnected as one whole, sensations affecting the mind and thoughts and feelings affecting the body.

However, it goes much further than that. It can change our relationship with loved ones for the positive, improving our patience and priming us for greater understanding, compassion, and loving-kindness.

Years ago, mindfulness and meditation practice changed my life in real and significant ways and it continues to do so today (some of which are associated with what I mentioned above).

The words below might seem like simply enjoyable blurbs either confirming your life's experiences or beliefs or insightful reading which can open your mind to a new idea. And they are exactly that.

10 Easy Ways to Start Being Mindful Today

10 Easy Ways to Start Being Mindful Today

Over the past 30 years, the practice of mindfulness meditation (mostly a secularized version originating from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program) has spread throughout the West.

Today millions of people all around the world are discovering the power of mindfulness through the practice of formal meditation. However, mindfulness practice extends beyond just sitting on the meditation cushion.

Mindfulness practice doesn't stop at being mindful of the breath. In just the same way that we are mindful of physical sensations in the body along with thoughts and emotions in the mind while we meditate, we can become mindful of feelings, thoughts, and emotions throughout our everyday life.

Activities such as walking, cleaning, and driving can be transformed from mundane autopilot activities to moments in our day where we stop the habitual rushing around (even if only for a moment) and come alive to the beauty and peace of that moment.

All it takes to begin living a more mindful life is to do a few minor activities mindfully more often. The result starts out small, but quickly these little moments of mindfulness practice can spread into the rest of your life in the same way that the effects of a consistent sitting meditation practice spread into the rest of your life (provided it's with a consistent effort) and positively affect everything you do.

Below are 10 easy ways to start being more mindful in your daily life. My suggestion? Pick 1-2 of these to work on at first. By focusing in on a few small moments each day you'll be more likely to follow through and develop mindfulness into a daily practice throughout your life.

How to Reaffirm Your Meditation Practice and Get Back Up When You Fail

How to Reaffirm Your Meditation Practice and Get Back Up When You Fail

When you commit to meditation practice, you begin on the path towards self-discovery.

And along this path you'll experience dozens of "little defeats" or adversities. Anyone that's ever worked to do something (anything) has encountered them. It's simply part of the process towards personal and spiritual growth.

Those little defeats don't point to your own inability, though. In fact, they serve as guideposts indicating that you're about to push beyond your current state to something "greater".

Your meditation practice, as well as your goals in the practice, will be unique to you. However, everyone encounters essentially the same types of adversities, or little defeats, along the way that threaten to undermine your efforts: the psychological barrier that convinces us we're being unproductive if we choose to meditate instead of work, the constant busyness that clouds our mind and leaves us asking, "what happened?" at the end of each day, and the fear that we're not practicing properly.

No matter which applies to you, eventually, you're going to lose focus. These adversities and the resulting loss of focus are a natural part of the process (of doing anything, really), so you'll need to know how to get passed them to be able to maintain a consistent practice that brings you calm and clarity.

A loss of focus could last a few hours, days, even months or worst of all if left untreated could lead you to quit on your meditation practice altogether. It's because of this that when these little defeats occur, it's important to treat them with a great sense of urgency.

5 Easy Meditation Techniques for Beginners (and How to Know Where to Start)

5 Easy Meditation Techniques for Beginners (and How to Know Where to Start)

Years ago, meditation and mindfulness practice changed my life in ways I had never imagined were possible.

I'm not talking about increased productivity, the ability to make more money in my business, or some sort of mind-altering evolution, though. These are all things we chase in hopes of feeding our ego so that we can solve the "real" problem- that we feel a "void" within ourselves and we think we need something to "fill it up".

What mindfulness and meditation did do for me was:

  • Teach me how to become friends with myself and handle the inner dialogue that brings us down
  • Show me how to more skillfully manage the challenges of everyday life including my once heavy stress and anxiety
  • Give me the ability to tap into a deep sense of joy through cultivating a sense of gratitude and appreciation for life
  • And come in touch with a basic sense of peace that's beyond the ebbs and flows of daily life.

Mindfulness is the first form of meditation I suggest someone start with because it's the most fundamental of meditation practices and easy to learn (although not always easy to practice, particularly in the beginning).

In a basic sense, it's really just us becoming more aware, more present, in our daily life. However, when done with a sense of intent focus in a ritualized manner, any discursive mindfulness practice can become a deeply nourishing form of meditation.

You can do anything in mindfulness. And it's because you can do anything in mindfulness that it’s those things which we do most often, each and every day, that make up the core mindfulness practices: breathing, walking, eating, and really anything else to do with the body.

However, there’s more to it than that. These foundational exercises also happen to be some of the best mindfulness and meditation techniques for beginners as well. They're simple, straightforward and relatively easy to learn and each has its own unique property which means there is a practice that fits essentially every type of beginner.

 

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