The One You Feed - Mini Episode- How I Built a Meditation Habit

Episode Date: December 13, 2014

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and everything that catches my attention. I am here to call it as I see it. And there's a whole lot of things catching my eyes these days. Listen to the I Am Rap Report Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. After listening to this whole episode that I just recorded, I figured it might be important to let you know that I am not high as a kite on Quaaludes. I'm just talking very quietly so as to not wake people up in the other room. I'm also not trying to talk like Eckhart Tolle. Hey everyone, it's Eric from The One You Feed, and this is another mini episode. This week we're going to talk about how I was able to create a meditation habit that has now been going on for 407 straight days. A little background is that I've been trying

to build a meditation habit for a long time, pretty much my entire adult life, and have never had any real success in getting anything consistent. It was on again, off again, I'd get a couple weeks in, I'd fall off, but I never was able to build something that lasted week after week, day after day, for a long period of time. So I thought after having James Clear on this week and talking about habits, that it'd be interesting to kind of go back and look at how I was able to do it and see if there's anything applicable for you and myself in building other habits. A lot of the things we're going to cover are things we talk about on the show pretty regularly, but I thought I'd try and condense it into one short episode. And so I think the major learnings that I had was the first

was I finally just got really committed to the idea. I spent some time thinking about it and I really looked at what the motivations were and more and more I kept reading and hearing about the benefits of meditation. And so I decided that I was going to give it a shot and try and be serious about it. The next thing that I did was, and we talk about this a lot on the show, is I started really, really small. When I used to try a meditation habit, I would start out with 15 or 20 minutes a day, which was misery. And so this time I started at two minutes, two minutes a day. And I built from there. I'm now up to about 20 a day, most days, sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes a little bit shorter, but that's the average over

time. The other thing that I did, and this tends to work for me a lot, is I made a little bit of a game out of it, and I tracked it. I used the Lyft application, which you can use on your browser or on your phone, and it allows you to keep track of how often you're doing it. And one of the things it has is the concept of a streak. And after I got a little bit of time in, I started to build a streak of, oh, I've been going 10 days. Oh, I've been going 20 days. And that helped me to keep up with it. The next thing that I did, and this was really important for meditation in particular, so we'll spend a couple minutes on it. I think it applies to other habits also, but it was I had to adjust my

expectations about what was going to happen. So with meditation, I always had this idea that the meditation period was supposed to be the period that I felt all blissed out. And if I wasn't feeling really happy during the meditation, then I wasn't doing it right. Hence, I wasn't a good meditator and I didn't get any benefit. And what I realized after reading a lot about it and learning about it was it made no difference how the experience was while I was doing it. That two minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes that I spent meditating was really not important. What it was, was the benefit it gave to the rest of my life. And after I made that switch, I stopped judging each individual session. Oh, am I enjoying this? Am I not enjoying it? Am I doing well? Am I not doing well? And I just did

it. Now, I think that this can apply to other habits in a couple different ways. One is, say, take exercising. We may not like exercising some of the time, but that's not exactly the point. The point is the benefit it gives us elsewhere. But I think the other thing is we get too attached to an expectation of how quickly changes are going to happen in our life. So if I start exercising and lifting weights, I want to look like a men's health cover model in two weeks. And if I'm not, if I'm not making the progress that I think, and it's not as visible as I think, then I get discouraged. What I realized with meditation was that it's very hard to measure the benefits, but I believe that there are benefits and I start

to see them over time, but that the key is I just keep up with it. For meditation, we've talked on the show before, I really changed my thinking about it to something more akin to mental hygiene, sort of like brushing my teeth. We brush our teeth and we're not, you know, every day going, wow, I wonder if those look great or are my teeth, you know, better? We just know it's the right thing for our teeth and we do it. And so I came to believe that meditation was the right thing for my brain. And so I started doing it and I kept my expectations really reasonable. The other thing I would say is ties into that, which is to remember our motivations as we go. I tend to start out very motivated.

I'm all fired up. I'm reading about it. But as time goes on, I stop doing that. And I start to forget why I even thought it was important in the first place. And so one of the things I found was, and I think the show was a big help because we have guests on all the time that are talking about it and I'm reading about it, was that it remained in the front of my mind how important it was to do it and why I was doing it. And that was really helpful. So I think one thing I learned was to sort of revisit those meditations, to read articles that are inspiring, or just stay focused on that habit, particularly in the period of time that you're still really building it.

And as James Clear talked about and I've read before, I've always thought that 21 days to build a habit thing was nonsense because many times I've done something for more than 21 days, and it didn't become what I would call a habit. And as James pointed out, it really has to do with what's the difficulty of what you're trying to change or to build. Another thing that was really important was this idea of, I call it be flexible as hell, or a little of something is better than nothing. James put it slightly more scientific sounding, which was reduce the scope, stick to the schedule. But the idea was, particularly for me, because I make a game out of it and I like to track that streak, was that I some days wasn't going to get 20 minutes of meditation in. Some days I got five in, but I made sure to try and

get that five. And I had to be flexible on where I did it. Oh, I want to be in a quiet room. And I just kind of had to give all that away and say, you know what, I'm going to make five minutes happen somewhere in some way. And I think that runs a little counterintuitive to some traditional ideas around habit building that you should do the same thing in the same place every day, which I think is wonderful if you can make that happen. But if your life is anything like mine, that sort of consistency seems to be very elusive. I plan to do it first thing in the morning. So as long as I get up early, I've got time to do it. And then one of the kids has to go into school early two days in a week. And that time is gone. And that sort of thing just seems to be very consistent in my life. Oh, I'm traveling and I've got a really early meeting. So for me, it's helped to be really flexible with what I'm doing and make sure I get it in. And that idea of a little something is better than nothing. Five minutes is better than nothing. And it allowed me to keep my

streak going. The other thing though, I think we've got to be careful about, because I've run into this many times before, is that if I miss a day, and I haven't, but believe me, I did many times in building up to the point where I got to this streak, which was that I would miss a day not to give up and go, oh, well, hell, it doesn't matter anymore. And so James Clear calls it never miss twice, which I think is a really great idea. I miss a day, I get back to it the next day. great idea. I miss a day, I get back to it the next day. So to just recap these ideas, it was, let's make it really small and build from there. Adjust our expectations, track it or make a game out of it. Remember our motivations. Be flexible as can be. Reduce the scope, stick to the schedule. A little of something is better than nothing that core idea

and never miss twice and then the last one which i haven't done too much of but i've done a little is engage support from other people find somebody else that can do it with you and if you can have somebody else who's doing it and lift is a great application for that because there's a social element to it and you can create challenges and you can work with other people and that can be another really helpful way to do it. So hopefully that is helpful for you in some way. I think it was helpful for me to try and codify why it worked this time for me. And we will talk again soon.

Thanks and see ya. Bye.