Quote Anon

Gratitude, manifesting, eating well and exercising all come naturally to me. Whilst I don’t do any of them immaculately and I tend to dip in and out, I know what I need to do, it’s usually poor choices that get in my way. Me – it’s always me that gets in the way.

Through the years of my yoga practise I’ve learnt over and over again how important the breath is. Thanks to numerous wellbeing podcasts meditation is also something I know I should have a daily practise with. I don’t. I never have and should I meditate on a Monday, I always feel better but it’s months before I return to the practise. Why as humans are we so poor at making time for things we know are good for us? Yet daily I make time to idly scroll on social media, gossip and allow ‘life’ to side track me.

…I know this is the paragraph where I’m meant to share wisdom and all of the answers to the questions I’ve raised above, but I’m just a little lady working through this crazy world too. However, I have managed to sustain a meditation practice for the last 14 days! I don’t feel like I’m a guru on the topic but I will share how I did it and will continue to do it, in hope that perhaps my new habit can either influence you do follow suit or deal with your own habits that you’d like to improve on.

I’m a mornings person and I’m also blessed to sleep like a goddess, so with this in mind my meditation practise happens before I get out of bed. I wake, twitch my nose, stretch my body in a star fish diva action and then I begin. Personally, I find morning meditation sets me up with a positive mindset for a better start to my day. It’s worth considering when you feel you’d best benefit from your new habit. It helps me to get the task done as soon as possible and then I can carry on with my day, knowing I’ve nailed the hard stuff!

I’m still new to this practise so I need someone to hold my hand, as such a guided meditation is working well for me. I’m using an app and listening with my headphones (this also has the luxury of shutting out the household noise of family life – bliss). The app I’m using is insight timer. *this is not an ad

Now here comes the best bit. My intention is to mediate daily, so at this stage it’s a success if the meditation lasts minutes or hours. As such even on my busiest days, I can always wake five minutes earlier to help me achieve my goal. The app allows you to select from meditations in lengths, so I simply click the five minute option and select one that resonates. Let me enhance the magic of this and whys it’s been so successful…I’m not concerning myself with whether my meditation has been groundbreaking, I’m not evaluating whether I cleared my mind, received divine intervention or am at one with the universe…I’m successful if I meditate full stop.

Most days, in my experience I’ve found that I can often give 20minutes or more. This means that I feel like achieved to a higher level…I’ve not just done a quick meditation – I’ve prioritised and excelled my expectations. That said, on busy mornings I’m equally proud to have made five minutes count.

Let me give you one more example because when it comes to building habits we all need to be kinder to ourselves when we achieve…if I go out and run, I successfully ran…at this stage, it’s unhelpful to track speeds, distances etc. once the habit has become imbed in daily life, then you can let your inner Olympian flourish the details.

Habits can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form, on average that’s 66 days until we can truly call something a daily habit, where our subconscious takes over, so don’t be hard on yourself if you fall off the habit train and need to get back on, failure is a wonderful attribute to improve future efforts.

What habit would you love to have with ease and flow? How do you think you can make it a priority? I will definitely come back at day 66 and let you know if my daily habit of morning meditations has stuck.