A friend of mine recently said how he was struggling to meditate. He knows it will have an immense effect on his body and mind. He understands the power of meditation and what it can help him with, like more focus, attention, calmness, and serenity throughout his day. But can’t seem to do it consistently. Sound familiar?
I’ve once meditated for over 621 days in a row. Yes, you read that right. Getting close to two years straight. I know what it takes to create and stick to powerful routines, and today I’m going to share with you the one that changed it all for me.
Doing anything day after day can be difficult, especially if you try and do too much. Meditation is one of those items; if you’re not doing it, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. Learn my top 3 rules for creating this routine and sticking to it.
I thought meditation was for monks and weird people about six years ago. I didn’t understand the benefits nor seem to think they would help me in any way, boy was I wrong…
Today I want to share how to create an unbreakable meditation routine. Something that you will consistently do for over a year. Yes, you read that right. I want this to be so ingrained into your life that you do it for more than 365 days straight. Doable? Yes. Realistic? Yes. I’ve done it, and so can you.
You must commit to it if you want to meditate more in your life. You must focus on doing it every single day.
There was one point in my life when I thought I should only focus on meditating or partaking in my important daily habits only 5 days a week, Monday to Friday. I thought it would be wise to get some breathing room on the weekends to change it up. Was this effective, you might be wondering? No.
To build this routine, you must commit to it 100%. And that commitment requires you to be all in on yourself. To do that, you must aim to do it every day, seven days a week! While this might sound like overkill, trust me, it’s not. Building a world-class habit will undoubtedly change how you live your life.
When you plan to do something daily, you also hold yourself accountable. This accountability is essential to follow through on tasks you want to complete. This is why coaching can be so effective. Someone is there cheering for you, holding you accountable at every step.
The daily habit of meditation must be scheduled. What I mean by this is what time do you plan on meditating? The first tip I can give you before you answer is the best time to focus on your breath is first thing in the morning.
Whether you wake up at 5:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m. doesn’t matter. But when you do wake up, have time set aside right away to sit down and meditate.
Write this time down in your planner (if you don’t have a planner buy one). Put it on your phone and your calendar. If you can start effectively building this time and schedule into your morning, it will help you stay on track.
I have four daily habits that I focus on executing each day. Meditation is on this list and has been there for over 6 years.
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With meditation, you don’t need any tech or equipment. It’s free to do anytime, anywhere. Although, this is not how I’ve been able to stay consistent over the years.
I’ve always believed in and used an app called Headspace. Headspace is a paid software that you download onto your phone or another device. It has many different functions, but I mainly use it for meditation courses.
Having an app allows you to follow the structure of focusing on your breath correctly. It will give you small cues via someone's voice to gently remind you what you should be doing or focusing on at that time.
I’ve used and supported Headspace since its early days when it only offered meditations. Now it comes with a wide array of other things such as; exercise and fitness, sleep meditations and sounds, music, and even a podcast.
There is a wide range of different meditation courses you can take depending on what you want to focus on. Some of these courses are; Letting Go of Stress, Communicating with Care, Navigating Change, Acceptance, Balance, Creativity, and much more.
Whatever you want to focus on at any given time, I’m sure they’ve developed a course or single meditation to help you do that. They now also have various people/voices that you can choose for each meditation or course.
I love this feature because you can hear different people with different soothing voices. Choose the one you prefer or switch it up often as I do.
Headspace does offer a free starting trial which I recommend starting with. You can download the app on iOS or Android devices and start immediately. The free version only comes with a limited number of basic meditations and the length of time for each.
Once you use it for about a week or so, I think it’s best to go all in and invest in the yearly subscription. At the time of this post, it costs $89.99 per year or $17.99 a month.
Take my advice, purchase the yearly subscription, and be done with it. Investing in the app will also hold you accountable for using it. Whenever you invest money or time into something, you are more likely to put effort into using it.
The beauty of using an app like Headspace is all the essential data is stored and shown to you. I can click on my name in the bottom right of the app and be shown various data, which helps keep me motivated and inspired to keep going.
I can see data on my average meditation length, total meditation time, completed sections, and run streak.
Here’s a quick look at my current stats:
Average meditation length: 10 minutes
Total meditation time: 12,499 minutes
Sessions completed: 1286
Run streak: 6 days
I had a lengthy conversation with a friend the other day about improving his health and nutrition. I went into many details on what to track and why tracking was so important. It allows you to see where you’ve come from, what’s working, what’s not, and what changes to make.
We then agreed that it’s the same concept as money. To save more money, you must track your expenses and income and budget your money correctly. This tracking method works for anything you want to improve! I’ve used it across many different areas of my life, and it works the same with meditation.
If you want to improve anything - track it.
An app to follow guided meditations is excellent as it also acts as a tracker. The most crucial tracking measure here (in my opinion) is the run streak.
The run streak within this app is the tool that allowed me to meditate for almost two years straight - without missing a single day. This tool is powerful because you don’t want to miss a meditation once you see the number grow.
Each day you meditate, you see the number continue to grow and go up. This helps you as it gives you a small pat on the back. You think to yourself, yes, another day in a row! And this is my trick to meditating consistently.
Set a desired (realistic) goal for your run streak. If you’ve never meditated consistently before, start with something small such as seven days. Continue to pursue this goal until you achieve it. Focus on meditating for seven days in a row.
If you get off track and miss a day, don’t get upset or let it get you down. The best thing to do is get back at it right away. Try not to EVER miss two days in a row because momentum will take over.
Whether you have a streak of meditating or not, meditating momentum and these numbers will grow in either direction.
Once you hit seven days, aim for fourteen days, then thirty, then ninety. You get the point. Before I set some massive run streaks, I did okay daily. Most days, I would meditate, but some I missed, no big deal, right? Well, this wasn’t good enough for me and the level of commitment I decided I wanted to make.
So, I decided to set a big run streak goal - six months. Then my next one was a year, and it continued to grow and grow and grow. A year in, the habit and streak I had built was so unstoppable it was magical.
It was harder not to meditate than to continue the streak. It was ingrained in my day and ingrained into my life. And the benefits I was getting from this practice were truly life changing.
Start with a small run streak goal and raise the stakes higher and higher until you consistently meditate for over thirty days in a row.
That sums up my 3 rules to create an unbreakable meditation routine! Let’s do a quick recap of what we covered.
If you want to do anything successfully and at a high level of competency, you must commit to doing it daily. You must get obsessed with attaining it every minute of the day.
I suggest figuring out the top things that are important to you. The top things will get you closer to the goals you seek and the life you want to create.
You hold the keys and secret to unlocking your potential already. The question I have for you is, what are you going to do with them?
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Chris M Wilson
Chris Wilson is a keynote speaker, CTI coach, and entrepreneur. Through his Hover to Fly framework, he aims to impact the next generation in their careers and lives.
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