Background: Those of you who is following may know, I am building a new habit of daily meditation.
The benefits of meditation have always fascinated me. For the longest time, I have always wanted to incorporate regular mindful practices into my daily routine. There are a few reasons why I have not succeed yet:
(i) feel sleepy while meditating
(ii) feel overwhelming to start
(iii) not committed to make it a habit
(iv) forgot to do it on busy days
Do these “reasons” (or you may call excuses) ring a bell to you?
If you also want to incorporate daily meditation into your daily routine but have not yet succeeded, or you would like to incorporate a new habit that you know would be beneficial to you or you bodily health but have not yet succeeded, this article is for you.
In April 2023, I have decided that I shall procrastinate no more and I commit to making daily meditation one of my routines. In the process of research and setting up the system, I came across James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits” and found this book useful in providing tips and hacks into building habit. In essence, the author shares practical advice on how introducing small changes can significantly shape and change our trajectory to achieve success.
I decided to apply some of his theories in building my meditation habit and challenge myself to meditate every day for 30 days.
In this article, I will break down and share:
(i) the 7 key benefits of meditation
(ii) Handling 3 blocker questions in building a new habit
(iii) 4 cautions and tips to make it easier to build a new habit from my own experience
Part 1:
7 Key Benefits of meditation:
(i) a sense of calm, peace and balance that benefit both emotional well-being and overall health
(ii) cope with stress and anxiety
(iii) improves focus and attention
(iv) enhances self-awareness
(v) improves sleep quality
(vi) May reduce age-related memory loss
(vii) reduces inflammation in the brain, thus lowering risk for cancer and other diseases
Disclaimer: The benefits above come from research. I am not medical practitioner and not here to provide medical advice. If you would like to get medical advice please consult licensed medical professionals.
Part 2:
I have shared the basic steps on <How to build a new habit>, on top of that, 3 questions pop into my mind when working on the plan to build the new habit of daily meditation.
Question 1: Is building a new habit adding more to the plate?
Question 2: where do I find the time to incorporate and practice this new habit?
Question 3: what would be the cue for this new habit of daily meditation?
If I cannot solve these 3 questions, I know that I would fall back to the easy existing routine because of the friction against change.
Handling question 1: Is building a new habit adding more to the plate?
I found the solution from the book “Atomic Habit” by James Clear, which is:
“One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top.”
So what I need to do is not to specifically state the time and location for performing the daily meditation, rather it would be easier if I just stack it on an existing habit that I have currently.
This is also called “habit stacking”.
So yes, I still need to find a time to incorp this new habit of daily meditation in my life, but I don’t need to think about the specific time, all I need to think about is “after which habit / event” or “before which habit / event”.
Habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it, hence it reduces the anxiety for “not enough time”.
For example,
My current routine is:
“I wake up > go to toilet > brush my teeth > wash my face > back to my room > apply skincare and sunscreen on face > change clothes”
Applying the principle of habit stacking:
“I wake up > go to toilet > brush my teeth > wash my face > back to my room > 30 seconds meditation > apply skincare and sunscreen on face > change clothes”
In effect, I don’t need to state a specific time because I will just follow my routine, so that reliefs me from “finding time for daily meditation” — perfect for anyone who thinks “I don’t have time for this”!
So one potential time to stack the daily meditation habit would be right in my usual morning routine, the other potential time to stack this would be in the middle of when I am travelling to my work studio from home.
The current routine is:
“leave home > get on car or public transit > listen to audiobooks or podcasts > arrive work studio”
Applying the principle of habit stacking:
“leave home > get on car or public transit > 30 seconds meditation > listen to audiobooks or podcasts > arrive work studio”
That solves question 1.
Handling question 2: where do I find the time to incorporate and practice this new habit?
Resolved as well, since I don’t need to think about a specific time to incorporate the daily meditation with habit stacking technique.
Handling question 3: what would be the cue for this new habit of daily meditation?
This is also resolved as well (you may not be aware):
For incorporating daily meditation in my morning routine, i.e.
“I wake up > go to toilet > brush my teeth > wash my face > back to my room > 30 seconds meditation > apply skincare and sunscreen on face > change clothes”
The cue for this new habit is entering my room when I came back from the washroom.
For incorporating daily meditation in my transit routine, i.e.
“leave home > get on car or public transit > 30 seconds meditation > listen to audiobooks or podcasts > arrive work studio”
The cue is when I get on the car or public transit.
[Update on 6 April 2023:
I have discovered a new way of conducting the daily meditation, which I call “walking meditation”.
It incorporates daily meditation when I am walking after lunch (an existing habit). It looks like this:
“lunch > walk for 30–40 mins — while walking, do meditation > back to work
It works perfectly with my version of breathing meditation because it involves counting 5 seconds breathing in , holding for 5 seconds before breathing out slowly in 5 seconds — for each step forward, that’s “1”. I walk for 5 steps as I slowly breath in, then for the next 5 steps I hold the breathe, and breathe out slowly for the 5 steps after that.
For a 30–40 mins walk, that would be around 4000 steps (according to my step counter).
If I only take 1500 steps for meditation, I could do 100 sets of breathing meditation each day (each set takes 15 steps), which equals to around 20 minutes of meditation each day.]
Part 3:
A few cautions & tips:
1. When and where you choose to insert a habit into your daily routine can make a big difference.
E.g. If you’re trying to add meditation into your morning routine but mornings are chaotic, that may not be the right time for you.
E.g. I tried to incorporate meditation on my way to work studio but later on found out that when I am travelling by public transit the environment is not supportive of meditation. So I developed the walking meditation to incorporate daily meditation into my walking routine instead, which is more of a right place because I can walk in a peaceful and quiet park (much better environment than on public transit).
So you may need to adjust the time and place of incorporation to make this habit a success.
2. The frequency of the habit or event should match with the frequency of the new habit that we’re building.
e.g. if I intend to do daily meditation, I would not stack it on breakfast because I may not eat breakfast every day.
Try not to stack your new habit on an uncertain event, that will reduce the level of success and consistency.
3. Try to get your hands off the phone
A common hindrance I found (in my own experience and students in my program) is that if we get our hands on the phones, we could be easily distracted.
e.g. at the beginning I want to play meditation music to have a better meditation experience. Yet, when I unlock my phone, I would see many notifications — from email, apps, subscription, news, social media etc. and I would be tempted to open those and handle them immediately. Hence drifting us away from what we intend to do (i.e. open the meditation music).
And if luckily and with conscious control, we managed to ignore those notification, then I need to log onto youtube to find a meditation music that feels right for the meditation that day — now I have placed yet another hurdle for myself to overcome before I can do what I intend to (i.e. meditate). Another 5–10 minutes could have easily passed before but I still have not started the meditation, simply for choosing the music.
Plus you know how youtube would recommend videos based on our previous history of viewing, so usually the recommended videos are much to our interest and how confident are you not to be tempted to click onto one of these videos and be drifted away?
So, you see, there are many traps on the way once we get our hands on the phone.
The easiest way to build the habit of meditation is actually to incorporate and stack it on an existing, certain, specific habit that we would certainly do every day.
That would, to the greatest extent possible, reduce the distraction and ensure our completeness of the new habit.
4. Make it easy to start
Reflecting on my experience on exercising, making it as easy as possible to start is one of my best tips in building a new habit.
When I build the habit of exercise, I literally wear sportswear to sleep in order to make it easier to start exercising the other day. Reducing the resistance to make it as easy to start as possible will help a lot in building the new habit.
Therefore, when I am building the daily meditation habit, I make it easy to start by not relying on any apps or music or any external gear (e.g. yoga mat). I focus on the key activity — breathing exercise and that removes a lot of the potential fiction in carrying out the new habit and hence reduce procrastination and abandonment rate.
“Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.” — James Clear
That’s the end of my sharing this time, hope you benefit from it. See you in the next article!
Connie is an Active Reader, Creator to 1 framework “Sustainable Simplified Soulful”, 3 programs “Rich Brain Installation, Knowledge to Cash, Easy Passive Investing”, Author to 1 book “Design your Day: How to Achieve More in a Day than Most Do in a Year”, Host at “Simplified Business Show” podcast. She shares about book recommendations, new learnings, and principles that she learned and practised in business and life.
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