Meditation is one of those things that we all know we “should” be doing. But if you’re like me, going from reading about all the benefits to actually getting a meditation habit going is a whole different ballgame.

I’ve been trying to get a consistent meditation habit for at least 5 years. At some point I had read enough that I was convinced this was a good idea and something that I needed to incorporate into my life. I’ve tried just about every meditation tool there is and most of them are great, but no matter what I just couldn’t get a consistent habit going.

I still don’t get every single day, I’m not perfect, but meditate often enough for long enough that I feel comfortable calling myself a meditator. I still fall off sometimes when I travel or during holidays but it’s all part of the process. I’ve also done it consistently enough that I’m noticing the mental benefits all those studies have been raving about, which makes it easier to keep the habit going. I’ll outline my approach step-by-step below, but first we need a few principles to prepare:

Meditation for Noobs — How to set yourself up for success

The most important piece of advice I could give you is that if you don’t already have a daily meditation routine in place the worst thing you could do is to set a lofty goal (“I will meditate 30 minutes everyday until the apocalypse!). You will do it for a few days, or if you’re really disciplined (congrats!) for a few weeks and then something will come up that will make you miss a day or two. Then those days will start to add up, you’ll begin to forget, and you’ll soon be right back where you started. So principle one is:

Set a ridiculously low bar for success

I’m talking like setting a goal to meditate for 2 minutes. If that sounds like a lot, no shame in making it 1 minute. I’m serious, it needs to feel like “pfft that’s so easy I don’t even see the point in doing that but ok I guess, whatever.” Then thank your inner angsty teenager for being willing to do it.

The goal first and foremost is to get the habit going, you can transcend your body and see the universe later. Since it’s new and you’re a stubborn old mule that’s been doing the same things everyday for years on autopilot, you gotta give yourself a bit of a nudge in the right direction.

Use this low bar as your standard. No matter how long you’ve been meditating, if you can hit the 2-minute timer you set for yourself, you can mentally count it done for that day. Expect that you’ll miss days here and there. Perhaps the holidays came around and you lost yourself in a frenzy of food, family board games, and alcohol until you come out of your drunken stupor realizing you missed an entire month. Or is that just me? That’s okay, jump back on your 2 minute habit whenever you come back to reality. That brings us to principle 2:

Tie your meditation habit to something you already do every day

As mentioned, forming new habits is hard for a stubborn old mule such as yourself. So one thing you must keep in mind for your new habit is the cue you want to associate with it. Charles Duhigg talks about this a lot in his book. Once you decide roughly on when you want to meditate, make something that you already do serve as a cue for your meditation.

For instance, brushing your teeth. You do brush every day right? So when you finish polishing your pearly whites, immediately sit down and start your timer.

I have two cues that I use, the other being getting in my bed. If I missed my previous cue for whatever reason I can do a quick meditation the second I lay down.

What you choose is not super important but it’s gotta be something that you do at the same time every day. Now on to principle three:

Decide on a location, position, time, etc. and stick to that as much as you can

It’s important to make the habit the same in order to ingrain it in your mind. When you go to brush your teeth, you grab your brush and toothpaste the same way you’ve been doing for years, you start brushing in the same spot you always have, and you rinse your mouth out as you always have. You don’t even notice you do this. You also haven’t noticed that perhaps it’s a bit weird to put your entire mouth on the faucet to suck out the water like leech when you have perfectly functional hands that can scoop the water directly into your mouth. But perhaps you’ll learn that one day.

So decide when and where you want to do your meditation, how you want to sit, etc. I like to sit on crosslegged on the couch with a pillow under my butt because it helps me sit straight. What you choose doesn’t matter as much as picking something that you know you will be able to do. Full lotus position is not a prerequisite to meditate. And finally principle four:

Teach yourself to see the meditation itself as its own reward

The final piece in the habit formation loop is the reward. Without it, your body will resist the habit and eventually you’ll lose the motivation to do it. Most people say to give yourself a treat after you complete your desired habit, like getting a smoothie after going to the gym. But this is the wrong approach. You don’t want to externalize the reward, it needs to be fulfilling on it’s own otherwise you’ll eventually abandon it. Yes, that’s also why you can’t keep your gym habit going.

If you can see the activity itself as rewarding, you’ll be able to easily do it continuously. I don’t need to convince you to brush your teeth every day because toothpaste companies add mint flavors to their products so now we associate it with a clean and minty fresh mouth. So teach yourself to enjoy the meditation itself.

Two minutes is just enough time for you to take yourself out of the mental state you were in before and step into a place of peace and calm. It’s just enough for you to be able to create a sense of distance and separation between what you were thinking about before and yourself. Two minutes is all it takes for you to go from frazzled and neurotic to slightly, but noticeably, less frazzled and neurotic.

If you can feel good while doing it and you make it as easy as possible for yourself to do it, you’ll have an easy time. Okay now to the meditation routine itself.

My step-by-step routine

Here’s how I went from struggling to get a meditation habit going for at least 5 years, to where I am today where I meditate (almost) every day.

Keeping the principles for success outlined above, I set myself up on a routine of slowly but steadily increasing focus and concentration as I got better at meditation.

Level 1: Statue

  • Once you’re in your meditation spot and pose, bring your awareness to your body and see if there’s any tension anywhere. Let that tension go.
  • Find a comfortable position that you can maintain for the length of the meditation and set the intention to be as still as humanly possible.
  • Start the timer and don’t move. I mean it. The only movement should be your abdomen from breathing. That is your only goal
  • Observe what happens. Your mind will keep going on and on about stuff. Let it. You’ll get an itch on your head but you’re gonna just observe it, even after doing that only makes it get worse. If your phone goes off (why is your phone next to you while you’re meditating??? Get it together) you’re gonna observe the urge that pops up in yourself to check it, and you’re gonna observe the mind go on it’s daily rant about how these apps are brainwashing us to crave content just because it makes them money. Let everything be and just observe.
  • Continue being perfectly still until the timer goes off.

That’s it. Stillness in the body will lead to stillness in the mind, and doing this first will make it easier for you to ease yourself into the process. See what I did there? It’s another low bar! Your mind won’t shut up and it’s not supposed to, making that the goal is like trying to get a bird to stop chirping. It’s going against it’s nature. So let the mind do it’s thing, you can much more easily control the body though and simply observe it.

Once you can easily and confidently do this for 2 minutes, start to increase the length of the timer by 1 or 2 minutes at a time. You don’t want to overexert yourself here so take your time, remember there’s no rush and there’s no finish line. It’s just you here. If you ever need to bump it back down to your original 2-minute timer feel free to do so and don’t be a judgmental dick towards yourself about it.

Once you are able to sit perfectly still without fidgeting and even without moving your eyes under your eyelids or your tongue in your mouth for 15 minutes (it took me like 2 months to get there), move on to the next level.

Level 2: Relax bro

  • Get started the same as before, your aim is to sit still here as well
  • Begin scanning each part of your body and simply noticing what’s there.
  • If there’s tension, simply bringing your awareness to it will relax it
  • Start at your toes (I find it easier to do one leg at a time), then move your awareness up through your entire body, scanning it piece by piece, until you get to the top of your head
  • Once you finish the scan, see if you can be aware of your entire body at once. Not focusing on any specific area but just aware of your body, the position you’re in, the space you take up, etc.
  • Whenever your mind goes off, simply bring the attention back to what you were doing. No need to point it out even, I used to mentally say “op mind has wandered” or “there you go again you little shit” but there’s no need for that. Just bring it back over and over to the point of your focus until your timer goes off

I’d recommend keeping your timer at the same time you had before for moving on to this level, about 15 minutes, and increasing it to 30 or more if you want. But remember you can always go back to your baseline of 2 minutes.

Level 3: Anchor Yourself Fool

Since the mind is so easily distracted, giving it something to focus on can help you in your meditation efforts. The breath happens naturally but is also something we can consciously control, making it an excellent point of focus for meditation. Just the act of watching the breath tends to slow it down, which will relax you further and help you get into deeper states of meditation.

Another tactic is to anchor the mind on a mantra. Just focus your mind on a word or sound as you inhale and exhale. I usually go for the standard “om” on the out breath.

This is a very basic method but there’s a reason for it’s long-enduring popularity. Sometimes I’ve been able to almost feel my body vibrating in concert with the om chant in my mind. Try it out.

What Next?

This is the level I’m on. I consistently meditate for 10-15 minutes most nights following the routine outlined above. I cannot speak highly enough of how much this has helped me. Simply the act of observing the mind has allowed me to not get caught up in its drama throughout the day.

If I find another level after this I’ll add it here. But for now, after my timer goes off I’ve sprinkled in other meditation methods I’ve learned about to try them out. Here are my favorites:

Gratitude

  • Mentally ask yourself “what am I grateful for?” three times
  • Don’t overthink it, this is an intuitive process. Keep it simple (“I’m grateful I woke up this morning”) and try not to repeat answers

Metta — Loving-kindness meditation

  • Mentally say in your mind “May I be happy. May I be well. May I be safe. May I be peaceful and at ease”
  • Repeat this phrase silently to yourself, letting this feeling wash over you.
  • Then, move on to someone you love dearly. Mentally visualize them in your mind and mentally say those phrases towards them: “May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.”
  • Now move on to some other person you’ve encountered recently, the barista, that co-worker you said hello to on the elevator, that stranger you noticed while you were eating your lunch or waiting at the stoplight. Mentally say those same phrases towards them.
  • And finally, bring to mind someone who you’ve had difficulty with in the past. Could be someone that just rubs you the wrong way or your sworn arch-nemesis. Mentally repeat those phrases and wish those things for them.

The last piece of this is obviously the hardest, but I think also the most important. When you carry ill will towards someone the only person that suffers from that is you. You have to carry that, not them. If you can get to the point where you view them not as an enemy but as another person with flaws (perhaps many), hopes, and dreams that perhaps you will never want to be around but can empathize with, you’ll be able to slowly let that tension go. Eventually you will simply realize they no longer have the power to influence your mind and your emotions like they used to. Try it, it works

One tip you can try here is to switch the order of the first two steps. So instead of starting with yourself, you can start with someone you love dearly and then yourself. Sometimes people find it easier to get into that loving state when they think about their loved ones than when they think about themselves, myself included. Where my self-loathing homies at??

View from above / metta extension

I usually do this right after I finish the gratitude and/or metta meditation above. Basically you take that feeling of love and visualize first filling up you heart area in your chest, then taking up a bigger and bigger space until it eventually fills and covers everything.

  • After you finish your metta or gratitude meditation, get in touch with the feeling that arises in your body. Feel that love and gratitude within you
  • Allow it to settle in your heart area and give it a color, whatever color you want is fine. I usually go with a bright white light. You can sit here at this stage (or any stage) for as long as you like
  • Once you are able to fully visualize your heart center and feel the color radiating out of that area, take a deep breath and visualize the energy charging up
  • On the out breath, picture that charge releasing and the energy spreading to your whole body until it fully fills and encapsulates your being.
  • Take another deep breath, charging the energy again, and on the out breath imagine the energy going beyond your body and filling the room. Imagine it touching anything that is alive in the room: people, pets, plants, etc. and picture the love energy radiating from you filling them with the same feeling that is within you.
  • Continue this process of expanding at your own pace. Radiating love in whatever color you chose from your heart out into a larger and larger space, touching every living thing as you do so
  • After you fill the room, spread out to your house, then your neighborhood, then your city, then your state, then your country, then the whole world, then the solar system, then the milky way galaxy, then the local group of galaxies in our galactic neighborhood, and finally the entire universe.
  • Let that feeling sit for a while as it permeates the entire universe. Feel how everything is connected, how a sense of separation is an illusion.
  • Come back to your body at your own pace and end the meditation

Walking Meditation

To start, pick a quiet location where you won’t be distracted. A park, a garden, or even a quiet indoor space are all great. Before you start, stand still for a moment and take a few deep breaths to center yourself.

Begin to walk slowly and deliberately, paying attention to each step you take. As you lift your foot, notice the sensation of your heel rising, then the rolling motion as you transfer your weight to the ball of your foot, and finally the lifting and placement of your toes. Keep your gaze directed on the ground a few feet in front of you and maintain a relaxed and steady pace, and let your walking become a rhythmic, mindful movement.

Deep Concentration

This one is an interesting one. Pick an inanimate object around you like a pen, a watch, or a fork and observe it for a bit while trying to take in all the details. Really focus on ingraining a mental image in your mind. Once you’ve done that, put it down, close your eyes and recreate that image in your mind with as much detail as possible.

At first you will only be able to do this for a few seconds and you will find other images interrupting your focus, but keep practicing and you will learn how to do this more effectively. After you can keep the item in your minds eye for a while see if you can move it around in space. Recreate a 360 degree view of it in your mind.

This short exercise helps increase your powers of concentration as well as your ability for visualization and creativity.

Guided meditation

Thanks to our collective addiction to content and the internet, there’s tons of options for guided meditation these days. Try different ones out and see what you like.

I’ve done both Headspace and Calm and have liked both. Spotify has a ton of guided meditations you can do as well. There’s a bunch on Youtube. I like this 6-phase meditation as it covers a lot of the other methods i outlined here in under 20 minutes.

A lot of people use these to get started but it never worked for me for some reason. However, once I’m in that meditative state I’ve been able to use guided meditations to get deeper. Lately my favorites have been chakra guided meditations.

Binaural beats

I can’t remember how I found out about this but I’ve reached some really deep meditation states using binaural beats. Internet is your friend here again, I recommend Theta (4-8 Hz) and make sure you have headphones!

Dance / Flow meditation

Prepare to look like an idiot. This one you find some music and just move your body without conscious thought. I only do this one when I know I’m completely alone because I don’t ever want to see a meme of me dancing next to a whacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man.

There’s one that has some guidance on Youtube I like or there’s some playlists on Spotify

Conclusion

I like the metaphor of using levels because the one thing you need to realize is that at every level the only one you’re working to surpass is yourself. You’re the final boss. The benefits of meditation are incredible and the only thing standing in the way between where you are now and where you could be is you. Work on mastering yourself so you can get out of your own way and then see what you’re able to do in the external material world.

Unknown's avatar

Published by JJ