We were laying in bed at his loft on the bowery, and I was looking around wondering why he had so many mirrors.
Did he like watching himself have sxx?
Was he a narcissist?
We’d been dating for a few weeks and I wasn’t sure how much I liked him.
I was figuring him out. I was having fun.
I was doing things on my terms, per usual.
The conversation drifted to meditation, as I knew he had done an interactive art installation based on it.
I asked him how often he meditates – I’m always so curious about people’s daily routines.
He flip-flopped for a few minutes before admitting he doesn’t really meditate on a regular basis, although he identifies as a meditator.
I don’t care either way – I’m just a voyeur who loves knowing peoples’ daily habits.
It got me thinking about how many people identify as meditators, but don’t actually meditate on a regular basis.
They want to, but they just can’t get their practice to stick.
It’s the same with food – I know so many people who theoretically identify as vegan or paleo, but are the opposite in practice.
Near-daily meditation has been absolutely fundamental to healing my relationship with food and my body, and mastering intuitive eating.
In our go-go-go society, it can feel hard to truly sit down and do nothing – a difficult concept for the brain and body to grasp.
For this reason, a lot of people say “Oh yeah, I meditate while I’m running, cooking, and cleaning.”
Living a meditative life is beautiful, but it’s absolutely not the same as silent, seated meditation. The benefits just don’t compare.
It took me a while to develop a truly regular practice, but once I did, everything changed.
I could hear what my body was asking for at each meal, and I was no longer at war with myself.
Why is it so hard to meditate on a regular basis?
How do you go from identifying as a meditator to becoming someone who actually meditates?
These are the frameworks that have helped me most…
1. Drop the all-or-nothing mindset.
Most days I meditate for 10-20 minutes. Some days I meditate for 3-5 minutes. Once in a while, I meditate for 1 minute.
Before I developed a regular meditation practice, I would either do 10 minutes or nothing. Anything else felt “useless” to me.
In letting myself meditate for super small amounts of time, and letting myself truly be in the process of building up slowly, I naturally began to want to meditate for longer, more often.
2. Take a self-directed approach.
A lot of people like to shove their experience and/or scientific studies on you. This usually doesn’t create change, or at best, it creates short-term change.
The best way to build any habit is to experience the benefits for yourself, in your own time. This is self-directed growth, and for me, it’s the only type of growth that really sticks.
We can and should absolutely have outside support, but it must be secondary to our self-directed process.
Choose a style of meditation that appeals to you and keep a journal on how you feel throughout a 30-day devotional practice, where you do it every day, even if it’s just 1 minute.
Allow yourself to experience the benefits first hand, and decide how often you want to meditate based on that, rather than basing your routines on other peoples’ experiences or studies.
3. Be the pebble.
Your True Home by Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my bibles.
It’s a series of short spiritual lessons, and I often think of this one when I’m meditating:
Like a Pebble in the River
“Please, when you practice meditation, don’t make any effort. Allow yourself to be like a pebble at rest. The pebble is resting at the bottom of the river, and the pebble does not have to do anything [emphasis added]. While you are walking, you are resting. While you are sitting, you are resting.”
This passage gave me permission to truly do nothing, which was legendary and life-changing for me.
It allows me to drop in and receive the time I’m giving myself – the time of genuine stillness, peace, and decompression.
Imagining myself floating to the bottom of a calm creek, like a pebble, just really does it for me.
Finding an image that soothes and allows you to drop in makes a huge difference.
Follow your intuition to a spiritual text or teacher and keep your eye out for an image that works for you. When you consciously choose to open up to guidance, it’ll make itself clear to you.
4. Let it be a gift.
A lot of people are constantly stressed, running around, and complaining that they never get a true break.
Meditation is a true break, even more so than vacation. I love vacation, but meditation just hits different, and is a more direct route to relaxing and resetting, in my experience.
Gifting yourself 10-20 minutes each day sets you up for productivity, play, ease, and flow.
Organizing your internal landscape before you approach the day changes the trajectory of your entire day. It’s magic.
Let meditation be something you get to do, not something you have to do.
Allow your body to truly relax, your mind to get quiet, and your pelvis to sink into the ground, rather than going over your to-do list or wondering if you’re doing it right. The pebble image helped me so much with this.
5. Build it in.
It doesn’t matter whether you meditate in the morning, afternoon, or evening.
A lot of people I speak with have the belief, “If I don’t do it in the morning, it’s not happening.”
This belief can be shifted.
I’ve meditated at 7am, 3pm, 10pm, and many other times of day. It works!
But if I believed it was only possible to meditate at 7am, and I reinforced that belief over and over by not allowing myself to meditate at any time other than 7am, many days would’ve gone by without the gift of meditation.
Any time you notice a limiting belief pop up, replace it. Pause, gently notice the belief, thank it for trying to serve you, let it go, and switch it up.
Take a deep breath and consciously tell yourself, “I can allow myself to meditate any time, and the benefits are just the same.”
The benefits of meditation compound – yes, meditation can be a beautiful way to set the tone for your day, but your 10pm meditation also affects the next day.
No meditation is for not.
Allow yourself to build meditation into your schedule anywhere it fits. Once it becomes a non-negotiable part of your day, like food and water, it will become a regular practice.
It can be scary to sit down with only your thoughts, but it’s one of the most effective ways to reorganize and reset your nervous system, which controls your entire body – weight, metabolism, mood.
Meditation creates a buffer between you and your thoughts, and you and the outside world.
It allows you to respond rather than react.
It allows you to choose your food, rather than your food choosing you.
It creates a soft, resilient internal landscape.
Meditation simply allows you to navigate the world much more effectively.
Is meditation challenging for you? Do you love it?
If you have a regular practice, how did you make it stick?
I’d love to hear your experience in the comments below.
With so much love,
Lula