Speaker 1: After listening to this whole episode that I just recorded,
Speaker 1: I figured it might be important to let you know
Speaker 1: that I am not high as a kite on Queludes.
Speaker 1: I'm just talking very quietly so as to not wake
Speaker 1: people up in the other room. I'm also not trying
Speaker 1: to talk like Eckert tole Hey everyone, it's Eric from
Speaker 1: the One You Feed, and this is another mini episode.
Speaker 1: This week we're going to talk about how I was
Speaker 1: able to create a meditation habit that has now been
Speaker 1: going on for four hundred and seven straight days. A
Speaker 1: little background is that I've been trying to build a
Speaker 1: meditation habit for a long time, pretty much my entire
Speaker 1: adult life, and have never had any real success in
Speaker 1: getting anything consistent. It was on again, off again. I'd
Speaker 1: get a couple of weeks in i'd fall off, but
Speaker 1: I never was able to build something that lasted week
Speaker 1: after week, day after day for a long period of time.
Speaker 1: So so I thought, after having James clear on this
Speaker 1: week and talking about habits, that would be interesting to
Speaker 1: kind of go back and look at how I was
Speaker 1: able to do it and see if there's anything applicable
Speaker 1: for you and myself in building other habits. A lot
Speaker 1: of the things we're going to cover our things we
Speaker 1: talked about on the show pretty regularly, but I thought
Speaker 1: I'd try and condense it into one short episode. And
Speaker 1: so I think the major learnings that I had was
Speaker 1: the first was I finally just got really committed to
Speaker 1: the idea. I spent some time thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: I really looked at what the motivations were, and more
Speaker 1: and more I kept reading and hearing about the benefits
Speaker 1: of meditation, and so I decided that I was going
Speaker 1: to give it a shot and and try and be
Speaker 1: serious about it. The next thing that I did was,
Speaker 1: and we talked about this a lot on the show,
Speaker 1: is I started really really small. When I used to
Speaker 1: try and meditation habit, I would start out with fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty minutes a day, which was misery. And so
Speaker 1: this time I started it two minutes two minutes a day,
Speaker 1: and I built from there. I'm now up to about
Speaker 1: twenty a day most days, sometimes a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: sometimes a little bit shorter, but that's the average over time.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I did, and this tends to
Speaker 1: work for me a lot, is I made a little
Speaker 1: bit of a game out of it, and I tracked it.
Speaker 1: I used the Lift application, which you can use on
Speaker 1: your browser or on your phone, and it allows you
Speaker 1: to keep track of how often you're doing it. And
Speaker 1: one of the things it has is the concept of
Speaker 1: a streak. And after I got a little bit of
Speaker 1: time and I started to build a streak of oh
Speaker 1: i've been going ten days, Oh I've been going twenty days,
Speaker 1: and that helped me to keep up with it. The
Speaker 1: next thing that I did, and this was really important
Speaker 1: for meditation in particular, So we'll spend a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes on it. I think it applies to other habits also,
Speaker 1: but it was I had to adjust my expectations about
Speaker 1: what was going to happen. So with meditation, I always
Speaker 1: had this idea that the meditation period was supposed to
Speaker 1: be the period that I felt all blissed out. And
Speaker 1: if I wasn't feeling really happy during the meditation, then
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing it right. Hence I wasn't a good
Speaker 1: meditator and I didn't get any benefit. And what I
Speaker 1: realized after reading a lot about it and learning about it,
Speaker 1: was it made no difference how the experience was while
Speaker 1: I was doing it. That two minutes or ten minutes
Speaker 1: or twenty minutes that I spent meditating was really not important.
Speaker 1: What it was was the benefit it gave to the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. And after I made that switch,
Speaker 1: I stopped judging each individual session. Oh am I enjoying this?
Speaker 1: Am I not enjoying it? Am I doing well? Am
Speaker 1: I not doing well? And I just did it. Now.
Speaker 1: I think that this can apply to other habits in
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways. One is, say, take exercising.
Speaker 1: We may not like exercising some of the time, but
Speaker 1: that's not exactly the point. The point is the benefit
Speaker 1: it gives us elsewhere. But I think the other thing
Speaker 1: is we get too attached to an expectation of how
Speaker 1: quickly changes are going to happen in our life. So
Speaker 1: if I start exercising and lifting weights, I want to
Speaker 1: look like a Men's Health cover model in two weeks.
Speaker 1: And if I'm not, if I'm not making the progress
Speaker 1: that I think and it's not as visible as I think,
Speaker 1: then I get discouraged. What I realized with meditation was
Speaker 1: that it's very hard to measure the benefits. But I
Speaker 1: believe that there are benefits, and I start to see
Speaker 1: them over time. But that the key is I just
Speaker 1: keep up with it. For meditation, we've talked on the
Speaker 1: show before, I really changed my thinking about it to
Speaker 1: something more akin to mental hygiene, sort of like brushing
Speaker 1: my teeth. We brush our teeth and we're not, you know,
Speaker 1: every day going wow, I wonder if those look great
Speaker 1: or are my teeth you know better? We just know
Speaker 1: it's the right thing for our teeth, and we do it.
Speaker 1: And so I came to believe that meditation was the
Speaker 1: right thing for my brain, and so I started doing it,
Speaker 1: and I kept my expectations really reasonable. The other thing
Speaker 1: I would say is ties into that, which is to
Speaker 1: remember our motivations as we go. I tend to start
Speaker 1: out very motivated. I'm all fired up, I'm reading about it.
Speaker 1: But as time goes on, I stopped doing that and
Speaker 1: I start to forget why I even thought it was
Speaker 1: important in the first place. And so one of the
Speaker 1: things I found was, and I think the show was
Speaker 1: a big help because we have guests on all the
Speaker 1: time that are talking about it and I'm reading about it,
Speaker 1: was that it remained in the front of my mind
Speaker 1: how important it was to do it and why I
Speaker 1: was doing it, and that was really helpful. So I
Speaker 1: think one thing I learned was it to sort of
Speaker 1: revisit those meditations, to read articles that are inspiring, or
Speaker 1: just stay focused on that habit, particularly in the period
Speaker 1: of time that you're still really building it. And as
Speaker 1: James clear talked about and I've read before, I've always
Speaker 1: thought that twenty one days to build a habit thing
Speaker 1: was nonsense because many times I've done something for more
Speaker 1: than twenty one days and it didn't become what I
Speaker 1: would call a habit. And as James pointed out, it
Speaker 1: really has to do with what's the difficulty of what
Speaker 1: you're trying to change or to build. Another thing that
Speaker 1: was really important was this idea of um I call
Speaker 1: it be flexible as hell, or a little of something
Speaker 1: is better than nothing. James put it slightly more scientific
Speaker 1: sound in which was reduced the scope stick to the schedule.
Speaker 1: But the idea was particularly for me because I make
Speaker 1: a game out of it and I like to track
Speaker 1: that streak. Was that I some days wasn't going to
Speaker 1: get twenty days or twenty minutes of meditation, and some
Speaker 1: days I got five in, but I made sure to
Speaker 1: try and get that five and I had to be
Speaker 1: flexible on where I did it. Oh, I want to
Speaker 1: be in a quiet room and it and I just
Speaker 1: kind of had to give all that away and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to make five minutes happen
Speaker 1: somewhere in some way. And I think that runs a
Speaker 1: little counterintuitive to some traditional ideas around habit building that
Speaker 1: you should do the same thing in the same place
Speaker 1: every day, which I think is wonderful if you can
Speaker 1: make that happen. If your life is anything like mine,
Speaker 1: that sort of consistency seems to be very elusive. I
Speaker 1: plan to do it first thing in the morning, so
Speaker 1: as long as I get up early, I've got time
Speaker 1: to do it. And then one of the kids has
Speaker 1: to go into school early two days in a week
Speaker 1: and that time is gone. And that sort of thing
Speaker 1: just seems to be very consistent in my life. Oh,
Speaker 1: i'm traveling in I've got a really early meeting. So
Speaker 1: for me, it's helped to be really flexible with what
Speaker 1: I'm doing and make sure I get it in. And
Speaker 1: that idea of a little something is better than nothing,
Speaker 1: five minutes is better than nothing, and it allowed me
Speaker 1: to keep my streak going. The other thing, though, I
Speaker 1: think we've got to be careful about because I've run
Speaker 1: into this many times before, is that if I miss
Speaker 1: a day and I haven't, but believe me, I did
Speaker 1: many times in building up to the point where I
Speaker 1: got to this streak, which was that I would miss
Speaker 1: a day not to give up and go, oh well, hell,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter anymore. And so James clear calls it
Speaker 1: never missed twice, which I think is a really great idea.
Speaker 1: I miss a day, I get back to it the
Speaker 1: next day. So to just recap these ideas, it was,
Speaker 1: let's make it really small and build from there. Adjust
Speaker 1: our expectations, track it or make a game out of it.
Speaker 1: Remember our motivations be flexible as can be reduced the scope,
Speaker 1: stick to the schedule. A little of something is better
Speaker 1: than nothing. That core idea and never missed twice. And
Speaker 1: then the last one, which I haven't done too much
Speaker 1: of but I've done a little is engage support from
Speaker 1: other people. Find somebody else that can do it with you.
Speaker 1: And if you can have somebody else who's doing and
Speaker 1: lift is a great application for that because there's a
Speaker 1: social element to it and you can create challenges and
Speaker 1: you can work with other people and that can be
Speaker 1: another really helpful way to do it. So hopefully that
Speaker 1: is helpful for you in some way. I think it
Speaker 1: was helpful for me to try and codify why it
Speaker 1: worked this time for me, and we will talk again soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks and see you bye.