6 Ways to Make a Meditation Habit Stick

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Meditation has a wide variety of benefits. It has been shown to increase practitioners’ attention spans and improve their concentration. Those who meditate are less stressed, sleep better and are less likely to get sick. The advantages of learning to meditate and practicing it regularly seem almost endless. So why do more people not do it? Why have you not formed a meditation habit?

Forming a new habit is not easy. No matter how much you know you should do something, it is not always easy to actually do it. Meditation is no different. If anything, it can be even more difficult to get into the habit of meditating because it is not always easy to justify taking time out of a busy schedule to essentially sit and do nothing. As such, it is best to stack the deck in your favor. Be smart about how you try to form your meditation habit, and do not expect to form the habit overnight. Practice makes perfect when it comes to actually meditating, and the same is true when it comes to getting into the habit of meditating. Here are six ways to make a meditation habit stick.

Careful Timing

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It takes time and effort to form a new habit. Everyone knows that. What most people do not think about, however, is the sheer amount of energy it takes to keep your willpower high enough to form the habit. Set yourself up for success by planning to meditate at a time that makes sense for you. People may swear by dawn meditation, and the idea of sitting cross legged in front of the rising sun may sound great. If you struggle to get out of bed before 9:00 a.m., however, meditating first thing in the morning may not be a great idea. You risk falling asleep. Similarly, if you know that your spouse always wants to talk right before bed, finding a quiet minute to yourself may not be easy at night. Instead, choose to meditate at a time where there is either a natural lull in your schedule or you could easily carve out five minutes alone. This may be right when you get home from work or shortly after dropping the kids off at school. You could even do your meditation during your lunch hour. When you meditate does not matter nearly as much as making sure you actually sit down and do it.

Habit Stack

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Habit stacking is a great way to train yourself to form new habits because it makes it harder to forget about your new habit. When you are trying to get in the habit of a new behavior, one of the hardest things is to remember to do it when you should. If you are trying to get into the habit of laying out your clothes the night before, you might not think about doing so until you are in bed with the lights off. Then, you either have to drag yourself out of bed to do it or give up on the habit for the day.

Habit stacking helps eliminate this forgetfulness by tying a new habit to a preexisting one. For example, you are in the habit of charging your cell phone at night. To remind yourself to lay out your clothes, you might put your charger on top of your dresser instead of on the bathroom counter. When you go to get your charger, you see the dresser and are reminded to lay out your clothes. Overtime, it becomes habit to lay out your clothes when you go to plug in your cell phone. This same theory works with meditation as well. Leave a reminder of some kind in a place where you automatically go at a certain time every day. If you wanted to meditate in the morning, for example, you might put a sticky note on the vitamins you take every morning to remind you to meditate after you take them. If evening meditation fits your schedule better, you might leave a note next to your toothbrush so you remember to meditate once your teeth are clean. After a while, the reminder will no longer be necessary, and it will be a habit to brush your teeth and then go meditate.

Start Small

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One of the worst things you can do when trying to create a habit is to expect instant, overnight results. This is one of the reasons so many New Year’s Resolutions fail. People wake up on January 1st and expect to somehow be able to restructure their entire life. They plan to eat healthier and devote less time to Facebook and spend less money and stop complaining and start practicing mindfulness and a thousand other things all at once. Naturally, this all falls apart.

Humans do not do well at starting new habits at full throttle. It is much easier to ease into it. You might dream of meditating for an hour at a time, but there is almost no way you will be able to consistently carve out that time in the beginning or sit still that long. Instead, start with an amount of time that feels relatively easy. For most people, this is between one and five minutes. Once you have gotten into the habit of meditating for that amount of time, increase it a little bit. Go from five minutes to seven minutes, and spend a few weeks getting into the habit of meditating for seven minutes. Then increase it to 10, then 15 and so on until you reach your ideal time.

Enjoyable Form

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Meditation comes in a wide variety of forms. There are guided meditations where a person or recording talks you through what to visualize and the correct breathing patterns. There are kindness meditations that are aimed at increasing a person’s empathy and compassion. There are mindfulness meditations, koan meditations that rely on riddles, silent meditations, moving meditations and spiritual meditations. If you can think of an objective, there is probably a form of meditation that specializes in it.

Given how many forms of meditation there are, there is no need to force yourself to practice one that you dislike. It will take you twice as long and three times as much energy to form a habit of willingly doing something you dislike. Rather than force it, experiment with different forms of meditation and find what you like. If you hate holding still, try moving meditations. If you need something to focus your mind on, try koan mediation. If you are not sure how to meditate, try guided meditations. Find what works best for you.

Get Comfortable

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Meditating requires emptying your mind of distractions in favor of focusing on something specific. It might be your breathing or the words of the person leading the meditation. Given that most people have random, intrusive thoughts bouncing around their skulls like particularly energetic pinballs, clearing your mind is not usually easy. There is no need to make it harder by being uncomfortable. Finding your calm center is all but impossible when your leg is falling asleep or you have pins and needles in your hand from holding one position for too long. When you meditate, make sure you are comfortable. There is no reason you have to sit in the classic lotus or half-lotus position. You could sit leaning up against a wall with your legs out straight, in a chair or you could choose not to sit at all and stand instead. Laying down might not be the best idea, however, as you might get a little too comfortable and end up snoozing instead of clearing your mind.

Track It

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What gets measured gets done. It seems like quite the cliché, but it is true. If you really want to make sure something gets done, you need to keep track of it more than just in your head. Meditation is no different. While you are forming a meditation habit, make sure you are recording your habits in some way, shape or form. You could keep a meditation journal, cross off a day on your calendar each time you meditate or even simply put tally marks on a sticky note. Each time you miss a day, you have to start the tally over again.

Keeping track of your meditation habits will also help you find what works best for you. If you find that you can keep up with it easier when you meditate in the morning, stop trying to fit your meditation in during the evenings. Similarly, if you keep avoiding doing a guided meditation but had no problem doing silent meditation every day for a fortnight, forget the YouTube videos and simply sit quietly.