3 Hacks to Start Meditating Today: How to Make Meditation a Habit

In this video, what I wanted to do was I wanted to show you guys the exact, like, secrets for the things that I've used in my life, the tools that I've used to get me to a point of not meditating, not having it as a habit, thinking that it was something that I really wasn't gonna be able to do, to then shifting it into a place to where it's like I got that tunnel vision, baby. I got that ability to really just focus and do it day in and day out, to where now it's been like 5 years and I've never missed a day. That's a lot of days. First thing I wanna do is to say that anytime we have something that we want to make a habit, the easiest way to do that is to simply have a strong why. Now, that means that the reason you're doing it is a good reason. To really think about this. Now for me, I had a strong why even from the beginning. At first I kinda went in curious about it, but I wanted to get off of Adderall, which was the medication that I was prescribed for having ADHD. And it was, you know, I experienced the hardest time harsh side effects of Adderall, which are you don't eat very much and you don't sleep very much. And because of that, it made me really like desire to get to another state to where I could do it naturally, to not have those side effects. So right from the beginning, I had a strong why, but now my why has changed. Now I meditate because I think it's one of the main contributors to the fact that I feel good like majority of the time. It has made me a lot more aware of my like emotional well-being and how I feel, how to be more in tune with my thoughts and how my thoughts my thoughts make me feel. It really trickles into a lot of different areas of life, but those are some of the main ones. And so what I want to do now is I want to show you the 3 things that I did to allow me to make meditation a consistent thing. Let's go. All right, so the first life hack is going to be something that I think is very practical. And now I say practical because the truth of the matter is that a lot of us are in our phones a good part of the day. Now this is me too. This isn't me pointing the finger. At anybody saying, you know, this is what you're doing. You should be meditating all day or something like that. But literally, just because a lot of our attention is into the idea of our phone, a powerful thing that we could do is simply shift the attention from what we're doing to maybe an alarm or a reminder in our phone that says something like, uh, let me see if you guys can see it. Yeah, uh, meditate for 10 minutes or 5 minutes or whatever it is. And simply by doing that, it will shift your attention to it. And this in the beginning stage is going to be a very powerful thing because until the habit is instilled, uh, it's almost like that just acts as extra emphasis on doing it. It makes it just a little bit easier. Now me, for example, I don't have to really do this anymore. Uh, I just put it in there for you guys to see what I meant by it because when I meditate is right when I wake up, 10 minutes in the morning, right when I get out of bed and then 10 minutes right before I go to bed every single night. And I haven't missed a day in like 5 years. Now the only reason that is, is because I've literally done it every day consecutively for maybe a couple months to where now I can't not do it. I know the benefits of me meditating right when I wake up and right before I go to bed. Now just want to share another little tidbit about this. When we wake up in the morning, our brainwave activity goes from what is called a delta state, which is like the deepest level brainwave activity, to a theta state, which is very relaxed, almost sleeping. And then we go into like an alpha state and then a beta state, which is like the awake state. Alpha state is more of the relaxed state. Um, and as we move through these, our subconscious mind is the most susceptible to any influence that we put on it. So if right when we wake up in the morning we take a conscious control of that by observing our thoughts, what we allow ourselves to do is to put ourselves in an observing mode, which means that when things happen to us throughout the day, we're not reacting. Now most people, what they do when they wake up in the morning is they flip over and they go straight into their phone, which tends to have an effect on the brain of reaction because then people are reacting to their external environment rather than observing simply because of like a pattern. Now I know this is kind of off topic, but I just wanted to share that idea with you because it's been a profound change in my life. Me being able to not react to the things that happened in my life because I've set that parameter in the morning with, uh, meditating for a couple minutes. But nonetheless, that's the first life hack. Now the second life hack is going to be something, uh, You know what, I'm gonna show you guys a little bit of a demonstration or just something I can use as a prop. Be right back. Now the second life hack is to simply understand that we can start off really small. Imagine the idea that you wanna start going to the gym, But, uh, if you haven't gone to the gym in a while and your goal or your expectation was that you were going to go to the gym and do, uh, 20 minutes of cardio, then you were going to do a really hardcore workout that was going to push you to your limits, and then you were going to do another 20, 30 minutes of cardio, then you're going to go into the sauna for like 20 minutes or something like that, you know, 2 hours of going to the gym, you probably wouldn't even start it to begin with because there's such a high expectation there. It seems like such a mountain to climb. But if you take just one step at a time, you realize that you have a lot more ability to get there through just focusing on baby steps. Now this was easy once I applied it, and this is the idea of just starting out for a couple minutes a day. If sitting down and paying attention to your breathing and your thoughts is hard to do for 3 or 4 minutes, then just do it for 2 minutes today starting out. So imagine the first day, maybe you start on a Sunday and you just start by doing 2 minutes a day. And you do it for 2 minutes that day. Once you're done with it, you forget about it, and then the next day you do it again, and then maybe you do it for 3 to 4 minutes. Once again, you start off small, but there's like an exponential compound effect that happens with this because as you up it a little bit each day, it becomes the norm for you. It gets a little bit easier and a little bit easier. Maybe by Tuesday you say, I'm going to go for 5 minutes, so you do it for 5 minutes that day and, uh, then you start to feel something, then you start to understand and start to feel this calmness inside your body. So it kind of pushes you a little bit so that the next day you go for 8 to 10 minutes. And then after that, what you might do is you might actually start to really feel the benefits of it. And this is what happened to me. So this is why I'm explaining it this way. And then what I did was, is I simply went for 10 minutes solid, then I went for 15 minutes, and then after that I went for 15 to 20 minutes, whatever I felt comfortable doing. But the idea is that if you start out small and just like every day for a couple minutes, you up it just a little bit, and over time what that does is it makes it easier and easier to do it. So the idea is that meditation can really be simple. Just start out small, start out just a couple minutes a day and see it grow from there. That'll at least allow you to take the action to do it because when you see that it's you know, just 2 minutes, it's a lot easier to say, hey, I'm going to try that. And then you try it the next day and you do it for 3 or 4 minutes and you're like, hey, that wasn't so bad. And then you do it for 5 minutes and start to actually feel it. And then it just escalates from there to where you enjoy it. And that's where I'm at. I enjoy the process of meditation because I like the feeling of it. It turns into a feeling once it's habitually done, which is what the video is about, is making this an actual habit. And now the third life hack that I have for you guys is to Simply start now. Now I mean like right now, let's meditate right now. We'll do it for just a minute or two. The reason I say this is because it's something that's very easy to kind of put on the back burner to say like, oh, I'll eventually get to that, you know, maybe tomorrow when I'm in a better state or maybe tomorrow when I, you know, I'm doing this one thing. The easiest way to start a habit is to do it immediately. Now I know this from experience too because there's a lot of habits that I used to have that I completely got rid of, but rather than telling me the story that I eventually, I'm going to quit doing this or I'm going to start doing this, whatever it was, what I eventually did was I just said, you know what, I'm going to start right now. And that's when the momentum starts to build. Up until that point, there was no momentum. It is just a nice philosophy. It's a nice idea, but it actually isn't here now. So let's do this right now. We're just going to do a simple 1-minute meditation. It's going to be so simple, but I just want to show you that we can anchor in this habit right now and simply allow it to us to feel the benefits of it. So what I want you to do is to simply first off, just become aware of how you feel. Become aware of the fact that you're sitting in a chair watching me right now. Um, you might be driving, you might be at work. I mean, you could be a whole bunch of different places, but just become aware of where you are and then what you can do is you can simply allow yourself to feel into your body. Now what I'm going to do is ask you to take a deep breath in with me and a deep breath out, and we're going to do this together. And as you do it, put the awareness inside of your body, put it inside of your chest, and just start to feel it. Observe how that feels and put the attention and the awareness there. So right now let's take a deep breath in. And then breathe it out. Now all you have to do is simply be aware of what you're thinking about. Become aware of your thoughts. Now instead of trying to change your thoughts, become aware of what they are. I always use this example, but imagine that you're sitting at a park on a bench at a park and you're watching the people, the dogs walk by, whatever it is, and you're just simply observing them. You're not judging them. You're not trying to change the direction of where people are going or what the dog is doing or anything. You're just simply appreciating and observing what is happening. In the same way, observe the thoughts that come up into your mind. You might have the thought of how much longer is this going to go? You might have the thought of what am I going to do afterwards? Let that be there. Just observe it, and as you allow it to be there, a funny thing will happen because the more that you do it, the more that you realize the thoughts begin to subside naturally without trying to control them. The only thing you're doing is bringing the awareness into what you're doing. You're being aware of the fact that you're thinking, you're being aware of those actual thoughts, and you're letting them be there. You're allowing them to be there. So this simple process of observing the breath Observing the thoughts and becoming aware and present, feeling inside your body, is one of the most powerful things that you could act upon and add to your daily routine. If you do it, I think that it can profoundly change your life the way that it changed mine. I encourage you to at least try it and see how it makes you feel. After me doing it for a week or two, I started to feel the results, and it was absolutely amazing. My hope is that you feel in a similar way and you can experience the benefits that I have. So other than that, I hope this video serves you today. I hope that you're able to make meditation a daily habit, something that you enjoy doing. And other than that, I'll see you guys on the next video. All right, much love. Bye.