Changing lifestyle habits can be difficult for anyone… even this wellbeing coach. The difficulty often isn’t in knowing what is best for ourselves, it’s moreso in finding what motivates us enough to make the change we seek and then modifying our routine to create space for it.
I tried meditation for the first time in 2014. (No - this is not a post espousing the benefits of meditation). I was motivated by the positive things I had heard about meditation and a desire to quiet my whirling mind. After a number of starts and stops, I declared myself hopeless as my mind seemed un-tamable.
In 2015, I tried again. I eventually felt a little breakthrough after realizing that the point of meditation isn’t having an empty mind, but rather to learn to observe the mind and be aware of its natural tendency to wander off in order to bring it back into focus.
In 2016, I found myself using meditation in bouts of time - in particular - around my cancer surgery. I was able to link it to a way of offering kindness to myself during a difficult time rather than seeing it as a thing at which I had to master in order for it to be worthwhile.
It wasn’t until the beginning of 2018 that I discovered the key piece that had been missing for me in developing meditation as a new habit - connecting it to something else I was already doing. Even as I write this, I feel a bit sheepish in confessing that because I am a smart woman… how could something so simple have eluded me for four years? We can’t know what we don’t know until we put ourselves in a place to know it. Change takes time, practice and patience.
So now my meditation is linked with my morning tea… my “teatation aha.” While I wait for my tea to brew and cool down, I meditate. Each one keeps me accountable for the other. Even when I miss a day, it doesn’t go unnoticed and I double down to get back to it the following day. I just hit my first ever 60-day continuous streak! I’ve found a way to make it part of my lifestyle.
Making space for new things can be a challenge and often requires trying things in different ways over time to find the right combination. All of my starts and stops provided valuable information along my journey that eventually led me to become more consistent with meditation. What will your teatation aha be?