4 tips to start meditating

Meditation is such a powerful practice to increase your peace of mind, decrease your stress levels, get more in tune with yourself, grow your self-confidence, increase your performance and become happier overall. Since 2014 I’ve been experiencing all of these benefits so I feel compelled to share how you can start with meditation and make it an integral part of your life.

At the bottom of the post you can find the links to other blogposts explaining the benefits of meditation.

1. Start small

Like with every behavior change, making sure you are putting the new behavior in place is the most important first step. That means: better make it easy so that it slowly can grow into a habit.

You could start with a simple mindful breath (paying attention to 1 breath) when you start up your pc or as the first thing when you wake up for example. Or you could sit down for meditation for a couple of minutes 3x per week (whatever threshold guarantees that the resistance is lower than the motivation so you’ll be able to execute the behavior no matter what).

Once that practice is consistent, increase the duration and/or frequency.

2. Understand the paradox

We all live busy lives and we all get sucked into a never ending list of to dos and obligations. It is exactly when that happens, that meditation becomes even more relevant.

Why? Because you will find more peace of mind which puts you back in control: you can more easily see your life from a helicopter view, you will tune into what is really important for you and what is less important. On top of that, you are training your attention and focus while meditating.

Peace of mind and more focus are fantastic productivity hacks.

Meditate for 5 minutes daily unless you’re busy. In that case, meditate for an hour. - Ram Dass

3. Use nudging

Nudging is the process of setting up your environment in such a way that your desired behavior becomes more easy, attractive or natural. You are in other words incentivized by your environment to meditate and you try to remove all barriers that could prevent you from doing it.

You could for example create a cozy corner that makes it appealing to go sit down, relax and meditate (attractive). Or you can put your meditation pillow next to your bed when going to sleep so you make sure it is the first thing you'll notice when getting out of bed in the morning (and basically just need to sit down to start the behavior (easy)). You can put a sticker on your steering wheel that reminds you to be mindful during traffic jams. Etc.

4. Support

When you're new to meditation, it's important to be supported in the beginning so you know what you're doing and what you need to pay attention to. Go to a retreat, read a book, use an app, find a mentor.

Once you're starting, it is also useful to find someone or a group to do it with. You create accountability and will also feel you're not alone on this path of exploration. It also helps with setting a fixed moment and place which supports habit formation.

If you decide to do it alone, set your own goal and measure it to create your own accountability and reward system (e.g. goal: meditate every Mon-Wed-Fri morning 8-8.15. Keep track of that).

5. Bonus tip: don't expect miracles

We might be successful for a week or a couple of weeks thanks to our motivation. It's new, you've decided to try it and you're motivated.

But then after a couple of weeks, a dip follows. The busyness is screaming for your attention. You also didn't really notice a big difference since you're meditating and therefore you're considering to drop the new behavior.

That's normal.

But don't give up. Know that meditation is like hair growth: you don't see it growing on a day to day basis, but you can be assured it is. You won't see dramatic, permanent shifts in your stress levels, peace of mind, or behavior after a couple of weeks but know that, like your hair, you are making incremental changes for the better. Stick to it and think how these increments might build up over the years. Yes, I said it. Years. It will benefit you most when it becomes part of your lifestyle.

To summarize

Make it easy:
- start small
- and set up your environment in such a way that it will be easy and attractive to meditate
Make sure you get support:
- at the start to do it right,
- afterwards to enjoy the process together with someone and create accountability
Prioritize it by understanding that:
- it will make you more productive and will make you focus on the right things (important for you), and therefore you will be creating time instead of taking some away.
- in the long run, it will lift your whole life to another level (happier, calmer, higher performance, more success, …)

If you enjoyed this post, leave a like or comment.

Here are some other blogpost that give you more insights in the benefits of meditation:

Also, check the Events Page for possible meditation sessions I’m hosting.

And let’s connect on social media: Instagram , Facebook or LinkedIn.

To a life fully lived!