How to begin meditating and actually stick to it

Tamerlan Gudabayev -

I've been meditating daily for the past three months, and my current streak is 80 days. But it wasn't always like that. I remember days when I said to myself that I would meditate every day, but then three days later, I stopped.

I downloaded all the apps (headspace, calm, waking up) and went through their introductory courses but it didn't take long for the habit to fall off.

This has been going on and off for 9 years (since I was 16) but only now I feel I have the habit down. Before I show you my strategy, it's better to tell you what went wrong in the past 9 years.

Mistakes I did that made me not stick to meditating

Photo by Francisco De Legarreta C. / Unsplash

Committing to long sessions as a beginner

My first mistake was that I committed to meditating every day for at least 30 minutes. As a beginner, 30 minutes is a lot, and it was hard. I dreaded the meditation sessions, and the habit eventually fell off.

What helped me most in this regard was starting with a time that I saw as manageable to easy. In my case, this was 10 minutes as I've meditated for quite some time before.

Then I'd meditate for 10 minutes a week and at the beginning of the new week (for me it was Sunday), I'd increase it by 1 minute. Just a single minute no need to do more.

I found this very helpful because it makes starting the session much easier. I don't have to force myself to commit to extremely long sessions and I can gradually get used to them.

I also noticed that in some sessions if I feel good, I just ignore the timer and meditate for much longer. This feels good as there is no pressure to stay and meditate, I can stay as long as I feel good. I've had a lot of sessions where I eased through 40+ minutes.

Not finding the right posture

The first posture I chose while meditating was to lie down. The problem with that is that I kept falling asleep. I later on tried to sit cross-legged and that felt very uncomfortable for my back. The chairs didn't work either as they felt a bit weird. (or I probably had unusually uncomfortable chairs.)

🤔
If you ever visit a psychiatric center, you'll notice they have incredibly comfortable chairs. Honestly, I'd be tempted to take one home! 🤣

The point is all of these things hindered me from meditating for more than 15-20 minutes due to having poor postures. After experimenting, I found that meditating with a zafu in the Burmese style is best for me.

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Rule of thumb: Find a posture that keeps your spine straight and yourself awake. You don't have to be 100% stiff, keep it at around 90%. Here's an article that helped me pick a posture.

Not taking the session seriously

I believe meditation deserves more attention than we often give it. While it may not be as intense as a hardcore gym session, it requires more focus than simply watching a movie.

There were times when I didn’t approach my sessions with the same seriousness as when I first started. This was likely due to boredom or losing sight of my initial reasons for meditating.

Nowadays, I begin each session with a clear intention, whether it's focusing on my breath or observing my thoughts. I also take a moment to remind myself why I meditate in the first place.

Judging or punishing myself harshly

Photo by engin akyurt / Unsplash

I used to get mad whenever my thoughts took over and I literally forgot that I was in the middle of a meditation session.

This culture of treating yourself in a hard and judging way ruined my relationship with myself. I was a brutal tyrant in my brain. I punished, I judged, and in the end, what happened?

I rebelled and quit.

We should treat ourselves with kindness and love because we are with ourselves our whole lives. Negative reinforcement doesn't work. It's not like you can beat your way to enlightenment or peace.

I found being the blue sky is the best. I use this analogy because you can think of consciousness as the blue sky and the clouds as your thoughts. The clouds will be there one way or another, no need to beat yourself up for it.

Accept it, embrace it, and be curious about it but no need to attach yourself to any thoughts. You are not your thoughts.

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It's sometimes interesting to see how we are much kinder to others than to ourselves.

Complicating things

This might seem counter-intuitive but it's really easy to make meditation complicated when it does not need to be.

During the beginning stages, you feel all excited and learn about different kinds of meditation (mantras, breathing, loving-kindness, walking, etc...). This either excites you or overwhelms you. The best advice I can give is to just keep it simple and do what works best for you.

Meditation isn't supposed to be hard. If you ever feel confused just focus on the breath or your object of focus for the session.

Three phases of getting into meditation

ChatGPT generated if you didn't already know

Now that I told you about my mistakes, I want to offer you a high-level plan on starting and sticking to meditation. It's separated into three simple stages:

  • Learning stage.
  • Starting stage.
  • Keeping consistency stage.

Allow me to dive deeper into each of them.

Phase 1: Getting Educated

Most people are first introduced to meditation by someone else, either an influencer who suggests it or is sponsored by one of the meditation apps. They download the app and immediately start meditating.

The problem is that you don't know what you're doing and get the wrong impression of meditation.

Meditation isn't just focusing on the breath. It's not about trying to have no thoughts. Meditation at its core is just being aware. When I say awareness, I mean the present moment. It can be your breath, sounds, smells, thoughts, feelings, or whatever is present at the moment.

You also don't need to sit down in some yogic pose to meditate. You can do walking meditation, lying meditation, or essentially whatever position you find most relaxing.

My point is to learn more about meditation from both Eastern and Western perspectives. Here are some helpful resources that I would recommend checking out:

Phase 2: Getting Started

You don't need to know everything about meditation at this phase. Just start doing it. Meditation isn't hard, your body already knows how to do it. You just need to get your "mind" out of the way and notice things.

So download your favourite app or use the default timer on your phone. Please set it to whatever time you think you can handle. It can be as little as 1 minute.

Make sure it's something you can handle and not get overwhelmed by. Many people choose times they can't handle consistently, which makes them drop the habit after a few days or weeks.

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As a rule of thumb, it's better to meditate a little every day than to meditate a lot once in a while.

Phase 3: Keeping Consistency

This is the most important part because meditation is one of those things where most people don't see the benefits of it immediately.

That's not always the case, many people simply enjoy the sessions from day one as it is relaxing while for others it may take a while.

So how do we keep ourselves consistent?

There are a bunch of personal things one can do to keep consistency but here are my favorites:

  • Have a daily minimum meditation session.
  • Don't push yourself too hard to do long sessions.
  • Try to enjoy the sessions by focusing on the pleasant and relaxing sensations.
  • Don't be a tyrant to yourself (Don't beat yourself badly if your sessions are not going well)
  • Keep a tracker (I use Insight Timer)

But most importantly remember:

The only bad meditation session is the one you didn’t do!

I would finally recommend incrementally increasing the duration of your sessions. I add a minute every Sunday. Some people say that's too slow, but hey, I'm on my longest streak and still going strong.

After a while, you just do even more after the timer because you love it. You already love meditation, or you already meditate every day. You just don't know it from the mind's perspective.

Random Practical Tips

The following are some random practical tips I've picked up along the way. To be honest, these are a bit personal so they may not apply to everyone.

Find Meditation Communities

For a long time, I was doing this alone. I had no friends or family members to talk to about this. I did try but everyone was weirded out by it, so I decided it was better to keep to myself.

This sucked until I did some actual research to find communities of like-minded people and turns out it is much less lonely out in the real world. Most major cities have in-person meditation communities. They can be branded as Buddhist "temples" or your local yoga centre that hosts meditation sessions.

For me, I turned to the online route and joined communities online on Reddit and Discord. I also have a weekly call with a bunch of people where we talk about meditation.

This has changed the game for me because it felt very nice to talk about something that I'm very passionate about with other people who regard it similarly. You begin to realize you’re not alone on this path, and your challenges aren’t unique. It’s rewarding to receive and offer support to others in return.

Find a teacher

I always thought that a teacher is not needed as all the answers can be found within you.

That's true in a sense but a teacher can accelerate your progress by 10 times. I found that the best benefit of having a teacher is that he would know your life and context, so you can very specific questions to them.

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Make sure to find a good teacher whose style you’re comfortable with.

At-home meditation retreat (dopamine detox)

Dopamine detoxes become popular this year. It's like fasting but instead of not eating you don't engage in dopamine-producing activities, which include:

  • Social Media
  • Consumption of any kind of content (videos, books, games, etc...)
  • Emotional eating and sugar.
  • Sex, masturbation, and any form of pornography.
  • Gambling and shopping.
  • Thrill and novelty-seeking.
  • Recreational drugs.

You get the point. The reason people do this is to reset the brain's neurochemical system. I'm not a neuroscientist and can't scientifically confirm that my brain chemicals get reset but speaking from experience, I have much deeper and enjoyable meditation sessions when I'm on a detox.

The difference is so profound, it's like night and day.

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I spoke with my teacher, and it turns out that what I'm describing is essentially a meditation retreat—what we now often refer to as a 'dopamine detox' in modern terms.

There's no need to suffer

I've always been a very methodical person. Even though I was born and raised in a very religious environment, it didn't make much sense to me.

I went on the path of capitalism and became what some people would say "successful" but that didn't bring me any happiness. I got into a loving relationship and that too didn't bring me any happiness. I got everything that people said would make me happy but I continued to suffer in silence.

Until I tried this and it just works. I don't know how but it does. I also have a lot of spiritual experiences that I can't share with you guys because you'll think I'm crazy. But everything I'm speaking of is from experience.

I can't guarantee that this will fix your life, try it out and see for yourself.

Thank you for reading.