I Finally Made Meditation a Habit.. Here's what I did

After 5 solid years of trying and failing, I finally made meditating for 10 minutes a habit.

Meditation has always been that chip on my shoulder. It was one of those habits, that no matter how motivated or discipline I was I just couldn't make it consistent.

I would maintain it for weeks to a couple of months before outright stopping.
Each time it felt like I was just doing it for the sake of doing it, just to prove something to myself.

Each time, my motivation was stronger than ever and my discipline was rock solid, I thought I could finally make meditation a habit.

But each time I failed, time and time after again.

Fast forward to now, I've built a 10 minute meditation practise for over a year, I've been taking cold showers every morning for 2 years, I read a book every week for 4 months, I also run a business that makes over 6-figures every year, and I credit my successes to building good habits, starting with meditation.
I hope in this post I can share my experiences in aims of helping anyone who has the same problem I had.

The books that really changed everything for me was Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg & Mini-habits by Stephen Guise.

So often we're taught to use motivation as our primary strategy. Each time I was more motivated and more disciplined but ultimately this strategy would fail.

I realised that no matter how motivated or disciplined I was, using this as a strategy was just too unreliable.

How I made meditating a habit

The answer to this may surprise most of you - it's to do less.

5 years ago I set out to meditate for 10 minutes everyday. Sounds doable right?
Well it went great for the first week... but on the second week I dreaded thinking about having to sit down for 10 minutes to meditate, everyday, for the rest of my life!!

It felt like I was looking at the great wall of china.. simply no hope of making it across. As a result, I was hugely inconsistent and often skipped days or quit completely for months at a time.

The secret to make meditating consistent was to start small. Instead of aiming for 10 minutes everyday, I made meditating for 10 seconds a habit.

The idea here was to make it less intimidating and to make sure I would never fail

Each day I showed up with the intention of meditating for more than 10 seconds, but I knew that if I couldn't or didn't feel like it, 10 seconds was more than fine.

Meditating for just 10 seconds to me was a success!

What happened as a result is that:

Meditating felt much less intimidating - everyday i showed up and I actually started to enjoy it rather than fearing it
Constant Success - Starting small makes it pretty much impossible to fail, it was simply too difficult to not force myself to meditate for 10 seconds. As a result I was always winning and this was huge for my self confidence.
Identity Shift - After about 2 months of consistently meditating for 10 seconds, I began to shift my identity to someone who regularly meditates. Suddenly meditating wasn't so intimidating and so meditating for longer periods of time felt easier and more enjoyable.

By starting small you'll ease yourself into this foreign behaviour and will show up each day without fail.

On the days where you feel extra motivated you'll be able to do more, but on the days where you're simply too tired, doing your baseline habit is perfect!

What you'll find is that you'll be constantly succeeding and never failing, simply because failing a small habit is near impossible. With this comes confidence in your ability to change and a small habit that changes your identity.

Success begets success.

There's a few more mindset shifts that I had to undertake before fully internalising meditation as a habit but talking about it would make this post way too long.

Starting small is the core of what I did and hopefully it can help you too!

Free 1-1 Coaching

Hopefully this post helps out. This isn't a complete guide but it's enough to help you build bullet-proof habits.

I'll also be doing free 1-1 coaching calls this month. There will be no sales pitch, no up-selling, I'll just be listening to the challenges that you're facing with your habits & maybe even give some advice that has helped me and others.
If you'd be interested, here's a link to sign up for a free call - https://calendly.com/habits-with-andy/free