SUMMARY OF HABIT CONSTRUCTION
What was helpful.
The most helpful tool I had for developing this habit was my guided meditation app, Headspace. Headspace made it extremely easy to perform meditation everyday thanks to its big library of recorded audio, and extremely easy to record my progress thanks to its "Run Streak" which I used to prove that I had done x number of meditations in a row. The second most useful to tool I had was this website StickK. It was useful partially because of the financial cost incentive, but more so because I had my good friend Eddy who could check on me all the time. Ultimately, that's the key with social accountability: Make sure you're friend can super-easily check that your sticking to your commitment, in my case the mechanism for that was the Headspace app. With one tap he could check my "Run Streak". Additionally meditating in the morning proves more effective than meditating in the evening. While I was travelling in Israel, I often only remembered to meditate last thing in the evening which led to poor quality meditations. What was even more useful was specifically meditating BEFORE breakfast in the mornings. This is due to a process known as "Habit Stacking", if you can hook your new habit to an existing habit(I.e breakfast) it makes it easier to maintain. Finally reading a book related to meditation, called the Power Of Now helped me to see the value in what I was doing and thus motivated me to keep going.
What were the benefits.
Now I can say that Meditating in the morning is something my brain just automatically reminds me to do. I don't even think about creating the habit anymore. Has it helped me in life? Yes, for the reason that I've become more aware of my thinking. When ever I feel bitter, regretful or worried, I'm increasingly able to catch myself doing it rather than succumb to its effect. This is also helped with the combination of reading a spiritual book, in my case The Power Of Now. I learn about these things in the book, then meditation gives me the mechanism to put its ideas into practice more effectively. So I recommend that combination.
|
|
Olivier did it, ge reached his goal |
|
A big day! 66 days is the length of time necessary to develop a habit according to a UCL research paper. But I'll keep posting because StickK could only round up to the nearest week? |
|
3035562303495730314163031004