Listen:

Watch:

Read:

Have you taken an unplanned break in your meditation routine? Are you looking to get back on track? Here’s how to go about it successfully.

Getting back on track after a break doesn’t have to be difficult. All you have to do is let go of any negative feelings about the break, and follow a solid plan to re-create your meditation habit.

Let go and forgive

You may or may not have sour feelings about the break in your routine. If you do, it’s important to let go of them. Otherwise, they can create resistance to starting again, making it much harder to get going.

There is a host of negative reactions that might be coming up for you. Perhaps you blame yourself. You think you weren’t diligent enough to stick to your practice and you’re disappointed in yourself. Or maybe you believe you were the victim of an event that disrupted your meditation plans, and you consequently feel aggravated and helpless.

No matter what you’re feeling, to move forward, you need to accept that there was a break in your routine. It’s just what happened and now it’s time to move on. Assigning blame won’t help you get back on track. Neither will feeling hurt, irritated, discouraged, etc.

 

This Week's Peaceful Moment

In meditation practice, we have a saying: Every breath is a chance to begin anew.

Try this. Imagine yourself holding a coin between your thumb and index finger, your arm extended out in front of your body. Now, imagine yourself letting go of that coin, so it drops to the floor. It’s easy to drop that coin, isn’t it? Believe it or not, it’s just as easy to let go of blame, guilt, and all the other negative reactions you may have to the break in your routine. Just drop it.

Reflect

It’s worthwhile to briefly reflect on the reasons for your break to see if you can identify ways to better structure your practice going forward. It is, however, imperative that you forgive and let go, first! Otherwise, reflection will likely feed the negative emotions. It will also be less effective, because it won’t be objective.

Here are some reflection questions to guide you:

Did I set a reminder to meditate or did I try to chain my meditation to another habit? Was my reminder effective? Did I chain to the wrong habit? 

Was I trying to do too much, e.g., to meditate for too long in a given sitting?

Did I remember to reward myself for meditating? Was my reward adequate? Did I reward myself every time I meditated?

Was I trying to meditate at an inconvenient time or an unsuitable place?

Did I take any steps to adjust my practice once I noticed it wasn’t working well?

Did an event come up to disrupt me? If so, did I try to change my practice to work around it?

Any insights gained through reflection can be combined with the strategies below to structure your meditation routine.

Start small

To foster success, start with only as much meditation as you know you can do successfully, because success breeds success. Every time you meditate as planned, you increase the chances of meditating the next time.

There is nothing wrong with starting very small. I recommend building a new meditation habit by taking just three mindful breaths every day for a week or two, then increasing to  1 minute of meditation every day. Check out episode 66 at mindful15.com/reward for full instructions on structuring a habit successfully, and if you’d like more help,