As we enter a new year, it’s a good time to form new habits. And what better habit to form than to form the habit of meditating every day in this year.

If you form the habit of meditation, your life won’t only become more happier and peaceful, but meditating every day will also help you gain more knowledge about yourself and the nature of the world around you.

Like every other meditator, I, too, had to struggle to form the habit of meditation. While meditation seems easy to those who have never tried it before, but once you start to meditate seriously you see how hard it is. Though the good thing is, once you form the habit of meditating every day, it only gets easier and easier with time.

So today, I want to share with you few tips that helped me to form the habit of meditation. Though once you master the practice of meditation, you can do it anytime and anyplace you want, still, in the beginning, it helps if you have some tips to help you form the habit of meditation.

Now I no longer rely on those tips to help me to meditate, but please note that this is because I have been meditating regularly for almost eight years now, and once you’ve been practicing something for that long you can break a rule or two.

3 Tips to Help You Form the Habit of Meditation

Here are a few tips that helped me when I was new to meditation. By following these tips, I was able to meditate every day with ease, which further helped me to form the habit of meditation.

All these tips worked for me, and I am sure they will work for you, too.

1) Create a Fixed Schedule for Meditation

If you just tell yourself that you’ll meditate whenever you get time, it won’t help you form the habit of meditation. Then you’ll push your meditation practice to the bottom of the things you need to do for the day, and easily miss doing it for one day, then another, only to find one day that you have missed your meditation practice for several days or weeks in a row.

That’s why you have to create a mindset to meditate every day; without that mindset you may not make as much progress as you’d want to make. And the first step to create that mindset is to tell yourself that no matter what you will meditate every day.

Let’s see how.

Rather than meditating at a fixed time every day, I recommend you to meditate before or after a fixed activity every day, say after you take a bath, or after you brush your teeth. You can also meditate before you go to sleep, or do it the first thing in the morning. This is better than meditating at a fixed time, as you may not be able to meditate on some days at a particular time, but you can manage to meditate if you schedule it after an activity that you do every day.

This way, whether you get up at six in the morning or nine, you can still meditate; whether you go to sleep at ten at night or twelve, you can still meditate. Just schedule your meditation before or after an activity that you know you will never miss doing in your day.

2) Remove All Outer Dependencies

There are dozens of ways to meditate. But I recommend you to choose one in which you don’t have to depend on any other person or resource in order to meditate. If you need to light a candle, or listen to an audio, or watch a video, or even read a book, then you are at the mercy of the availability of that resource. And when you don’t have that resource near you, then you simply can’t meditate.

So, get rid of all the dependencies that make you rely on them for your meditation practice. The less you depend on other tools to meditate, the more often you meditate.

While books and videos may be necessary for you to learn more and gain more understanding about meditation, but there is another time for them in your day, and that time isn’t the one which you have scheduled yourself to meditate. Though I will add that meditating while reading books is also a good way to make progress in your meditation, but if you can’t find a meditation or spiritual book near you, then that doesn’t mean you should skip your meditation practice for the day.

3) Make it Simple

The simpler you make your meditation practice, the more often you are likely to practice it. And what simpler way to practice your meditation than to meditate on your breath. To meditate on your breath, you can read this step by step guide which I wrote earlier. The good thing about learning to meditate on your breath is that you can meditate any time of the day you want, any place you want, and for as much time as you want. I don’t know of any other technique as simple as that.

Just like every other thing in our life, if you find it simple to start and end your meditation practice, you won’t have to motivate yourself much, or push yourself harder, in order to meditate. Then, you will meditate more and more on your own, and learn more about yourself at a faster rate. Isn’t that one of the goals of your meditation?

Extend Your Habit…

Once you form the habit of meditation don’t limit yourself to practicing it only for a few minutes a day. Try to extend that time, or try to meditate more number of times every day, as that’s the only thing that will move you ahead towards gaining deeper understanding about yourself.

Meditation isn’t as hard as many think it to be. Try these tips today, and practice them for a few weeks, and you will see for yourself how easy your meditation practice becomes for you.

Thank you so much for your time. I hope this helps you form the habit of meditation not only for this year, but for every year ahead.

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