The first couple weeks were all about changing my attitude toward meditation. I asked myself, “Why was it easy to exercise every day, but a struggle to meditate? Theoretically,” I argued, “my mental health is more important to me than my physical health, so I should be even more motivated to do it.” Part of why it’s easier to exercise is because our society encourages it. Especially living in Austin, I see beautiful people jogging and biking every day. So, to compensate for this public component, I told myself that millions of Americans meditate in private. I then visualized all these people meditating right that very second.

I then Googled around for famous people who meditate, and found out that Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison both were into the practice. These thought exercises helped make meditation not seem like something exotic or weird. I started to think of it as something fundamental, essential, and more importantly, normal.

Another trick I developed was all about giving me a sense of progress. Even though you’re not supposed to think about outcome while meditating, I fudge a tiny bit by keeping a calendar of days I meditate. Here’s my calendar from last year:

Printout from Calendarlabs. Each slash is a day I mediated.

Crossing off days on the calendar is incredibly satisfying, and there is a fear of having an empty spot in the calendar due to perfectionism. If you do the calendar method, I actually recommend doing exactly what I did, and use a physically printed calendar, as opposed to an app. With the physical calendar, you can place it by your meditation area, serving as a constant reminder. Also, every mark you make on the calendar isn’t going to be exactly the same, so visually, this makes for a much more interesting thing to look at instead of a never-ending series of identical symbols on a screen.

When you finish a whole year, the calendar can serve as a wonderful artifact. I’ve laminated mine, which serves as a kind of trophy commemorating “The First Year I Meditated.”