Homework - Week 0

If you're here before the start of the Beginners Course, then that is amazing. You are the perfect student! We wanted to include this in the Beginners Course, but it would make for a very short lesson, so we left it here. It is not a requirement for the course, but it can help a lot with forming a meditation habit.

How to kickstart your meditation habit?

There are a lot of things that are good for you, like sleeping enough and regular exercise, but simply knowing that it is good and how you can do it is often not enough. Habit forming requires a bit more, so here are three tips to kickstart your meditation habit.

Tip 1: Keep it small and go from there

Starting a new habit is often difficult because we simply don't start. It just seems too tiring. It seems impossible to fit in your schedule. So, when you build your meditation habit, start small. Any meditation is better than no meditation. The following routine will help you out:

Three-step meditation:

Step	What?	Duration
1	Set a timer for 10 minutes	5 seconds
2	Do the seven-point relaxation exercise	2 minutes
3	Stop meditating	0 seconds

Total meditation time: 2 minutes and 5 seconds.

If you're finding this routine difficult, then you're probably struggling with step 3, don't sit down with the intention to meditate! Sit down, with the intention to follow the three steps to the letter. You might wonder, why would I set a timer for 10 minutes if I'm only going to meditate for 3 minutes, well it is all part of building the habit. We're simulating the future behavior that we want to have. Succes is when you do it every day!

You can find the seven-point relaxation exercise here:

Seven-point relaxation

If you find yourself at step 3 and you do want to meditate on the breath, then I'm not going to stop you. You can even find a basic meditation routine here:

A basic meditation routine

But again, it is not an indicator for succes at this moment, because you're building a habit, not meditating on the breath—yet.

Tip 2: Connect your habit to another habit

Starting a fresh habit is difficult, because how will you remind yourself to do it? Now, you might think alarm clocks are a good idea for initializing a habit, but research shows that when you stop using the clock, you often lose the habit as well. By connecting it to an existing daily habit, you won't have this problem.

To give a few examples:

• Meditate after your first cup of tea/coffee in the morning.

• Meditate before you brush your teeth.

• Meditate after breakfast.

• Meditate before your morning run.

Yes, I like meditating in the morning, but you can do the same thing with afternoon or evening routines. For me that just doesn't fit in my life.

You will end up meditating at roughly the same time every day. Make sure that this time slot can fit your habit on a daily basis, because often when I miss this moment, it's not going to happen during the rest of the day. "Sure," I will think to myself, "I will do it later" — but let's be honest, I probably won't.

Tip 3: Accountability

Humans are social animals. We hate public failure and we crave recognition. Use this! Find a meditation partner or meditation group and make sure they can see if you meditate.

Insight Timer is great for this. It allows you to connect with your friends and then they can see if you're sticking to the plan! And when you go to your weekly meditation group, they will know if you practiced or not.

If you're joining the Beginners Course, then the teachers are always very willing to become you accountability partner. Just send them a message.

I want more!!!

I can highly recommend reading this post, it is quite amazing: https://complice.co/articles/dont-miss-2-days