Meditation, the Master Habit
Great work on surviving quarantine and seeking knowledge to improve yourself. Don’t believe all the social media “influencer” hype making their transitions to solitude seem effortless and obnoxiously productive. Trust me, this is tough for everyone for different reasons and every little bit that you CAN do for yourself or others is taking a step in the right direction to better understand yourself, the world and your reality.
As a Fitness and Nutrition coach I have been recommending my clients, family and friends use this time to dig deep and examine their daily habits. By adopting a meditation practice you can become more aware of habits you already have but don’t want so you can cultivate better ones to better support your growth and well-being. Consider cultivating daily habits as a part of your work.
Have you thought about the following questions or are you on auto-pilot?
How do you want to wake up in the morning?
What is the first thing you want to do?
How do you want to fall asleep at night?
What routines bring meaning and energy into your life?
What routines drain you and make you feel numb?
How do you want to structure your day?
How do you currently structure your day?
What really matters to you?
Are you prioritizing the things that matter throughout your day?
How many mindless but fun activities are you comfortable allowing? (alcohol consumption, smoking, video games, t.v. etc).
How you spend each day is how you tend to live your life. So use this time to dig deep and see how much of your day is on auto-pilot and influenced by your external environment and how much of your day is consciously chosen by you. Prioritizing a meditation practice can help your brain slow down messages and synapses enough to keep automatic beliefs, thoughts and behaviors from running the show.
By prioritizing a consistent, daily meditation routine you start to notice patterns you didn’t know you had before. You start to notice for the first time what is happening automatically. Imagine any kind of belief, thought or behavior like a super charged electrical highway that has been developing traffic over the years in your mind. The more traffic on the highway the larger, brighter and busier that belief, thought or behavior becomes.
These are neural pathways in our brain and essentially what a habit is neurologically. The brain grooves out these large super-highways in response to what we think, feel and do repeatedly over time. Our brain is doing us a favor by trying to make us more efficient. Walking, speaking and making a cup of coffee are all habits that have become large electrified super-highways in the brain so we don’t have to continuously “remember” to do it. This is a good thing but it happens with both helpful and unhelpful patterns, anything and everything that is done repeatedly over time.
Without meditation we tend to be unaware of our pathways. We tend to act them out without having awareness of what’s happening. Meditation slows down the traffic on the highways. It makes those patterned electrical currents less loud and less distracting so we can NOTICE them and not be driven by them. With less traffic on the highways our brain has time to connect itself together, do deep processing, make space for knowledge, allow integration of emotions, improve cognition and increase clarity. Essentially you’re taking BACK your brain power by slowing doing the traffic and rerouting the energy.
The cool thing is this process happens all by itself when we allow it to. The brain knows how to heal and it wants to integrate it’s systems, we just need to give it the quiet space and time to do so. You may notice improved memory, greater intuition, healthier relationships, better emotional control, better sleep, increased stress management, feelings of ‘connectedness’ and an improved sense of internal control.
Use meditation as the master habit to help transform all others. If you’re interested in learning how you can integrate meditation into your daily life send me a direct message on instagram @Julianne.dallas, I would be happy to help. Stay healthy out there.
Your Coach,
Julianne
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