Creating Your Successful Meditation Plan

Have you ever tried to meditate but have never been able to stick with it?

Or have you had big intentions of adding meditation to your daily routine at the beginning of a year or season or after a yoga class but not sure how to make the time?

Or perhaps you just don't know where you'll fit it in?

This is the point I find most new meditators get stuck.

So they meditate once or twice but don't manage to fit it into their lifestyle so they don't create a habit or routine and then they miss out on ALL the incredible benefits of a regular meditation practice. 

And then it gets forgotten among other priorities of life and any benefit that could have been gained gets lost and overtaken with daily stressors, to-dos and sometimes even bad habits without healthy habits to offset the strain and drain of work and life. 

The step that new meditators forget is creating a PLAN of how they'll fit it into their life. 

So this article will walk you through creating a plan using some transformational habit setting techniques. 

We'll cover the 3 key steps to go through to set up your PLAN and set yourself up for SUCCESS with your meditation practice and beyond!

Because how you do one thing is how you do everything.

So let's kick things off with clarity, intention and emotion to keep your inspired energy up and moving forward! 

Let's dive in, shall we?!

Step 1: Knowing your "WHY" behind starting to meditate

So first, before we get into the steps of the plan, let's first chat about why you want to learn to meditate: 

• What has brought you to checking out this meditation starter course?
• Why are you interested in meditation?
• What are you looking to change in your life?
• How do you think meditation will help?
• Why does this matter to you?

Grab a journal or just see what comes up when you ask yourself these questions.

And see where the emotion is. Most people don't change unless there is something negative they are looking to address. Like myself, I started meditating when I was totally stressed out and looking for a way to relieve some of the stress & pressure. 

What about you? 

Make the internal "WHY" motivator even stronger!

A great way to encourage ourselves to actually do something different is to make the reason for staying the same feel worse than the effort of the change. 

So try taking the WHY reasons you've come up with in the questions above and intensify them. How will making the change or not impact all areas of your life?

1. What pain or difficulty in your life will you experience if you don't make the change?
2. What good things will you gain in your life from making the change? 

Write these down with at least 3-5 points for each one. Ideally you'll do 5-10 or even 20 points or reasons for and against making the change. In this case, the change would be creating a meditation routine or habit in your life. 

• How do you feel now? 

Whenever I do this exercise, I feel waaaaay more motivated to make the change.

Plus, by working on this deeper level, the change seems to almost happen naturally because you've "convinced" yourself that it's better to shift to the new way of being/acting or habit. 

Now that you're feeling pumped up and inspired to create space in your life and schedule to meditate, let's create a plan! 

Step 2: Come up with a plan to fit meditation into your schedule

Like I mentioned above, this is where so many people I've talked to about meditation get stuck.

• They don't have time!
• They don't know how to fit it into their schedule!
• They are exhausted and don't have enough energy or whatever their reason is! 

But you're here so you are obviously willing to make a shift to gain the benefits!

And crazily enough, making the shift to adding meditation into your life will actually help reduce or resolve some of the problems that you and other people get caught in. 

It's part of the solution to the challenges that have been keeping you held back from adding meditation (and more self-care, etc) into your life in the first place! 

So let's get planning! 

So in my previous article "Are You Mentally Fit?" we talked a bit about when and where to meditate. Plus I shared some of the locations where I meditate most of the time (on my couch) and my favourite places (overlooking the ocean). 

Now it's your turn: 

Either pull out your journal, open or print off the free Simply Mindful Starter Kit PDF, or pull out your phone or laptop to write out your plan. 

1. Why is meditating important to you? (use the WHY points we covered above)
2. Where will you meditate?
3. When will you meditate?
4. What tools will you use? 
5. How will you mediate?

See the Simply Mindful Starter Kit PDF for more detailed questions and ideas of what to write for each part of your plan. 

Also, get some recommendation of my top meditation tools and a free guided meditation in the free Simply Mindful email course when you sign up!

Step 3: Committing to your Plan!

This is where you'll pull it all together... 

In a few sentences, write out a summary of your why and your plan then, commit to yourself to develop this new habit for the next 30 days. 

Here's an example: 

"For the next 30 days, I, Sarah Francescutti, commit to meditating for 20 minutes every morning after my morning walk and before I get showered and changed for the day because I love how meditating makes me feel calm, centered, connected and inspired for the day ahead!" ~ signed & dated 27 May 2019

You can even sign and date it at the bottom for bonus points! :p 

This is your declaration to yourself, no one else. You're doing this for you! 

Yeah sure, there will be benefits for other people in your life at work and at home... but truly, the most benefit will be yours! 

Making a commitment to YOURSELF can be super powerful! I've used this technique to commit to daily journaling and morning pages, for my meditation practice, fitness routine and more! 

Conclusion

So, we've explored your WHY for wanting to start a meditation practice and deepened it by looking at the impacts in your life if you don't make a change compared to all the incredible benefits you'll gain from starting a practice!

Then, we came up with the specific detailed plan of how you'll fit it into your life and made a personal commitment to trying it out for 30 days!

If you'd like to dive deeper into your plan and also get support for setting up your practice, plus get a free meditation course in your email... sign up for the Simply Mindful Intro to Meditation Starter Kit PDF and email course here!