Extending The Benefits of Meditation with Everyday Habits

They’re obvious, but often overlooked

Mindfulness has become one of those popular terms that’s almost overused now in western culture. This is no surprise with all the stress and anxiety caused by our modern-day lives.

People, in mass, have turned to practices like mindfulness meditation: It’s being promoted more in the workplace, by sports teams; even some western doctors will recommend it to patients.

Although meditation is great, that feeling of clarity, peace and presence it can produce tends to slowly fade away as you get into the day-to-day stresses of life.

You get to work (whether it’s your business or you’re employed) and you’re straight into dealing with fires, planning for the future, and having meetings about complex issues.

The clarity, peace, and presence you felt during your meditation have become a distant memory, fading further into the past with each email you open at work.

You almost completely forget about any insights you might have had during your meditation as your mind jumps into evaluations of the past and projections of potential future outcomes, in a bid to navigate your life.

Then the next time you meditate, you get back into that clarity, peace and presence. You realise you’ve just spent the last however many hours in a completely different mental space.

You tell yourself you’re going to carry that calm, present mindset into the rest of your day. But as soon as the meetings start, the emails flood in, and your phone starts blowing up, you’ve lost it.

Meditation does have more lasting effects. When you’re regularly doing it, you do carry some of the benefits into your life, even when you’re doing other stuff. It helps you deal with life much better.

But the tampering effect is still there. Not many people can maintain the same levels of presence & clarity that they experience during meditation into the rest of the day.

I’ve been meditating, not every day, but pretty consistently for about 10 years now. I’ve experienced those periods of really strong mental clarity, presence and peace.

Some periods last longer than others, it really just depends on what season of life I’m in.

I’ve also experienced those blips, where you get pulled into compulsive thinking, reactivity, fear, and stress of life.

Again, some periods last longer than others.

It’s easy to sit on a comfy pillow, crossed-legged, in silence, meditating away, observing your thoughts, feeling great. But to try and maintain that same mental state once you’re dealing with problems is completely different.

I’ve found that when I’m following these 3 habits. I’m able to carry over more of the benefits I get from meditation into the rest of the day, week, and month — regardless of what happens.

Just to caveat, these habits probably seem obvious, and you most likely already exercise each of them to a degree. But I think their significance is understated, which is probably why not many people exercise them to a high degree.

Honesty

It’s hard to be mindful when you’re being dishonest. Even if you get away with lying, you never really get away with it, your conscience won’t let you.

Even if you’re a psychopath and you don’t feel any sort of moral repercussion from lying, there’s still a price to pay.

When you lie, things hang over your head. You’re constantly having to sustain the lie. Constantly having to make sure you keep your story straight and avoid slipping up.

You can’t have presence and peace living like this.

In a recent interview, Jordan Peterson said “I’ve never seen any one of my clinical clients ever get away with anything, even once.”

He went on to explain this using an example of people who use deceitful business practices. You may get some narrow advantage in the short term, but eventually, it catches up with you.

Whether you end up losing credit & respect in the future, or whether you have to live with the psychological effort and concern that comes with lying, you pay the price.

This includes being honest with yourself. Being honest about your relationships, about your true feelings towards something. A lot of the time we go along with things to fit societal norms, but we pay with our peace of mind.

It’s all good pretending to be someone, or pretending to be happy about things you’re actually not happy with, but that comes with a price.

Detailed Planning & Effective Organising

We’re always thinking about the stuff we have to do: our tasks for the day, our goals etc.

This takes you out of that present state. Being organised and planning effectively can vastly reduce this. You don’t have to think so compulsively about all the things you need to do for the week because it’s all there in your calendar, written up with specific time slots.

When you’re organised you don’t have to think and worry about how you’re going to fit in all your tasks, there’s less mental gymnastics and rushing to try “fit everything in.”

It’s like planning a car journey early. You’re more likely to have a leisurely drive. You can go more slowly, make a few stops on the way, take in the sights, and savour the journey.

But when you’re disorganised and you’ve left late, it’s stressful. You’re more likely to get a ticket for speeding, you’re less likely to take in the sights as you’re rushing to make time.

You’re more likely to forget things and it’s just a lot less pleasant.

Brandon Carter hosted a talk on the fresh and fit podcast, where he detailed how he sets goals. I was shocked at how detailed everything was.

He breaks his longer-term goals into smaller sub-goals. He then makes detailed plans for how he is going to achieve them and gives specific dates for when each step needs to be completed.

Coach JC talks about his playbook for life. He’s written 10 commandments for his life. He looks at these commandments every day. He’s also written down a game plan for his life and will also often write one for his day.

His thinking behind this is if sports teams and businesses have game plans and business plans, why shouldn’t we have one for our lives?

It’s pretty similar to what Tony Robbins emplores in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Tony highlights the importance of having a mission statement that outlines your values and overall goals for how you want your life to be.

Humans are very forgetful, and we go against our own ethics all the time. We’re constantly having to remind ourselves to do the things we need to do. We’re constantly having to think about our actions and where we want to go.

Having these things written down and detailed reduces the amount we have to think about them.

It just becomes a case of looking at the calendar, looking at the mission statement and executing without all the excess thought.

Minimalism

This fits into almost everything. If you’ve read any of my other articles it probably sounds redundant, but this is a solution for so many issues.

Doing fewer things, more slowly, with more engagement is really the only way you can be present and have peace of mind.

When you’re multi-tasking all the time, trying to do too many things and rushing everything, naturally you’re going to unconsciously gloss over what you’re experiencing and feel stressed.

You’re going to have fewer things to think about, and you’re going to be able to give more attention to the things you’re doing.

I know this one can be difficult because often our modern lives demand so much of us, especially in the workplace.

But I’ve found that rather than trying to be perfectly minimalistic, it’s better to be as minimalistic as is feasible for your current lifestyle.

Being better with these three practices on their own is going to allow you to be more mindful, clearer-minded, and less stressed.

But when combined with a mindfulness meditation practice, I’ve found it works like a supercharger.

It compounds the benefits you get from the meditation and allows them to set more deeply into your being regardless of what happens. Then inevitably, when you are confronted with stressful situations, you’re able to deal with them better.

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