It's a new year and many people have resolutions to get healthier. Research shows that most resolutions do not last very long. The reason is that it can be difficult to create new habits.

There are a few things one can do that have proven to help create new habits.

Shamanic teacher and coach, John Moore, uses creating a meditation practice as an example to give real-world strategies for creating new healthy habits.

Announcer 0:28

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's John.

John Moore 0:50

So what happens most of the time, is that we put a lot of thought into the what, what are we going to do, I'm going to work out for 45 minutes every day. But we don't actually think about, Oh, you want to think about the perspective, I want to create a, an exercise habit that will last me the rest of my life that will end and I will naturally get into shape, like we think about the, I'm going to fit into that bathing suit, or I'm going to look this way, or I'm going to lose this many pounds as the goal. And it's very frequently a large, long term, large, long term goal. And there's nothing wrong with large long term goals, I've got lots of large, long term goals. But trying to tackle that on day one, is not great. And so again, let me use meditation, meditation is going to be the example I use throughout this episode. Because because it is a spiritual, spiritual, physical and psychological practice, and it benefits everyone. And I'm also going to use a talk about a few myths of meditation that prevent people from practicing sometimes. So that'll be sort of an allied topic along with how to build healthy habits, consciously build healthy habits. So, you know, I talk to a lot of people and I have, from time to time teach meditation. And I've taught meditation online, which is kind of interesting. And, you know, I try to teach people how to create a meditation practice, which is essentially about building a habit. So what happens very frequently, in my observation, from talking to a lot of people that meditation is, people say, Okay, I'm gonna start meditating, I'm gonna sit down and close my eyes for an hour. And I'm going to stop my thoughts. And then I will be fully enlightened. The very first time I tried to meditate, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not a lot. So the number one complaint I hear from people who claim they can't meditate is I can't stop my thoughts, my thoughts, keep going. My response to that is, congratulations, you're alive. And your thoughts are never going to stop until you become the Buddha. So the bad news is, you are not the Buddha yet. Part of you is but you are not fully immersed in your Buddhahood at the moment. That's the bad news. The good news is you're alive and your consciousness is working, and thoughts are arising and you're aware of them. Those are all good things, all good things to be expected. The goal of meditation is not to stop your thoughts. The goal is to meditate. That's it. The practice is the goal. The benefits that you get are side effects. The lower the blood pressure, the lower stress all of those things. They may be goals of yours. They might be goals, oh, I'm going to meditate to reduce stress. I'm going to meditate to do this, but those things are side effects, right? It's like saying, I'm going to work out to lose weight. Okay, losing weight is a side effect of working hours. But if we shift our perspective Have a little bit. And, you know, we say I'm, I'm going to work out. Because I love, I'm going to find a way that I love at getting exercise. And I'm going to exercise just for the enjoyment of it, and then make sure I enjoy it every time I do it, you will very quickly build or at least start to build an exercise habit. And you will lose weight as a side effect, if that you know, is a goal of yours as a side effect of working out.

But if your end goal is, hmm, well, man, I got to lose 30 pounds, and I'm going to go I'm going to work out to lose 30 pounds anymore work out for a week. And it's hard. And you got to get up early in the morning and you got to drive to a gym and you got to put on weird clothes and shower in a weird place and do all these things. And then you look at the scale after a week and you've lost half a pound. You know, like huh, at this rate, it's going to be more than a year, before I lose all that weight, as well just go eat a large pizza, topped with cupcakes. And drink a two liter bottle of soda, too, to wash it all down. And again, I'm exaggerating, but this is what happens a lot people you know, and again, it's it's good, it's fine to have these big long term goals. But one of the problems with one of the problems with you know, setting these goals and building these habits is not seeing results quickly enough. Right, not seeing things happen getting discouraged. And giving up and Breaking the Habit too soon, and that sort of thing. Okay. So with, with meditation, you know, I would say in the same thing with exercise or anything else. I would say start small and set short term goals. So if if exercise are your goal, I'm going to exercise, my goal is to exercise for 30 minutes three times this week. That's much more doable than I am going to exercise for an hour and a half every single day and I'm going to lose 30 pounds in the next two weeks. And, um, you know, we get discouraged a lot. And also, you know, large habits are challenging to install. Right, we've got to make big, big changes, big lifestyle changes, we've got a buck against other habits to do these things. So one of the things that I work on with clients when I coach them, and they say, Well, my goal is to, I don't know, find a new job. Let's say that that's the goal. Well, hmm, you know, we, one of the first things I'll do is to, you know, try to get people into momentum, get people moving. You know, and it's hard. If you think about think about the way momentum and inertia works. Okay, you have a car, you can't go zero to 100 miles an hour instantaneously. You have to, you know, apply the gas and it speeds up over time. Right? You're overcoming the inertia of the car sitting still. Seems kind of true with yourself. Like you have to overcome some inertia. Now, I trained martial arts for decades and taught martial arts for a long time. And one of the things that my one of my teachers told me was the hardest part of training is getting off the couch. And isn't that the truth? I would see people you know, come to class for a week and then not show up again. And what happens is, oh, we're comfortable, you know, oh, there's something good on TV. Oh, I'm hungry. Oh, you know, we'll find all of those things that get in our way. get in our way. So what I will work On with clients frequently is, and this will be my first major tip for building any sort of healthy habit, but I'll apply it to meditation in a moment

is, you know, I'll ask the question, what is the smallest thing you could do right now, that would move you forward towards your goal. And that thing should be so small, that it would seem almost ridiculous not to do it. I will give you an example, from a client and I don't give away my clients name or any identifiable information. So I won't tell you where this person lived or anything about them. But I had a client who's a fantastic photographer. And she was working in a job. That was not what exactly what she wanted. And we talked about her goals, her dreams, all of these things. And she really wanted to have, you know, see her work hanging in a gallery somewhere. And that would be a really cool, kind of long term goal for her. And I said, Well, you know, what do you what are you doing about that right now said, Well, I don't even know my camera. I haven't even taken pictures in a year. My cameras in the back of my closet, my photos are all on hard drives and storage, and this and that. And I said, you know, as to the question, what is the smallest thing that you could do to move your goal forward? That is so small, it would seem almost silly not to do it. I just said, Well, I guess I could take my camera out of the closet. I was like, Cool, take your camera out of the closet. And then the next step was, I guess I can put my camera in the car, whenever I go out. And so if I have an opportunity, I can, you know, go take some pictures somewhere. You know, if I have some time, if I see something that catches my eye, I'll have my camera right there. And so she did that. Um, a couple things happened. So she started, you know, she did all of those things. And she started taking some cool pictures. And in her day job, so to speak, she ran into somebody who ran a gallery who was putting on a show of new artists. And she said, wow, that's really interesting. I'm a photographer, and they got talking. And long story short, she had within within three months of us talk, you know, having that initial conversation, she had booked her first gallery show. You know, and this is, this takes nothing away from her skill. As a photographer, she was always a brilliant photographer. It was just a matter of it was a matter of a number of things. One, she was demonstrating on a spiritual level, she was demonstrating to herself into the universe, what she wanted. You know, and one of the problems with the law of attraction stuff that's out there is, a lot of people take the law of attraction to mean I just sit around on my couch, and wish really hard. And when I do, the universe is gonna drop a box of money into my lap. And if it worked, that way, we would all win the lottery. Right? We'd all be billionaires. It doesn't work that way. I'm sorry to say. The Law of Attraction is wonderful. And it's a fantastic practice. And it does, you know, follow some accurate spiritual principles and that sort of thing. But frequently, it omits action, it admits doing something. You know, and I think people have the idea that, Oh, if I'm actually doing something, I'm not using the law of attraction, which is just not true. You know, the law of attraction is meant to make things meant to create enhanced probabilities. We'll put it that way. So if you know I'm using law of attraction to get a new job, but I don't put my resume out there, or I don't look for jobs or I don't interview, a new job isn't going to, you know, a new job isn't going to jump into my lap. So, you know, it's

it's a false idea that you're just gonna sit around and wish real hard and things are going to happen for you. And I'm sorry to say that that's a false idea. But, but it is, and people will be better served by getting into inspired action and actually doing things towards their goals. So this client of mine gotten into inspired action, she took some very small steps, that led to huge results, but she took steps. And she'd been she'd had this goal, this thing in mind that she wanted to happen for her for years, maybe decades, I don't know, but for a very long time, years and years, didn't do anything about it. Okay. And so stuff isn't just going to happen for you, you're not going to lose weight, if that's your goal, lose body fat. If you sit around and think real hard about it. Well, you're eating two pizzas and a chocolate cake every day. Okay, because your actions are going to run contrary to your to your mind and spirit and your minds not if you're doing those things, your mind is not quite aligned, either. So, alignment is really about getting body, mind and spirit moving in the same direction. So having these goals like why do you want to work out? Why do you want to meditate? Why do you want to do these things? That is important, having the why is important. You know, but not as important as getting into motion getting into action. It's funny saying getting into action with meditation, because you're kind of doing the opposite. But sitting down to meditate is taking the action. So the key here is particularly at the beginning of any habit or change you want to make. do small things. So if I had gone to my client, well, if you want your own show, you need to spend three hours a day taking photographs, and two hours a day editing those photographs and another hour a day. I'm marketing yourself to different galleries and you know, spend every Saturday walking from gallery to gallery with your portfolio. I don't think she would have been able to sustain that for very long. It's too big a change. It's too much to ask. And yeah, I know. I mean, there are some people out there that make huge changes and never look back. But that's pretty rare. For most people, again, most New Year's resolutions, I think 85% go by the wayside within the first couple of months. So I'm trying to give some tips for the rest of us for whom these large changes don't tend not to stick. So make small changes. So with meditation, when I've had people come to me with a goal of creating a meditation habit, I will tell them a couple of things. One is don't sit down and try to meditate for an hour and a half. If you have not meditated before, it's going to drive you crazy. You know, you wouldn't if you've never worked out before, you wouldn't go to the gym for two hours and lift the heaviest weights you possibly could. You know to the point of exhaustion, you would never go back to the gym again, you would most likely injure yourself and the amount of soreness you would feel would keep you out of the gym for quite a long time probably if you ever went back so start with small actions. Okay. If your goal is to start a meditation habit, start with I am going to sit on my cushion for a minute and a half with my eyes closed. And that's it. That's it. That's how we would start. Like yeah, but I'm not enlightened when I just by sitting down for three minutes. Sure. But you're not enlightened by sitting down in your mat for the first time for two hours either. And you're probably not going to stick with meditation if that's how you're trying to do it.

So that's, that's step number one, chunk things down into smaller steps and build over time. So I've told people, you know, if you're starting meditation practice, don't start with longer than five minutes. If you're just beginning there's no reason for it. And then, you know, after about five minutes or so, you're just fighting with your brain Anyway, you've got to get some practice under your belt, and say that your, your brain starts to go, oh, okay, we've done this before. I'm not gonna fight with you, this is safe. This is okay. So small chunks, you know, a couple of the other things I'm going to suggest come from some research on habits, good habits, bad habits, all of that sort of thing. And that's one of them chunking out small things. The other. Another good tip for creating habits. You know, and this goes along with chunking them into smaller things, is, when you have a new habit that you want to create. Let's say I want to drink more water, I'm gonna start by drinking an extra glass a day of water, I am going to change that habit to something I already do habitually. So I brush my teeth in the morning and at night at the same time. So I'm going to add a glass of water to my tooth brushing routine in the morning, I'll start out with that. Okay, so every time I brush my teeth, bright, before I pick up my toothbrush, I'm going to drink a glass of water. And then I'm going to brush my teeth. Or I'll do it after brushing my teeth doesn't matter. But I'm changing that to something that's already a habitual behavior. And then I might add a second glass of water to my nighttime teeth brushing routine. So whenever you can you chain this to habits, you're taking advantage of patterns that you've already built up. So with meditation, it might be you know, whenever I get out of bed, and you know, put my shoes on, before I put my shoes on, I'm gonna sit down on my mat for five minutes, close my eyes and watch my breath. And then I'll put my shoes on, or, you know, whatever, whatever thing that you do every time in the morning. So for me, I make my coffee. Maybe I meditate for five minutes before I before I actually drink my coffee. I'm gonna have a sip right now. Very good coffee this morning. If I don't say so myself. Okay, so that is hit number two. So hit number one was small, small, small, small, small behaviors was the smallest thing you could do. Hint number two is to chain the behavior to other habits that you already have. Take advantage of those neural pathways that are burned in hint number three is to Reis reduce resistance to performing your habit. So resistance is anything that blocks us emotionally physically, whatever. But usually emotionally talking usually about emotional resistance to to performing a task. So I'll give you an example. In I got this from I was listening to a story on NPR the other day. And the woman was in fact talking about habits she had written a book about habits I think called like good habits, bad habits or something like that.

But I you know, this one came up. This statistic came up I knew, I knew that overcoming resistance was one of the keys to to creating habits but I didn't know this particular statistics. So they did a study of people with gym memberships and how often they use them. So somebody who lived within three miles of their gym so they had to drive three miles to go work out of the gym three miles. or less, on average, use the gym and worked out three to five times per month, which doesn't seem like a lot. However, once you crossed five miles, when somebody had to travel five miles, the number of times they worked out, or you know, use the gym, on average fell to once per month. So that two extra miles of resistance, which you know, is a few extra minutes of driving, you know, reduced the, you know, usage to a third or a fifth of what people normally would be normally would be doing. And that tells you how strong a factor resistance is. So how, you know, how do we go about reducing resistance to a new behavior? Well, let's say it's meditation, we'll look at the things that stop you or the things you have to do to meditate are that sort of thing. So you might say, well, you know, when I meditate, I've got to go, you know, put on special clothes, and I've got to get my cushions out and set them up and dim the lights and you know, whatever. Okay, well, let's say you have to wear special comfy clothes to meditate. And you want to meditate in the morning. Maybe at night, you lay out your meditation clothes for the morning. And maybe you set your cushion out. So when you get up in the morning, you can put on your comfy meditation clothes, and just go sit on your mat. Or maybe you've linked that to brushing your teeth, maybe put your comfy clothes on, brush your teeth, and go sit on your mat, and meditate for five minutes. And this, you can link a bunch of behaviors together, right? So pre brushing your teeth, you put on your comfy clothes, I don't change my clothes to meditate. Maybe you do, and that's fine. But I'm just using this as an example. I meditate and whatever I happen to be wearing at the time. And but anyway, it is all about reducing your resistance. So if you want to work out, you know, maybe, don't you, you know, you've a lot of people have, you know, buy the piece of workout equipment, the treadmill or the whatever. And they set up in their house. And then they use it as a clothes rack, right. There's stuff all over it and that sort of thing. And then like, Oh, I've got to you know, if I want to use a treadmill, I've got to clean it off. And that's resistance. Keep your treadmill clean, keep your meditation cushion out and available where you can just sit and meditate, link it to another habit. So the three tips we have so far are small chunks. Linking to another habit and reducing resistance and you can figure out how each of those things works for you. The last kind of the last hint I have and this one can be, you know, a little bit more challenging, I guess. And that is that this has to do with brain chemistry, particularly dopamine. So dopamine is the chemical that is associated with reward in our brain, our sense of being rewarded and we can get a rush of dopamine from different ways frequently alcohol and drugs. You know, the addiction aspect is an addiction to dopamine eating, you know those sorts of things.

And, you know, if you have low dopamine levels, you know, it can be problematic you have things like Parkinson's disease and that sort of thing. So there are you know, there are different ways to naturally increase your dopamine levels. Meditation is one of them. So meditation as long as it can be as long as it's pleasant, positive experience will actually increase your dopamine levels. So it can be a reward unto itself. But some of the other things, so we want to perhaps link increases in dopamine, you know, we want to do things that naturally increase our dopamine. So there are things that you know, like you can eat certain things, you'll do research on your own. changing your diet, getting enough sleep, meditating, eating, you know, eating good proteins, that sort of thing. And you can, you can look up sort of the dietary things as well. But some of the other things that, you know, release dopamine for us, you know, do increase modern, you know, art, but pardon me, little tongue tied there, some of the things that release or increased dopamine for us include sort of like short bursts of exercise. So like moderate intensity exercise, does it. So if you do it too much, you know, not great, but like 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, getting enough sleep. When you get enough sleep, there's a lot of dopamine released in the morning. But we can also potentially link habits to things that things that release dopamine as well. So I already said that meditation in and of itself can release dopamine but so can things like listening to pleasant music. So maybe you find music that you play when you meditate that you really enjoy. Okay, maybe if you're working out you listen to you know, a lot of people listen to music on treadmill, or that sort of thing. I've already said meditation, you know, frequently food. Food, you know, eating something we'll be eating something we like will improve dopamine. So but we want to be careful about eating something unhealthful and unhelpful way. But maybe you could, I don't know, as an example, reward yourself with a very small piece of dark chocolate, for example, which has even there's some sugar in it has some health benefits and releases really happy chemicals in our brain. So you know, you have a rule, I have a tiny piece of dark chocolate after I meditate, just as one example of how to do a dopamine dopamine release with your hap habit, so triggering your reward system. Or, you know, I'm only going to, you know, I enjoy watching this trashy TV program, I'm only going to watch it. After I've meditated I've got it, you know, you've got to record it on DVR or something. And I've got to meditate for 15 minutes before I allow myself to watch this trashy guilty pleasure TV show or whatever you can think of things that you find rewarding, that you can use to link to habits and this will increase as we know, rewarding behavior leads to those that behavior increasing. And rewards that release dopamine enhanced that enhance the habit building effect. So those are some very real world, I hope, practical things you can do to create to create habits. And I know I'm specifically specifically focused on meditation habit for this, but it can be anything. But I do want to talk a little tiny bit about meditation at the end of this since if you're if you're listening, perhaps you're interested in, in creating a meditation routine for yourself, building a meditation habit.

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John more. For more info or to contact John go to maineshaman.com That's maineshman.com