30. Meditate with friends and family
You might think that meditation is a private affair, but it’s not. Meditation is greatly enhanced when two or more people sit, walk, or meditate in any other way, together. Try it and see for yourself.
31. Sit in the morning
Whether you’re a night owl or an early riser, it can be very beneficial to begin meditating once you rise in the morning. A daily morning meditation practice is probably the single most powerful morning ritual you can adopt. It will literally transform the rest of your life with a consistent daily practice.
32. If your interest begins to wane, reaffirm your practice
This might happen, and it might not. Due to the sometimes difficult nature of meditation, but probably more importantly just because sticking to anything for any length of time can be difficult, it may be necessary at times to reaffirm your practice.
By this I mean remember why you began meditating in the first place. Typically, coming back to your book or audio can be highly beneficial in these cases as they’ll remind you of how powerful and beneficial your practice can be and usually be mixed with enough encouraging words to keep you going.
In general, if this does happen, it will only be a phase. So stay strong, reaffirm your practice, and keep moving. It will wear off. Once this happens, your practice will be stronger than ever.
33. Discover the power of silence
You might be compelled to listen to some peaceful music or something while meditating, and at times this can be OK, but in general I’d suggest you learn the value of silence.
Silence is a powerful and almost mystical thing really which can often leave us with no real way of describing the experience itself (of sitting in silence, for instance). Silence is healing and revitalizing, so learn the power of silence now. Not just in sitting meditation, but in all forms of meditation: silent walking, silent eating, silent driving, etc.
Test it out- it’s a beautiful and highly nourishing practice.
34. Use bodily signals to uncover and deal with strong emotions
It can be difficult to sit with strong emotions, like sadness or anger. To help this, it can be valuable to focus your concentration (or object of meditation, where you place your attention- typically your breath, steps, etc.) on your body.
Practicing mindfulness of the body can help detect these strong emotions, and sometimes, when you’re feeling restless and don’t even exactly know what you’re feeling, identifying where on your body you’re feeling changes can help you identify what emotion it is that you’re feeling.
Overall, whether you’ve already identified the emotion or not, practicing mindfulness of body can help to bring these emotions into perspective.
It helps you see that these emotions aren’t any different from the rest of your body’s natural processes and helps shed their sometimes monstrous cloak which make them feel to us like they’re these impossible forces to overcome (which they’re not).
35. Don’t jump up
Once you’ve finished your meditation session, don’t immediately get up and rush off to the rest of your day. It’s important to take a moment after your meditation to stay in this relaxed state, look around, let your thoughts come back to you slowly, and get up only once you feel you’re ready.
Doing so will make your practice more enjoyable and help break the habit of rushing from place to place.
36. Have fun
Ultimately, your practice should be a great sense of joy. You won’t always enjoy it, as we talked about earlier you may run into problems or your motivation to keep practicing might wane, but these things will be temporary and you’ll soon go back to your “usual” practice.
And this practice should be highly enjoyable, bringing you in touch with the limitless beauty and peace of all the things within your everyday life.
37. Find a community
This is in no way required, but finding a meditation community can be both highly beneficial to your practice and greatly rewarding in your life as a whole.
Meditation done in groups is far more effective than alone, so even just one weekly group meditation session with people can be of great benefit. This could mean simply bringing your friends and family in on your practice as I talked about earlier, or it could mean joining a local meditation group.
Whatever you decide to do, finding a group of people to practice with is something to strongly consider.
38. Mindfulness isn’t about quieting the mind
Know that mindfulness isn’t about getting to a point where your mind is literally quiet like the dead of night, so don’t get frustrated if even after a year of meditation you still have thoughts popping up regularly.
The purpose of mindfulness is to calm your mind to the point where you can observe it with clarity. You’ll never completely quiet the mind, and nor is this the point.
You’ll greatly calm the mind and derive a great source of peace from your meditation despite this. This is definitely one of the most important points on this list because it’s not just a common mistake beginners make but also a common misconception even among those who practice (at least those who haven’t practiced for long).
39. Meditation forms are generally separated by position, but there are various forms of meditation for each position
Let’s take walking for instance. You might think that there’s only one form of walking meditation. That is, walking while being mindful of your steps.
This is the most common, but while walking you can also be mindful of the sensations you’re experiencing, especially if you’re outside, such as the wind hitting you and the heat from the sun on your body.
The most common forms of meditation are generally the most common because they’re the most universal and straightforward, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to mix it up. Doing so can really take your practice to a different level, allowing you so many other varied methods of living with mindfulness and offering new opportunities to deepen your practice.
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