You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day — unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour. – Zen Proverb

Why is it so hard to sit still and calm the mind for even FIVE minutes a day?  Are we so programmed for instant mental gratification, tiny bullets of dopamine hitting the brain in rapid succession that it’s impossible to work in even the smallest bit of mindfulness in our days?

Maybe some people don’t have as big an issue with this as me, but having grown up playing games, reading voraciously, playing 16 tables of poker throughout college and running an online marketing business, all things that require a lot of context switching, I’ve found it nearly impossible to stick to the habit of sitting for 10-20 minutes a day in meditation.

Of course, the next course for me was to analyze every single possible reason why this habit was so hard for me to stick to.  It’s easy to blame an overactive mind, one that needs to be DOING something all of the time – and it may even be true.  But it doesn’t help me build the habit of mindfulness in any real way, so it’s a worthless excuse.

A Better Approach

I scoured around the depths of the internet for too long before I found a great piece of advice that talks about countering The Resistance.  If you’ve ever read Steven Pressfield’s book The War Of Art, you’ll know exactly what The Resistance is.  Even if you haven’t you’re aware of it – it’s the little voice that stops you from doing things that – deep down – you know you should be doing.  Things you don’t need to do, you don’t HAVE to do, but you’d be better off if you did them.

Anyways, this wise anonymous person had this to say:

I just shrink the length of the session in my head until I hit a level I don’t feel resistance to. Like, “Could I do 15 minutes? No, I feel resistance, I’m not gonna do it. Okay, what about 10? Still too long, the thought puts me off. Okay, 5? Huh, I don’t feel resistance to that. I feel like I can sit for 5.” Boom.

So simple.  Sure, when starting out I might feel that resistance all the way down to a single minute…but a minute is better than no minutes.  So I’ll do the minute.  Then I might do two, or five.  The goal isn’t to meditate my days away, but just to actually find and dedicate that time every day to observing the thoughts and experiencing as much presence as possible.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think.  If you’ve been able to keep a meditation practice in place…drop some knowledge in the comments!

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

It’s only recently come to the forefront of my mind that it’s possible to give ourselves an amazing shot at living to over ninety.

Of course, we can’t control everything.  There are a million and one ways we can die tomorrow, but they’re not really worth worrying about.  If we go to a renegade icicle or mysterious sinkhole…that’s just how we’re going to go.  Can’t do much about it.

However, the areas we can control should be controlled with as much rigor as possible.  I’m talking about our nutrition, our musculoskeletal system, our brain function, our emotional health, our relationships, and our creative output.

There are a plethora of ways we can make tiny shifts in the right direction in any of these areas right now.

Let’s look at our body. Making an effort to perform posture correcting exercises, or even going as far as to eliminate the behaviors and habits that create bad posture can clear up many potential health risks.

In nutrition, the addition of a green juice on a daily basis can make sure we’re getting at least some kind of fresh plant matter into our diet on a daily basis.  We don’t have to make a large shift – things can evolve from micro actions into something much bigger.

Combine all of these micro actions in all aspects of longevity over time.  Eventually our level of performance in all areas is staggering, and we’re eating beautifully, exercising and caring for our body well, making sure our brain functions properly, and so on.  It’s hard to argue that the person doing all of those things doesn’t stand a chance to add years – or even decades – to their life.

Recommended Reading

• Healthy at 100
• Becoming a Supple Leopard

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

By all cylinders, I mean you’re absolutely nailing The Essentials:

• Feeding your body amazing, nutritious food
• Pushing yourself to new limits physically
• Pursuing a creative passion at maximum effort
• Absolutely crushing your job / going full bore building your business
• Meeting interesting, awesome people AND strengthening existing relationships with your friends and family

I mean, sit and think about it for a second.  What would a day in your life look like where you actually did all of that?  If you’re like almost anyone, chances are you don’t live that type of day – but some people do.

Sure, they might not hit every single cylinder hard in a given day, but over the course of a week, a month, a year…they’ve got them all pumping.

If You Were Firing On All Cylinders…

How would you feel when you wake up in the morning?  Maybe you’d feel absolutely no need to hit snooze on the alarm.  Maybe you wouldn’t even need to USE an alarm.

How would you feel when you go to sleep?  Maybe you’d be asleep before your head hit the pillow.  Maybe you’d stay up for an hour thinking about what you’re going to tackle tomorrow.

How would you feel as you move through the day?  Maybe you would have miniature peak experiences multiple times a day.  Maybe you’d appreciate and enjoy the ups and downs of each day instead of waiting for the day to be over so you can go home and watch some TV.

What If You Were Firing On All Cylinders?

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

As a follow up to my post on habits in 2013, I wanted to touch on some improvements that I have made to the system.

Previously I was tracking just one habit per month, making sure that it was likely to be a keystone habit – one that, if implemented, has a “cascade” effect on other parts of your life.  Regular exercise is a great example of this, because you’ll usually have more energy to devote to other aspects of your life and will achieve more things throughout your day.

I’ve upped the ante and am starting to think not only of single habit formation, but tracking many different habits throughout the day and using perfection as an ideal, not the desired result.

Because willpower is finite, there are simply going to be some days where my willpower gets tapped by business or personal life and some habits fall by the wayside for the day.  The idea is to track a multitude of habits – some small, some large – over long periods of time and work on the meta-structure of your day and the order of the actions you take throughout the day.

Here’s an idea of what it looks like:

Habit Categories

This is pretty self explanatory – certain habits can be grouped together under the same theme and tracked in the same place.

Habit Completion

I decided on three states for a habit in any given day: Missed, Finished, or Ignored.  Ignored exists because some days we might make a conscious choice not to do a habit, so it shouldn’t be counted as a miss on these days.  This is a judgment call, but if you make a strategic decision to pass on a habit for a day, you can give it an Ignore.

Day Percentages

This is the most interesting part of the system.  I get the percentage completion of the day with this equation: Finished / (Total Habits – Ignored).  In another view in the system you can see your habit completion percentage graphed over a week, month, or year’s time.  You can also view your habits one by one on a week, month, or year graph.

Note Taking on a Daily Basis

You can click on the date and write some short notes for the day, letting you make some quick and easy observations on what worked and what didn’t.  This allows you to rapidly iterate on your schedule and habits to get higher completion.

What This Allows You To Do

When put together, all of these pieces allow you to view habits with a larger perspective.  You get to do some REALLY cool stuff if you stick with the system for just a  month or so.

Meta Habit Structure

Everything is interrelated in life, and your habits are no exception.  Playing around with the timing, grouping, or the habits themselves can have profound results on your percentage completion for the day.  Provided you are actually choosing the right habits, doing some simple tracking and testing like this is a much better way to achieve long-term results in your life.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

I’ve been very successful in my quest to eliminate hardcore competitive video games from my life. By using Stickk, a friend, a monetary incentive, and accountability, I’ve hard-quit League of Legends and repurposed the hours a week that I was spending playing games.

This next year is going to be very exciting for me, but is also going to require a lot out of me as a person. It is going to require me to become a different person if I want to have what I will consider a “successful year.”

There are no financial, travel, or social goals planned for 2013 at all.

Instead, I will call 2013 the Habitual Year. The only true “goal” that I have for the year is that I commit to implementing or quitting one habit per month using the framework that has worked so well for me this past month. The way I see it, if I implement or remove a total of 12 major habits (think nutrition, exercise, meditation, socializing, etc) then 365 days from now there really is no way I can have a bad year.

The Framework

A habit that is 3rd party verifiable

I need to focus on habits that other people can easily see if I have accomplished or not. For LoL, it was easy because there are 3rd party websites that track gameplay, allowing Jon to see if I’d played or not regardless of if I wanted to tell him the truth. This needs to be the case in any future habit challenge.

A “painful” stake

In most cases this is an amount of money per WEEK that, if the habit challenge is failed, is given to my accountability partner or an anti charity of my choice. Two things here: the amount of money needs to really HURT and be tied to a single failure of the habit, and secondly it needs to go to something that I really don’t want to see happen.

One change per month, focusing on likely keystone habits

This is absolutely key. Not adhering to this rule is why I have failed at habits so many times in the past. As long as I am on track for the habit that I am challenging for the month, it’s OK to fail at habits I plan to implement in the future. What is NOT ok is for me to fall back into past habits that I have successfully brought through a habit challenge. There are certain habits that are OK to miss on a “few times a month” basis, and also some that I should NEVER do again in my life (video games).

A systems-driven approach

By turning actions into habits via month long habit challenges, I will be making them automatic actions that require very little of my daily willpower. The next step is to turn them into systems that remove even more willpower from the equation. Documentation will be key, but also considering some kind of outsourcing and automation will also be a major way to drive the habits into systems that self sustain.

Barrier removal

Preparation is going to be a major element. Pre cooking food, pre buying a week’s worth of groceries, laying out toothbrush, or putting Vibram’s and running gear in place are all examples of pre prep. Documentation will also be very key here to know which types of prep are working the best. For example, if putting toothbrush on my desk doesn’t create the brushing habit often enough, I should notice this within a few days because of my tracking system and I should be able to adjust the pre-prep and study what is causing me to stall on the habit.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -