Sometimes we can’t get to do an activity no matter how much we try. This can affect a breath awareness meditation practice. How do we deal with the situation? The answer will be discussed: the solution, why it works, and ideas to get us started.
The solution
The brain knows every trick against you, will make every excuse with breath awareness meditation, and will try to keep you down and not do the practice. The easiest way to get yourself to do the practice is to work on your mood in general.
Why it works
Your mood affects behavior. If you feel awful, it will be harder for your to do an activity. The more you force yourself to do the activity the more you feel awful. You will be stuck in a negative feedback loop. We all know how that ends. As mentioned before, work on your overall mood. Feeling good in general makes it easier to do activities including breath awareness meditation.
9 Ideas to get you started
- You can listen to inspirational music. You can go on the internet, specifically YouTube. Type in your favorite inspirational song and listen to it. Listen to new songs and add to your list of favorites. Music can transport you to a different place. If you want to go to a happy place listen to happy music.
- You can fast. When you are under a lot of stress and dealing with very stressful things in your external environment your body isn’t thinking of digesting food. Give it a break. The worse foods you eat the more your digestion needs a break. You don’t want to feel awful. Also include prayer. Now your body as more energy to manifest your prayer because it isn’t digesting food. Spend more time on areas that are bothering you the most. Don’t negatively polarize your emotions. Focus and feel the ideal scenario as if with positive emotions. Fasting and praying can also make you physically healthier. Fasting moves energy from the gut to the brain. You don’t want to overdo it. Before sleep time eat something but eat something light so you won’t feel sick in the morning.
- You can practice affirmations, and love and gratitude. Use present and positive connotations for your affirmations. Affirm who you want to become. Also, affirm the action you are going to take to reach your goals. The body will become the mind. You are building muscle brain memory. Performing the action will feel more natural. Think of it as a rehearsal for the real event. The more you do it the better. Get a notebook. Everyday right down ten things you are grateful for. In looking for positives you are teaching your brain to look for or remember the positive things in your life and stop focusing on the negatives. It builds positive brain neuroplasticity. You will be happier. Your body is also an extension of your brain. You will also be healthier. If you want better health, give thanks for the level of health that you have.
- Don’t judge yourself negatively for making mistakes or things not going according to plan. Do things that will make you positive. If you work on the strengths and the strength of your strengths your weaknesses will reduce or be eliminated. Instead of saying you are going to stop eating junk food, say you are going to cook more. You don’t want to resist junk food and have nothing to replace it with. You are setting yourself up for failure.
- Take care of burning problems that might be weighing you down. Is your work boring or stressful? Do you have more important business? This can affect your overall wellbeing. It isn’t just what you do. It is how you feel about what you do. Emotions affect chemistry and chemistry affect physics. Take care of the burning problem. Decrease or increase the difficulty of your work. Prioritize your goals.
- The more you learn about something the more you see it from a set of new Nero connections in your brain, become more aware of the different possibilities, and the more you appreciate it. You don’t want your dopamine receptors to get num. When you aren’t active, learn. Learning will help you fantasize and try new things. If you have too much free time you can increase your financial intelligence. You will always need money. You can solve more problems. You are less likely to do things that don’t serve your highest good with your free time.
- Use the 80/20 rule to make decisions. All you need is a few habits to make you most happy and productive. 20 percent of the input gets 80 percent of the results. You know you are getting a hundred times a lot more than you are putting in, so you are motivated. Then do a different variation of each habit to create nuance. When making money work where most results are possible with the least amount of effort first. Do the best micro activity of your best activity. Plan your time and make reusable assets. Keep things simple and consistent. Work on other things also like your health. Go for the gut and you will solve a thousand other problems. Allow your to do list to cycle. This will keep you motivated. If something doesn’t add to the synergy of all your activities, it should be eliminated. Take your least important activity that is giving you low to negative results and experiment with something that is potentially better.
- Work on your environment. Arrange your environment in such a way that it discourages bad addiction and encourages good addiction. Subliminal messages are always reaching your subconscious mind when you aren’t paying attention and the more you are exposed to them the more likely you are to act on them. If you leave in a cluttered environment your mind will be cluttered. If you are always looking for stuff it is a drain on your energy, and you will feel frustrated. You need a clean workspace to work. Set up your environment in a way that it reinforces your goals. You can watch inspirational or educational programs on YouTube. Write down your goals on paper and affirm the action you are going to take. Have faith and be positive. Take baby steps every day and commit to learning. Make your worst-case scenario still good as you experiment your way up. Have a routine but rework the worse part of your routine as needed.
- Take a break from your routine. The left brain likes to follow standard routine all the time. The right brain is open to learning and trying new things. If you are doing something and it is making you frustrated or depressed, take a break. Do something else temporarily. Do something fun that doesn’t involve work, change your environment, or read a book you don’t read every day. You will be able to come back to an activity with a fresh perspective. Try not to miss two days in a role of an activity.
Final thought
What uplifted your mood yesterday and motivated you to do an activity won’t necessary work today. Ask yourself what you need right now to uplift your spirit. It might be doing nothing for a short while. It might be something else not discussed. That is okay too. Don’t fail, give up, and believe nothing is working. Different things will work at different times and somethings more often than others. Next time you find yourself not being able to do breath awareness mediation ask yourself, “How do I feel in general?” Then work on improving your mood if you need to.