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How to overcome making hard choices…

perfect-health

Part 1 …like starting a meditation practice.

Is the motivation to do what’s good for you hit and miss? You ate well all week, so tonight – what the heck, show me the ice cream…

Most of us know what’s good for us, but choosing right is hard. How so?

In Deepak Chopra’s and Rudolph Tanzi’s latest book, Super Genes, it throws up some answers.

According to my spiritual teacher, Deepak, and his genetic expert friend Tanzi, choice making it turns out is a skill. One we can cultivate and get better at to the point that eventually what we once thought was an impossibly hard choice (for us, but not necessarily everyone) becomes easy.

The secret?

  1. Work on making small easy good choices that make you feel good right away.
  2. As you continue to make these choices, notice the positive effects build until you have a foundation of easy choices that are bringing you long term results.
  3. Build upward, level by level, to create a pyramid, with harder choices on top that have now become easy, because of the foundation you created.

If you check out my February 2014 blog, How Little Changes Amount to Big Benefits, you will start to understand why I buy into this idea, big time.

So how about testing it out for yourself? Let’s say, by introducing meditation into your day – every day. Now, before you let your reactive response kick in and rule this suggestion right out the window, hear me out.  I’m aware for some, starting a regular meditation practice may be a hard choice to go with right off the bat. It’s a big leap from the no pain, no gain, model of achieving any kind of success that most of us are brought up on. But, from personal experience I know it’s the lifestyle change that can:

A –  make you feel good right away

B –  instantly set you up to be a more conscious choice maker – so you do more of what’s good for you and less of what’s not.

C –  helps you achieve the elements of success we all seek as human beings, which includes everything from having a stronger sense of self, to being able to focus, to having the energy for long work days.

Deepak offers more, suggesting mediation also helps us strengthen traits such as:

  • Emotional resilience
  • The ability to read a situation ahead of others
  •  A stream of new ideas and solutions
  • A cool head in a crisis
  •  Strong coping skills.

And I’ve not even gone into the many physical and mental benefits which you can check out right here.

So for me, if you want a better life, starting a meditation practice would be the change I’d seek first, above all others. So are you ready to start to build your choice making muscles and start meditating?

If you are great. If not, that’s ok. We’ll be looking at other areas of lifestyle where we can all seek to make better choices, in future blog posts.

For everyone else this is how it works.

For one week set yourself an intention to make one change per week that will take you towards a meditating goal. The deal is that whatever choice you make you intend to make it permanent. In Deepak’s book, he suggests you circle two to five of the choices below that feel easy to you.

PART 1 EASY CHOICES

Sit alone for 10 minutes at lunchtime, with your eyes closed

Learn a simple breath meditation for 10 minutes morning and evening

Find a friend to meditate with

Use a mindfulness technique several times a day

Take up a simple mantra meditation for 10 minutes twice a day.

Take inward time whenever you find it helpful, at least once a day.

If you need help, there are stacks of free guided meditations you can access online. My personal favourites are those delivered by David Jii, a Chopra Centre Vedic Master who I met at Seduction of Spirit in California. Check out his website at www.davidjii.com

Just so you know, my own meditation journey started when I was introduced to Deepak’s 21 Day Meditation Experience (Perfect Health).  I’d never meditated before, but right away I got results.  The next experience begins on July 11, 2016 and is called Getting Unstuck, Creating a Limitless Life. Go to https://chopracentermeditation.com for more details and to register – for FREE.

I’ll be back with the harder choices when you’ve nailed these easy ones… or of course you can go get the book. Good luck. Let me know how you go. I’d love for you to share your comments and experiences below.

 

 

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