How to establish a daily meditation ritual using the Habit Curator framework

The second step is outlining the benefits that resonate with you most.

Why do you want to build this habit?
What do you have to gain?

Educate yourself on the short-term and long-term benefits. You don’t need to share this with anyone, but you need to be honest with yourself in order to uncover your true motivations.

There are many benefits that come from meditating but only some will strike a chord with you, so write down the ones that resonate. Having it written down in your planner means that you can revisit your reasons at any time and stay connected with your intentions. This is your fuel.

The third step is setting up cues, which are essentially habit reminders. It’s something that your brain strongly associates with a particular habit. Cues can be objects, existing routines, certain times, locations, emotional states, or even other people.

For instance, your yoga mat in the lounge room might signal stretching, your water bottle could remind you to stay hydrated, and your morning alarm tells you it's time to wake up. All of these serve as cues.

To set up your meditation habit, you could use a recurring alarm reminder as your cue. Try to choose a tone that’s unique from your other alarms so you can start to associate your meditation habit with that specific alarm tone. 

Another option is to use a written sticky note, but placement of the sticky note is key. If you're meditating in bed for example, you’ll want to make sure the sticky note is visible before you get into bed.

Every habit can be broken down into tiny steps. What are all the steps required to complete your meditation?

If you’re using an app for a guided meditation, the steps will be something like:

grab phone > search for app > open app > choose meditation > press play > meditate

The goal is to simplify and minimise the number of steps it takes to start meditating. The fewer steps involved, the easier the habit. The easier the habit, the more likely you are to stick to it.

If you consider the steps above, you can easily eliminate searching for the app by positioning it on the home screen. Some apps will also allow you to choose a default meditation. You might be able save your favourite meditation which means you could also eliminate the step of choosing a meditation if you wanted to streamline this habit.

Aim to eliminate “in the moment” decision making by making decisions in advance. This automatically reduces resistance.

Think about it—if you’re spending 5 minutes making tiny decisions every morning like what meditation app am I going to use today, what meditation am I going to listen to, how long am I going to meditate for, where am I going to meditate—you’re not only adding more steps to your daily meditation practice, you’re giving yourself more opportunities to quit before you can even start meditating. 

The final piece of the puzzle is establishing some kind of immediate reward for your daily meditation. We are wired to favour immediate rewards over delayed rewards which means we need to reward our good habits in order to encourage repetition in the short term.

For example, benefits like reduced anxiety, better self-awareness, better emotional regulation, improved attention span may have driven you to build a meditation ritual but those are long-term benefits that will only be felt with repetition.

In order to access the long-term benefits you crave, you need to reward your good habits.

Eventually, you’ll reach a point where the long-term benefits of your habits will replace the need for immediate rewards.

For the time being, your reward can be as simple as ticking it off on your habit tracker. It’s so simple, but it gives you that little hit of dopamine. Plus, seeing a visual display of your progress can be really satisfying.

You can also repurpose everyday activities into rewards, like enjoying your morning coffee or eating breakfast. Think about what you do on a daily basis that you find satisfying, then select one that you can do immediately after your meditation.

For example, if you’re doing a morning meditation, you might choose to have your morning coffee immediately after.

Lastly, we’ve included space for you to write a checklist of things you need to do to set up your daily mediation practice.

For example: research and download a mediation app, set a recurring reminder or add sticky note to your bedhead.

I hope you found this helpful, and I hope it serves as a catalyst for revisiting the healthy habits you set out to build this year.

Remember, it’s important to start small and build on your new habit as time goes on. It’s tricky because the excitement of starting something new activates the "go big or go home" mentality, but ambitious habits aren’t sustainable. Once excitement and motivation fizzles out, your habit tends to fade away too.

Starting with smaller, achievable habits will make it easier to stay consistent—that is the key to building lasting habits. Regardless of how easy your habit is, you are bound to slip up—that’s okay. It's normal and expected. Some days will be harder than others. It’s all part of the journey. We’re striving for progress here, not perfection. If you miss a day, don’t be so hard on yourself. Try again tomorrow.