On Backsliding and Consistency

[c_wave_arts]

Hi all,

Recently I've been trying to see my life from the lens of urgency (i.e. we only got so much to live, making the most of it now, etc.). Leo mentions this a lot. He talks about how we should skip all the bullsh*t that is not conducive to achieve our vision. We should generally avoid things that are not aligned with our noble values. I'm still working on the life-purpose course and had a period of not doing that, not reviewing my goals, and no meditation (most of the time it pains me to skip out on my meditation). The reason that I skip is because of backsliding. It's so frustrating and easy to backslide. I've done it so many times. Sometimes I have to change my approach.

My job causes me to backslide. I want to resign my job where I have to work more than 50 hours a week, because it's not conducive to self-actualization. I've applied to some places with less hours. It's easy for me to go by my work schedule and not do the things that I should be doing. I broke my commitment of never eating junk food and watching YouTube for entertainment. I indulge in these things like everyone, but I don't want to be like everyone else. I want to be actualized!

Listening to actualized.org audios gives me ideas and inspires me to engage in this actualization work, but the consistency is lost immediately. Kudos to those who have broken through this barrier! This is really tough work to do.

I would like to hear your experiences, ideas, or approaches when it comes to overcoming backsliding/maintaining consistency.

[Sahil Pandit]

@c_wave_arts we all back slide in the beginning, so don't beat yourself up too much.

What does your life look like outside of work? How about we start there.

Perhaps you could write a list of the things at home that are causing you to backslide (Ex: chips laying out on the counter - eating them unconsciously)

Another perspective: What are the non essentials you could eliminate or dramatically reduce when you get home from work? 

Try writing a list of the most important things you want to be doing (Meditating, contemplating about life, etc) and start to watch yourself like a hawk when you are not following the path that leads you to there. 

Hope this helps.

[Rinne]

58 minutes ago, c_wave_arts said:

I broke my commitment of never eating junk food and watching YouTube for entertainment.

I indulge in these aswell maybe not as much as much as i use to but dont let this be a barrier to you doing the work. 

So far im on a 100+ meditation streak along with other important habits im doing. 

Its seems like from my experience that backslides are just part of the process. I had plenty of backslides throughout my journey. I guess the key is just getting back up after those backslides. Usually when the pain got so great again from the lack of things that i was suppose to be doing whilst drowning myself in unconsciousness i than got back on track. 

My advice to you is start with something small that you could benefit from while also being able to stay consistent with. Leo use to stress the importance of 1 habit for 1 if not 2 whole months. Build up snowball momentum. Dont go all balls out on something, from my experience this never works for the long run. You said your still working on the LPC so you know the power of vision. Remember: We are moved/motivated by emotion. Negative motivation almost never works for maintaining long term consistency. Contemplate whats motivating you right now. Is it negative motivation (sticks) or postive motivation (carrots).

Best of wishes to your journey. Would like to hear back on how your doing a month from now. 

Edited September 29, 2018 by Rinne

[c_wave_arts]

On ‎9‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 8:37 PM, Sahil Pandit said:

What does your life look like outside of work? How about we start there.

Right now, I just rest from work. I take a nap, then do some journaling. I'm undergoing a job search, I watch YouTube, dance practice, and I meditate before I head to bed. Before I was working on my business, but my work hours make it difficult, so I'm looking for another job with less hours.

 

On ‎9‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 8:51 PM, Rinne said:

My advice to you is start with something small that you could benefit from while also being able to stay consistent with. Leo use to stress the importance of 1 habit for 1 if not 2 whole months. Build up snowball momentum. Dont go all balls out on something, from my experience this never works for the long run. You said your still working on the LPC so you know the power of vision. Remember: We are moved/motivated by emotion. Negative motivation almost never works for maintaining long term consistency. Contemplate whats motivating you right now. Is it negative motivation (sticks) or postive motivation (carrots).

I remember meditating for 6 months and I think I only missed like two days. I remember the purity and happiness I felt after that. I use that as my motivation, but it's still hard for me. I was really into Leo's videos (this was around the same time he released his awareness video) and this fueled me to persevere through the moments where it was hard to stay consistent.

Now I'm trying to decide between emotional labor as a habit or meditation. The thing with emotional labor is that it is difficult to quantify because it can come in different intensities. Meditation is done once a day and that's it. Maybe I should stick with meditation? Going against everyday comforts through emotional labor gets things done, but I think I need meditation to build a level of resiliency to tolerate emotional labor.

You provide some good suggestions. I will post an update later on!

[Rinne]

2 hours ago, c_wave_arts said:

Going against everyday comforts through emotional labor gets things done, but I think I need meditation to build a level of resiliency to tolerate emotional labor.

Thats good observation. How about doing both. Maybe 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation as a start? 

2 hours ago, c_wave_arts said:

You provide some good suggestions. I will post an update later on!

Yes please.

 

[Your place at Heart]

On 9/28/2018 at 7:17 PM, c_wave_arts said:

Hi all,

Recently I've been trying to see my life from the lens of urgency (i.e. we only got so much to live, making the most of it now, etc.). Leo mentions this a lot. He talks about how we should skip all the bullsh*t that is not conducive to achieve our vision. We should generally avoid things that are not aligned with our noble values. I'm still working on the life-purpose course and had a period of not doing that, not reviewing my goals, and no meditation (most of the time it pains me to skip out on my meditation). The reason that I skip is because of backsliding. It's so frustrating and easy to backslide. I've done it so many times. Sometimes I have to change my approach.

My job causes me to backslide. I want to resign my job where I have to work more than 50 hours a week, because it's not conducive to self-actualization. I've applied to some places with less hours. It's easy for me to go by my work schedule and not do the things that I should be doing. I broke my commitment of never eating junk food and watching YouTube for entertainment. I indulge in these things like everyone, but I don't want to be like everyone else. I want to be actualized!

Listening to actualized.org audios gives me ideas and inspires me to engage in this actualization work, but the consistency is lost immediately. Kudos to those who have broken through this barrier! This is really tough work to do.

I would like to hear your experiences, ideas, or approaches when it comes to overcoming backsliding/maintaining consistency.

I still backslide till this day. I do 2 weeks of progress then something urgent happen, and lose all progress, then all my symptoms comeback but then I work on myself again and within days I gradually reduce my symptoms of procrastination, worry, racing thoughts, antagonism to people by the end of the week i achieve serenity, and serenity goes on as long as I am consistent but hits plateau whenever something is urgent or demanding that makes me incapable of being consistent and I slide again. Thank god, now I cut the symptoms by half, I made mind map model of all my expected symptoms and worries and fears and the steps I take to reduce them. It's just how it is man. It takes on average 10,000 hours of consistency to see big results.

[c_wave_arts]

On 10/3/2018 at 10:07 PM, Your place at Heart said:

 Thank god, now I cut the symptoms by half, I made mind map model of all my expected symptoms and worries and fears and the steps I take to reduce them. It's just how it is man. It takes on average 10,000 hours of consistency to see big results.

A mind map! That's a great idea! That's actually a strategic thing to do. How would you start it? Would it be a list of fears and possible trajectories? I can make my own that way but would like to see how you create it!

 

On 10/2/2018 at 11:21 PM, Rinne said:

Thats good observation. How about doing both. Maybe 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation as a start? 

I'm currently in the process of doing that. I use emotional labor to get things done but I focus more on day-to-day consistency with my meditation habit. So I actually do both.

It's interesting because before I started out with 20 minutes like Leo said and went for 6 months. I went as high as 40 minutes a day (which is impressive for me). Now I guess I just need to start really small and work my way up to that vision. Going to reflect on the positive motivation bit that you mentioned.

[K VIL]

You know I backslide everyday or what can be seen as backsliding and i see it more as a sling shot effect.

back back back

forward. forward fast. forward with momentum

sometimes you gotta get in the dirt, before you pursue the bubble bath

[LeoBacca]

@c_wave_arts

You're probably backsliding because you are too ambitious on your goals (that is not a bad thing per se).

You think that you have to do MASSIVE WORK EVERYDAY HUSTLE SHIT to get what you want, that in part is true, but it scares you because you are afraid of all that work. Maybe you don't even have all that willpower (which is totally fine).

The solution is making MINI-HABITS, choose 4-5 habits that you think will improve your life purpose make them stupid small (like 1 minute of meditation, read 2 pages of a book, writing 50 word for a book/article) and be consistent! Probably you'll do more than the little commitment established, but that's the point! Now at least you are no more in rest mode but at least you're in a somewhat motion mode.

Read the book if you're interested.

This is my experience, I hope it will be helpful.

[c_wave_arts]

Update: I've meditated for about a month now, for about 5 minutes everyday. I skipped two days though, but now my desire to meditate consistently is coming back. I feel my intuition is keeping me on the right track. 2/3rds into the month of October, I had the desire to raise my meditation time to 10 minutes, but still found that it was too much, so now I'm doing 8 minutes every day. I want to get the most out of my meditation practice, so I use Sundays to meditate for 2 hours (I've done that today, but it backfired because I was experiencing pain sitting down after an hour and thirty minutes). I might just have to stick with the 8 minutes and rely on my intuition to let me know if I need to increase the time.

The more time I add to my daily meditation, the more I feel like it's uncomfortable for me to stop what I'm doing during the day to meditate. I want to get to a point where I can jump into an hour of meditation every day no problem without feeling like it's invading my schedule. I do schedule different activities during the day, but have difficulty staying with it because I only see it as a guide. My ego is obsessed with productivity, and I know that to improve myself I need to meditate consistently. I can go on, but I'll stop here. @Rinne @Rinne

[Rinne]

Good job man sometimes all it takes is small baby steps in the right direction. What your main focus should be is maintaining a snowball effect with your practices and "keeping the fire of the practices alive." Eventually youll be able to pull off higher lengths of meditation sessions daily. Your will power will increase overtime. Heres an idea: Your able to meditate for about 8 minutes everyday right, so how about doing 2 5 minute meditation sessions throughout the day? You dont have to force yourself to them at certain times during the day but instead have the mindset of making sure they are done before the end of the day. I say this because from personal experience forcing yourself to do something at a certain time creates more resistance (in the beginning phases that is). Heres another idea: plan out your whole meditation week ahead. This is what i currently do. Example: Maybe next week you could meditate for 15 minutes daily and then the following week toning it a little bit down to 10 minutes if you see there was a lot of resistance from last weeks plan. Be flexible in according to your life situations, circumstances. Last tip: when you find yourself resisting to do your meditation session WATCH YOURSELF LIKE A HAWK be aware of your self sabotaging mechanisms, be aware of your emotions, be aware of whats creating the resistance. 

29 minutes ago, c_wave_arts said:

I want to get the most out of my meditation practice, so I use Sundays to meditate for 2 hours (I've done that today, but it backfired because I was experiencing pain sitting down after an hour and thirty minutes). I might just have to stick with the 8 minutes and rely on my intuition to let me know if I need to increase the time.

Good good. I do the same on Saturdays sometimes since sats are my days i get lots of free time. Let me point out something to you tho, i think you aimed WAY TO HIGH with 2 hours. 2 hours of one full sitting if VERY TOUGH for almost anyone at the beginning phases but the fact that you made it to 1 hour and 30 minutes shows a lot. Heres an idea tho: Do what you did this sunday but only aim at like 30 minutes - 1 hour for now. Set the intention to NO MATTER WHAT FULLY COMPLETE YOUR 30 minute - 1 hour meditation session once you have set yourself to do that meditation session that day. THIS IS KEY. Overtime youll see that it wont take much will power to FINISH your sessions once you have started them (This is from my personal experience tho). Once you see this you could set your timer to 2 or 3 hours every once in awhile. 

 

50 minutes ago, c_wave_arts said:

The more time I add to my daily meditation, the more I feel like it's uncomfortable for me to stop what I'm doing during the day to meditate. I want to get to a point where I can jump into an hour of meditation every day no problem without feeling like it's invading my schedule. I do schedule different activities during the day, but have difficulty staying with it because I only see it as a guide. My ego is obsessed with productivity, and I know that to improve myself I need to meditate consistently. I can go on, but I'll stop here.

Remember, we are motivated by emotion. Carrots and sticks. What emotions are motivating you to meditate?

[c_wave_arts]

On 11/4/2018 at 10:37 PM, Rinne said:

Good job man sometimes all it takes is small baby steps in the right direction. What your main focus should be is maintaining a snowball effect with your practices and "keeping the fire of the practices alive." Eventually youll be able to pull off higher lengths of meditation sessions daily. Your will power will increase overtime. Heres an idea: Your able to meditate for about 8 minutes everyday right, so how about doing 2 5 minute meditation sessions throughout the day? You dont have to force yourself to them at certain times during the day but instead have the mindset of making sure they are done before the end of the day. I say this because from personal experience forcing yourself to do something at a certain time creates more resistance (in the beginning phases that is). Heres another idea: plan out your whole meditation week ahead. This is what i currently do. Example: Maybe next week you could meditate for 15 minutes daily and then the following week toning it a little bit down to 10 minutes if you see there was a lot of resistance from last weeks plan. Be flexible in according to your life situations, circumstances. Last tip: when you find yourself resisting to do your meditation session WATCH YOURSELF LIKE A HAWK be aware of your self sabotaging mechanisms, be aware of your emotions, be aware of whats creating the resistance.

I've been changing the way I do my weekly scheduling, so I will need to set aside some time to meditate twice for 5 minutes daily. Makes sense, since I feel you're ought to resist more with one meditation session as opposed to two.

When I get used to this for a week or so, I'll increase to 15 minutes to play around and see how much I resist. Maybe even splitting it as 10 minutes and then 5 minutes?

On 11/4/2018 at 10:37 PM, Rinne said:

Good good. I do the same on Saturdays sometimes since sats are my days i get lots of free time. Let me point out something to you tho, i think you aimed WAY TO HIGH with 2 hours. 2 hours of one full sitting if VERY TOUGH for almost anyone at the beginning phases but the fact that you made it to 1 hour and 30 minutes shows a lot. Heres an idea tho: Do what you did this sunday but only aim at like 30 minutes - 1 hour for now. Set the intention to NO MATTER WHAT FULLY COMPLETE YOUR 30 minute - 1 hour meditation session once you have set yourself to do that meditation session that day. THIS IS KEY. Overtime youll see that it wont take much will power to FINISH your sessions once you have started them (This is from my personal experience tho). Once you see this you could set your timer to 2 or 3 hours every once in awhile.

I'll try 30 minutes on Sundays since I'm still experimenting with changing the time. 40 minutes intimidates me still. I remember meditating for an hour every day for more than a month before, but since I've fallen back, I need to work up to that point again. It seems so easy, but my ego's sneakiness makes things a bit difficult.

 

On 11/4/2018 at 10:37 PM, Rinne said:

Remember, we are motivated by emotion. Carrots and sticks. What emotions are motivating you to meditate?

When I want fight against my ego, I meditate (like a self-punishment when my ego wants to do a lot, but I know it's to better myself). When I want to endure emotional labor in anything I do, I meditate. These reasons motivate me.