The Perfect Start To Your Daily Practice

This post is Part 5 of a series on the psychological and practical benefits of daily practice. In this series, I’ll explore the elements of daily practice, varieties of daily practice, challenges to daily practice, and strategies for meeting those challenges. Please join me in learning more about this important subject! Complete information can be found in The Power of Daily Practice.

First, you have a daily practice, some clear, nameable thing that you are attending to every day. This might be working on your novel, practicing the piano, practicing yoga, or working on your start-up home business. Then, having named it, each day you mindfully and consciously begin it. If you don’t begin it, it exists in name only. If you don’t begin it, it isn’t a real practice.

Even if it’s something as abstract as a spiritual practice or a mindfulness practice, you nevertheless want to know that you’ve actually begun it and you want to feel the experience of beginning. Maybe you start it in some ceremonial way or maybe no particular ceremony is needed. But you are clear that your daily practice has begun and that you are now working on your novel, and doing nothing else, or practicing the piano, and doing nothing else, or engaged with your mindfulness practice, and doing nothing else.

You might initiate your daily practice in some very simple way, say by selecting your favorite cup for your morning coffee. I have six favorite cups, from Prague, Berlin, New York, Rome, Paris, and Savannah, and I enjoy choosing my daily cup. Your simple initiation step might be to put on a little Bach, or spend a moment at your writing altar, or water the plants in your study. By starting out the same way each day, you reinforce the idea that your daily practice matters.

Cheryl, a coaching client, explained:

“My ceremony is to get up promptly at 5:30. I go into my writing room, turn on a soft light, and boot the computer up. I then do all those tasks that will get me out the door for work that would otherwise distract me if I put them off until after my writing session. This lands me at my computer at 6:15. I then have my breakfast while writing. I know it’s a good session when I don’t remember eating breakfast! I finish at 7:15, which my dog helps remind me of as she usually wanders in at that time for her walk. I don’t know how she knows the time but she does! I do a quick ‘start map,’ so that I’ll know where to begin the next day, turn the computer off, and then go for my dog walk.”

Rachel, a coaching client, shared her starting ritual:

“I stopped working outside of the home and so I no longer had a daily commute. Then, weirdly, I began to realize that I missed the ritual of my commute to my old job. So, I started packing my snack and a big thermos of coffee and a bottle of water for myself when I made the kids’ lunch and snack every day. I also put fresh flowers in my office and lit some incense on Mondays to clear the air for the week ahead. And I made an alter with pictures of my childhood cats and wrote a prayer—to the cats? to the muse?—to go along with it. I do one minute of focused breathing and then say the prayer before writing. It’s maybe all a little bit odd but I know that it helps me settle my nerves.”

Nia, a coaching client, described a very different sort of initiation practice:

“For some reason, I’m not ceremonial. What I do, though, is I always log my start and stop times in a spreadsheet. It’s really dry but I’ve been able to be consistent with it for years now. It’s basically punching a time clock. It works, but … I feel a kind of heavy energy in myself starting this way and I’m going to experiment with something light. I can visualize what light and happy looks like and I’m going to try the coffee cup selection idea, because it makes me smile. Well, I have to get some new coffee cups. But that can be fun too! And I don’t want to scorn my spreadsheet habit, because it’s been working for years and since it really isn’t broken, I don’t want to go too far in trying to fix it!”

Folks living a life based on the philosophy of life I’ve developed, called kirism, think in terms of life purposes, rather than imagining that there a single “purpose to life.” If this idea resonates with you, you might think about using the following pledge, or one you create, as your initiation ritual. This is a long version and you might shorten it to something as simple as, “My daily practice supports my life purposes.” Here’s a long version of a possible starting pledge:

“I am choosing to live my life purposes. One way I do that is by creating and maintaining a daily practice. Byproducts of my daily practice are that I will get really good at something and that I will get a lot of something done. But those are added benefits and blessings. The main reason I attend to my daily practice is that it is a wonderful way to support my intention to live my life purposes and to make myself proud by my efforts. That I finish novels or play the violin beautifully or build my home business or meditate daily is wonderful, but even more wonderful is that I am honoring my understanding of how my life should be lived.”

There are an infinite number of possible initiation strategies. You might employ a mental image, say of a car starting up smoothly and effortlessly. You might close the door to your study in a ceremonial way. You might hum your hymn or anthem. The main points to remember are that starting is a key element of practice; starting the same way each day supports your practice; and if you are having trouble creating or maintaining your practice, focus your trouble-shooting on “how you start.”

—

Previously published on Psychologytoday.com.

—

***