Day 31 and Meditation Response Instances vs Fixed Sessions

SRHI = 52

Great night sleep, bleary wakeup. Had one drink more (than I usually do when I drink) last night.

In THIS post I describe different categories of habits. Meditation the way I will practice it is definitely the third one, a “continual habit” - something like posture, a thing that must be corrected at different points during the day. I would also like to practice meditation as a fixed session everyday.

There are three things I want to fix. Fear, anxiety, and depression - they are all things that I have in abundance, and especially recently, I’ve notice my mind following these paths. I’ll get anxious and worried for no reason. I’ll be looking at other people’s successes and become depressed. I’ve been thinking nostalgically about my time in China, and fall down mentally.

There is no particular reason to do this. I could just as easily get motivated by looking at successful people, or realize that I can make more memories by thinking about the past. And anxiety has always blossomed in my mind for no reason whatsoever. It makes me tense.

In practice I need to tackle these things in different ways. I can have a once a day meditation session and then keep track of how many times I actually use it in actual life. I can also practice a specific exercise for each one for a few weeks. 

The thing I need to play around with is tracking this. I would have to have to track this twice - once for the fixed session, which is no problem. And another one as the habitualized response - counting the number of times I respond to instances of depression, fear, and anxiety throughout the day.

I can do an SRHI index for both, but the latter might have to be modified, since presumably I’ll need to actually respond less and less as mental fluctuations occur less frequently. So frequency would not be an indicator of success.

Day 6, Lumo Lift, Categories of Habits

SRHI = 29

Remembered in the morning again - It’s interesting the stages you go through with this - First forgetting entirely and “catching yourself” later, then remembering as soon as you get up, then getting a degree of autamaticity about the whole thing…

A few months ago I was indundated with ads on Facebook about Lumo Lift, from http://www.lumobodytech.com/

Basically it’s a device to help with body posture. It’s a device that syncs with your smartphone to remind you when you are slouching.

It’s a great idea to combat a different habit - the correction of a general state of being that you should do all the time. They way I see it, there are several categories of habits that should be attacked in different ways.

1. Habits of Instance - a regular habit, like flossing or working out - you do these once a day

2. Habits of Omission - a habit of not doing something i.e. not smoking, or not facebooking

3. Continual Habits - a habit like good posture or relaxing, something that ideally should be kept up at all times

I’m glad Lumo Lift got put on my radar because it really is one of those core habits like learning an instrument or flossing - everyone says they want better posture, but very few people ever actually go about trying to achieve it. As such I’m putting it on my list of future habits, and have ordered the device.