To People That Want To Start Meditation Techniques But Are Afraid To Get Started

Here’s 10 powerful habits practiced by top executives, and a guide for how to perfect them

The new year (and decade!) always brings a renewed energy. We’re excited about change, eager to set resolutions and have a newfound willingness to work on ourselves.

However, most people fail to conquer their resolutions because they don’t create new habits around the behaviors that they want to change.

Building new habits isn’t hard, but it does require diligence, discipline, and commitment to following a plan for at least 60 to 90 days. The key is to start small and pick one or two habits you want to focus on. Once those habits are ingrained, you can add more over the course of the rest of the year.

Here is a list of the most powerful habits successful people incorporate into their lives. When you’re committed to not only starting these behaviors but to making them an ongoing part of your life, your potential is truly endless.

1. They work smarter, not harder

The most successful executives I know don’t log 90-hour weeks. Instead, they look for ways to be more efficient with their time.

How to build it: Start to notice when you’re most productive. Do you get twice as much done in the mornings? Do you get your second wind after dinner? Identify the times when you do your best work, and carve out an hour or two every day to get a lot done in that time frame.

Breaks are equally important. See if you can “block” your schedule and accomplish brief chunks of focused work, then take breaks to recharge. The Pomodoro technique — 25 minutes of work followed by five-minute breaks — is one method, but choose the lengths of time that work best for you. You’ll be surprised at how much more you can get done.

2. They value who they are

I truly believe that each of us has our own unique genius: the type of work and thinking at which we are best. The most successful people know their genius well — they value it in themselves, and they seek to use it every day.

How to build it: If you’re not sure what your genius is, this article can help you identify it. Every day, read the language that defines your genius, then say to yourself, “I value who I am and the value I bring to the world.” Do this at least twice per day, every day for two months. You will quickly see how amazing it feels.

3. They continually educate themselves

Even the most successful people I know are never content with the status quo. They’re constantly learning and looking for ways to grow.

How to build it: With the abundance of information at our fingertips, this is simple. Think through the skills you’d like to hone or the subjects you’d like to learn more about, and find books, videos, or classes that will take your expertise to the next level. The hard part is sticking to these assignments — but try to make it fun by tackling one per month and rewarding yourself for completing it.

4. They’re proactive about their career happiness

All of us, from time to time, feel stuck or unhappy at work — or have a sneaking suspicion that something’s not working. But successful people don’t let that paralyze them. They get curious, they start looking for data, and they take action.

How to build it: For starters, download my Performance Tracker, a weekly check-in exercise that helps you measure aspects of your professional life — like how often you’re “in the zone” and doing work that’s meaningful to you. Do this for a month, and you will be able to clearly identify what’s working in your job and what’s not. You will have the data you need to be more proactive with your career, whether that means spending less time on tasks that aren’t fulfilling or looking for a new role altogether.

5. They build their confidence

There are a lot of misconceptions about confidence. Many people think you’re either born with it or you’re not. That’s simply not true. Confidence is a skill, and people who have a great deal of it have typically worked diligently over a long period of time to achieve it.

How to build it: Pay attention to negative messages you’re telling yourself. Do you compare yourself to your colleagues, or beat yourself up after tough conversations? See if you can just notice that thought process for a week or so. Once you’re in the habit of noticing, tell yourself a different, more positive message, like “I am just as talented as my co-workers,” or, “Everyone makes mistakes. I have the skills I need to learn from this and move forward.”

6. They aren’t deterred by failures

Ask any successful person, and each will have a long list of failures. They aren’t deterred by these stumbles; rather, they learn from them.

How to build it: This can be scary, but start tracking your failures as they happen — without judgment or blame. When something doesn’t go the way you want it to, pause and write down what happened. Then (later, if you need to), think through what you might be able to learn from the situation. If it’s hard to find opportunities for growth, think about the advice you might give a friend in a similar situation. Do this for two months, and you’ll start to equate failure with a tool for being better.

7. They ask for feedback regularly

Similarly, the strongest leaders aren’t afraid of feedback — from their peers, their higher-ups, or even their subordinates. Done right, this can be an equally powerful tool for learning and growing.

How to build it: Make a list of 10 people you work closely with or know well and trust. Create three questions that are specific to the feedback you desire.

For example, if you’re looking for feedback on your leadership style, you might ask: “What’s one quality that you really enjoy about my leadership?” or, “What’s one time in the past month you think I could have handled a conversation differently?”

Mention that you’re seeking more feedback and will reach out again in three months with additional questions. Encourage them to do the same and let them know you’re more than willing to reciprocate.

8. They enjoy the process of their work — not just their achievements

Our society tends to focus on achievements: landing a promotion, scoring a big new client, or making a higher salary. But it’s healthier, more fun, and less taxing to enjoy the process of your work, rather than living for the wins.

How to build it: Each day, ask yourself: “Am I enjoying the process of doing my work just as much, if not more, than achieving the goals I’ve set?” When you start to answer “yes” more than “no,” you’re on the right track to receiving happiness from the right place. If you’re not there yet, do the work to understand why achievements are driving you and how you might be able to add more enjoyment into your work.

9. They don’t listen to society’s rules — they make their own

This is all about being who you are — no matter how different that may be from others, your friends, or society. If you can make this a habit now, your career and life will be much happier and better for it.

How to build it: Every time you need to make a big decision, write down all of the pros and cons. Go through them again to reveal the origin of these ideas. Are they true to what you actually believe, or are they messages from your parents, workplace, or society? If it’s the latter, scratch those items out. Do this for every big decision, and you will start to trust yourself and make the decisions that are right for you. You will soon find that you’re living a life for yourself, and not for others.

10. They make health a priority

Finally, remember that success isn’t just about your work; it’s about you as a whole person. You will struggle to thrive if your health and wellness takes a back seat.

How to build it: You’ve heard most of this before, but it bears repeating: Get good sleep (I love Michael Breus’s newsletter, which shares tips and products to help you sleep better). Exercise several times per week . And if you haven’t already, build a meditation practice.

Download an app, hire a meditation coach, find a meditation center, or book at least 15 minutes in your calendar to pause and focus on your breath. Do this for at least 30 days, and before you know it it will be something you can’t live without.

This article first appeared on Business Insider.

The Life Audit: a workbook that brings you on a revitalising retreat

Michelle Moroney is squatting barefoot, lighting a row of tea lights that flicker across the floor and reflect in the glass wall of her studio. Outside, the last of the light is leaving the western sky. Down below, past the green fields and dry stone walls, waves crash against the shore. There’s nothing but a sheet of glass between the pouring rain, the Wild Atlantic Way and us. I’m lying on the floor on the comfiest yoga mat ever, called a fluffy cloud, and quite frankly I’d be happy if I never had to get up again.

This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I’ve come here to the Cliffs of Moher retreat to learn more about Michelle’s book The Life Audit. I was half afraid I was going to have my own life audited by her. The book’s subtitle is a “Workbook for a healthier, happier you”.

 Michelle Moroney meditating

It’s the kind of book from which I’d usually run a mile. You don’t have to start it in January, and I’m slightly reassured when on page 13 Moroney says that resolutions are desperate words that imply we are not enough as we are. Instead, she quotes one of her early yoga teachers who told her that we are absolutely perfect in every way, with room for improvement.

Huge shock

Moroney wrote the book for people who can’t come on one of her retreats. It’s a distillation of the learning from the past 17 years she has spent as a yoga instructor and health and wellness coach, and informed by her own experiences as what she calls a “seeker”.

In 2004 she was working at a dive centre in Thailand and decided to come home for Christmas. On St Stephen’s Day she discovered that the house she lived in on Ko Phi Phi had been washed away in the tsunami, and many of her Thai friends had been killed.

“It was a huge shock, and there was a lot of guilt,” she recalls. A few months later, she and her husband Michael set up their company yogatraveller.com, and held their first retreat on Phi Phi. “It was a way of giving back.” When she was pregnant with their first child they came back to Ireland, first opening the Little Yoga Cottage and later the Cliffs of Moher retreat.

Back on the floor we’re moving into the first of a series of restorative poses.

“We’re making a shape like a crescent moon or a banana,” says Moroney in a low, calm voice. “We’re using our breath to find ease in a pose. This is how we open our body, not by pushing it but by noticing it.”

When she started giving retreats, Moroney would lead an active morning class and a relaxing evening class. “The more I taught the more I realised the power of the slower class. It’s not just a reward for doing the physical work, it’s where the healing happens.” As she writes in the book, “to me it seems wrong that we treat slowing down and recharging as a luxury. I see it as survival.”

Most of us are living with low-level stress, she believes, and it’s leading to a huge growth in anxiety. “When small kids are feeling it, we know its deeply embedded in our society.”

As we grab a late lunch in the retreat’s double-height diningroom, she tells me that her first idea was to write a recipe book that incorporated her thoughts on wellness (the vegetarian food served is excellent – we’re eating a mushroom crumble that delivers an umami hit). But the publishers convinced her otherwise.

The Life Audit is divided into 12 chapters, one for each month of the year, and begins by taking stock and working out where we need to bring balance into our lives. For people who have investigated the “self-help” genre, the book contains many tools with which they might be familiar, like the Morning Pages from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, the Wheel of Life, and even some tips on decluttering. Chapters include self-reflection, health and wellness, stress and relaxation, thriving in your career, compassion and family, community and friends, play and self-love.

Encouraging approach

What draws it all together is Moroney’s compassionate and encouraging approach. This is not a book that you read, it’s a book that you do. And at the start she reminds readers that taking control over our lives involves self-discipline. There is work involved. Each chapter is divided into three sections: Explore, Contemplate and Create. Exploring involves answering questions, Contemplate introduces thinking and tips, and Create is about establishing goals about what you want to change.

She’s a big believer in early mornings, but admits that “once a week or so I’ll crawl back into bed or not bother getting up early . . . sometimes it’s good to say f*** it”. That’s not an excuse to give up altogether, and you can build in strategies to try and minimise that risk. Moroney is part of a WhatsApp group of sea swimmers who meet in Lahinch in the mornings. Building your healthy network can help you to keep going.

 ‘In the evening it’s cold and windy outside, and the stove in the cosy cottage is calling me, but so is the hot tub I spotted outside the studio.’

The next morning she’s at the front of a group of people walking down the steep path to Aileens, the best viewpoint of the Cliffs of Moher. Most retreats include hikes along the spectacular 14km cliff walk from Doolin to Hag’s Head. Time in nature is a chance to feel completely alive. “I love the wildness of it, the drama of the cliffs and the contrast of the soft undulating fields.”

Today it’s blowing a gale and the wind is whipping the waves into a frenzy. She’s in a bikini and shorts, in January, leading the group in their breathing. It’s a taster retreat for the Wimhof method, a way to control the breath and experience extreme cold, which she runs with fellow instructor Níall Ó Murchú.

As they reach their goal at the edge of the cliffs, the group breaks into a horse dance to keep warm, complete with whoops and hollers. The group has also undergone two ice baths as part of their retreat, and that shared experience does create the sense of a tribe. Many of those attending are regulars who come back time and time again.

Restored

“She’s the most dynamic person I’ve ever met,” says one. “She practises – not what she preaches, because she doesn’t preach – but what she talks about.”

In the evening it’s cold and windy outside, and the stove in the cosy cottage is calling me, but so is the hot tub I spotted outside the studio. I sink into the water, as a cloud parts to reveal the moon. In this sort of environment, rested, restored and filled with healthy food, it’s easy to feel at one with the world. But slogging through normal life, how do you hold onto that golden thread?

I remind Moroney that during the first hour we met, she was texting people about the following day’s events, organising a memorial service in the studio, arranging her kids’ schedules, talking to me, and eating her lunch. So does she have sympathy for those who might feel that auditing their life is just one more thing on the to-do list?

“Absolutely, but the best thing I or anyone else can do for everyone around them is to look after your health and wellness. I know when enough is enough. I’m busy but I’ll have a couple of hours with the kids now and I’ll be in bed by 10. I try to stay offline as much as possible.” For her, yoga, baths, and swimming daily are some of the ways to get back in balance. “Someone else might be at a phase in life that all they can fit in is 10 minutes a day for meditation and getting a walk in twice a week. But that’s okay. We are our own teacher, trust your gut.” And if you were to boil it down to one thing? “Start small but start now.”

Back in Dublin, I’ve done my homework for January and enjoy the process of delving into the state of my life more than I expect. I discover that it’s not as bad as I thought. I’ve also copied the retreat habit of having a platter of cut-up fruit around the place; you’re much more likely to get your five-a-day in that way. I’m back doing the Morning Pages, journaling to get the day going and clear the clutter from my mind.

I can’t promise that I’ll finish The Life Audit. Life sometimes gets in the way of workbooks. But the tone of the book is a great comfort. Moroney isn’t prescriptive or bossy, but she does give you a kick in the arse every now and again. It feels like a wise friend encouraging you to be your best self, but picking you up when you fall and telling you it will be better tomorrow.

What I can promise is that I’d rip anyone’s arm off for another opportunity to lie down on a fluffy clouds yoga mat, while an Atlantic storm rages outside and a soft, soothing voice tells me it’s okay to do very little except breathe. If I have to audit my life to do it, bring it on.

The Life Audit by Michelle Moroney is published by Gill Books. www.cliffsofmoherretreat.com

A Beginner's Guide to Buying, Cooking, and Eating More and Better Vegetables

The thing that Montana likes most about CSAs though, is the opportunity to directly support farmers. “It's community supported agriculture. [Everything you eat] comes from small farms. You are actually supporting the small farmers in your area and eating local food. It really reduces the supply chain that food passes through.” Replacing some of your meat consumption with that of vegetables and roots from CSAs, then, will make a big impact on your carbon footprint. Just as it’s saving you money.

Start with the Basics

However you decide to get your vegetables, it’s time to start actually cooking them. If you’ve never really cooked with vegetables you don't need to jump right into using them as your meal centerpieces. “It's okay if you're not chowing down raw kale like the day after you're like, 'I should eat more vegetables,'” said Montana.

When you’re just starting out with vegetables, even after looking at a lot of different recipes, you’ll find that most of what you’re doing with them falls into three different categories: steaming, frying, and roasting.

Steaming is the one probably the most associated with the worst taste, evoking that rubbery broccoli of your grade school cafeteria. But it doesn’t take much effort to do better. One of our favorite non-stick pans, made by Our Place, actually includes a steamer basket. Fill it with water, set it to boil and put your cut vegetables on top of the basket. As long as you make sure you don’t leave them in for too long, and season your food with at least salt and pepper, you’ll get something pretty good.

You’re probably not that likely to deep fry any of the vegetables you pick up, though you totally could! If you’re cooking vegetables, you’re going to have to get familiar with sautee-ing, which is basically frying in a very small amount of fat. Headley suggests using this technique to make a sofrito, which is a kind of a powerful flavor base that you can use in other things, like beans. After cutting them up into small pieces with a chef’s knife, “you cook down celery, and onions, and carrots, none of which are expensive or particularly hard to find, into this beautiful mush basically, and I mean mush in the most positive sense.” It’ll take a few hours to do properly, since you really have to let it go, but Headley says you can make a bunch at once and then store it in the freezer in a deli container.

The third technique, the one you’ll probably end up using the most, is roasting. “When I’m cooking [at home], I like to think, ‘how do you lazy cook?’ How do you come home from work after being so burnt out from the day and still decide to cook? Really the best thing you can do is take a whole cauliflower head, toss it with olive oil, add salt and pepper, and roast the whole thing on a sheet pan in the oven at 350° F. That’s it.” You can apply this technique to pretty much any vegetable, though they’ll all require different amounts of time to cook. As long as you keep them in separate pans or separated in the same pan, you should be good.

The one thing that might happen as you start to cook more vegetables, especially if you cut out meat entirely, is that your meals will start to look a lot different than they did before. This happens to Brooks Headley at Superiority Burger. “Sometimes people are like ‘Well then, what am I, just eating sides?’ They’re like, ‘it’s just a bunch of sides!’ To which I say, ‘Yeah, so what!’ … Everything you eat doesn't have to be like a chunk of protein and a pile of vegetables.” Getting comfortable with that will make your journey a lot easier, especially while you’re getting adjusted to a bunch of new ingredients.

Get Adventurous

Once you’ve started to get familiar with these techniques, you can start to expand your palate. In fact, if you’ve decided to get a CSA, you might be forced to. Crates from CSAs will often have a lot of vegetables that you might have never heard of before.“One thing that’s so cool about a CSA is the fact they give you a thing that you don't know what to do with,” said Koslow. “Something you would never buy for yourself, like kohlrabi.”