 Hi everybody, so I'm recording this technically at the end of the year, but next is New Year's Day and I know a lot of us are looking at creating better habits in the new year. It always seems to be like this, right? New Year's motivation, New Year's intentions for, in this case, I want to talk about creating spiritual practice habits which I think are the most important habits of all because from the spiritual practices arise our sense of emotional well-being mental and emotional well-being that then gives rise to the rest of our our life, our well-being and also because this is why we're really here in this life in my opinion. We're here for the spiritual growth which means we approach as many situations in life problems and surprises and unexpected situations and yeah, just any, we approach as much of life as possible from a spiritual perspective but to have a spiritual perspective requires that you have a spiritual practice because without a spiritual practice then your perspective is basically influenced greatly by the mainstream, by what's around you, which is generally very materialistic and not the spiritual, the spiritual that you probably want to to bring to it. So for me, I am in the new year. Well, I feel like every week, every day actually, I recommit to my practice of the life monastery, which I've talked about in a different, a previous video before, basically a series of activities throughout the day that bring me back to my spiritual practice. To me, I don't believe that at least for me, it doesn't work well just to, you know, pray in the morning or meditate in the morning and evening and then go out about the rest of my day. For me, spiritual practice is what's required to me to have a spiritual perspective on things is to come keep coming back to it throughout the day. So my spiritual practice and plus I never, I never was able to be patient enough to meditate or pray for more than a few minutes at a time. Those of you who can meditate or pray for half hour, hour, hours at a time, you are amazing. You're a superhero. I'm not. I am much less patient so I can do it for like, I can, it's much better for me, it works much better for me to pray like three to five times an hour. Okay, and you might think of me as a superhero in that regard, but I keep coming back to it several times an hour, just for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute at a time. That's it. Usually more like 20, 30 seconds. And so I do it throughout the day. And so what allows me, if you want to go back and look at my video about the life monastery rhythms, basically it's things like when I get up in the morning, I take a moment to do my energy reboot, to set my perspective for the day and to remind myself of the next activity in my life monastery, which is, you know, in my morning bathroom time, I have a certain practice that I do to remind myself of the day and how I'm going to approach the day, all that stuff. And then throughout my day, throughout the rest of my day, when I, when I come to work, I do my energy reboot at least three to five times an hour and then da-da-da-da and on one hour, how I start my lunch, you know, how I take my naps, how I get up from my naps, how I end my work day to get prepared, to be with my, you know, my family, da-da-da-da. And how do I, how do I remind myself to actually do this? And what do I do when I fall out of that rhythm? All right. So first of all, I find it crucial to have a checklist that I look at each day. I have so many activities in my life monastery day that I haven't memorized it yet, and I don't feel like it's necessary to memorize it because there's a certain satisfaction that happens when you can check things off a list. So for me, the technical part of it is I use Google Keep, a free software from Google. It's a free app on the phone that you can use it on the web, Google Keep, and Google Keep, you can create a checkbox, you can create a list of checkboxes, and you can just check things out, check when you're done with something, you can check it out throughout the day. And then you can also easily click on the three dots and say uncheck all items. So every morning I click the three dots and I click uncheck all items so the checklist is fresh again. And I just start checking things off as I do them in my life monastery rhythm. And so that's one that's really helpful for me. Second is at each of my, well, at several times during my day for my rhythms, one of my checklist items is remind myself what the next activity is in my life monastery rhythm. So for example, when I wake up in the morning and look at my checklist on, you know, while I'm sitting at the bed, you know, says energy reboot, it says, you know, energy reboot, and it also says visualize my next rhythm, my next life monastery activity, which is when I'm in the bathroom, I do sort of thing. So then when I'm in the bathroom, I do go through my checklist, then one of them says visualize the next rhythm. And so it's, I'm always connecting one spiritual practice to the next one so that I remember the next one, when is it, when, when is it happening, where's it happening. And the other thing I do is I connect my spiritual practice to a particular context of my day. So for example, like I said, getting up in the, in the bed, sitting on the bed and doing the thing first. And then in the bathroom, you know, when I walk into the bathroom, like, oh, that's right, I have, I have something I'm doing here for that. When I get to my office desk, you know, oh, I have, that's right. I have something I'm doing for my spiritual practice. So there's always an anchor to, to the spiritual practice. So it happens throughout the day. And then the last thing I'll talk about is what happens when I miss the rhythm. It's still happening. I have so many things I want to be doing in my life monastery throughout a single day that I still haven't gone through an entire day having done every single thing yet. It's been, it's been probably a month and a half or so since I started doing it. And I still haven't gotten to the perfection of it. That's okay. That's part of the practice is that if something is important or something is, is full on, like my life monastery is full on where I have, I wish I could be practicing throughout the entire day. And technically I could if I was reminded enough, if I was conscious enough, I'm still working on it. Right. And so when I miss the rhythm, this is part of, I think the spiritual practice is you have got to define for yourself and design for yourself what to do when you miss your spiritual practice. Because the default is blame or, you know, disappointment with yourself or to say, well, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not cut out for this or whatever it is that gets, gets us out of it completely. No, it's you got to design a, well, what, what happens when I miss it because it's going to be inevitable. So when I miss the rhythm, I remember, oh gosh, I haven't done the last two hours. I've been completely out of my life monastery rhythm. And it's like, what did I do the last two? I mean, I was not, I wasn't conscious. I wasn't spiritually aware. And, and so gentle breath, energy reboot to return. Ah, thank you for, for reminding me whether it's been two hours or whether it's been an entire day of forgetting gentle breath, spiritual energy reboot 20 seconds to return to okay, I'm recommitting again, even if it's, you know, in the evening, and I still have a couple of life monastery activities left, you know, my shower, evening shower and my, and you know, my bed routine or whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, what else is left? I'm returning now. And then I'm looking at my checklist now. Okay, what else is coming up now? Okay. And also, I should mention part of my morning bathroom rhythm, my life monastery says, look at what I missed yesterday as part of my life monastery. And what can I do differently so that I'm more likely to do it today? So actually my, you know, as part of my morning thing, I actually look at what happened. But if I, if I keep missing it, and it's the, it's the evening time, and I keep missing it, I will also look at, okay, today I did, I missed that activity. How can I design it differently? How can I connect and anchor it differently to something going on in my life so that I'm more likely to return to it? So, and the last thing is, you know, if I remind my, if I remember, oh, you know, I'm back to my spiritual practice, do it right away. Just do something quick right away, like my energy reboot, I do it right away. There's no blame needed. There's no disappointment needed. It's just a return, a gentle return. So I hope this is helpful. I look forward to seeing if you have particular tips for others who are watching this on how you return to your, or how you, how you keep consistent with your spiritual practice. And when you miss it, what do you say to yourself? That's productive. That's beneficial. That's helpful. That's uplifting. How do you return? So I look forward to seeing whatever you want to share with us below. And thank you. Thank you for watching this. Thank you for being part of this, this experiment and this journey with me.