The following reflection originally appeared in the newsletter I sent out on April 29, 2026.
Feel free to read just the bold words and skip the rest.
Introduction
We begin with a simple question, “how is it that people can intellectually know something is good for them, but then struggle to actually do it?”
This is something I’ve been fascinated by for the last couple of decades, leading to a university degree in Psychology, reading several of the leading books on habit formation, and spending many years mindfully studying how it plays out in my own ADHD mind, as well as working with hundreds of students to get themselves to meditate regularly.
The following reflection is an attempt to offer something useful on how to bridge the gap between “knowing” and “doing.”
To keep it simple, I will give special focus to a daily “formal meditation” habit, but the principles in this reflection are essentially the same for any habit you are trying to cultivate.
Before we jump in, here’s a math equation, loosely inspired by interweaving the Buddha’s wisdom with habit expert, BJ Fogg:
Habit success = (Desire — Resistance) x A Clear Plan
In the following sections, I’ll detail each of those parts.
A Clear Plan
When resistance is low, oftentimes, simply having a little structure is all that’s needed to establish and deepen a habit.
Here are some of what I’ve found to be the most supportive “tactics” for creating structure that endures.
This utilizes muscle memory, by pairing meditation with some pre-existing part of our routine.
For example, “after morning coffee, I will meditate,” or “after I feed the cat, I will meditate,” or “after I come home from work, I will immediately go to meditate [before screens, snacks, etc.],” or “when the clock strikes 8am, I will join David’s morning meditation.”
By pairing behaviors, we bypass the ‘decision-making’ phase where procrastination and resistance usually take root.
2. Get Clear on How Long
For those without a consistent habit, practice The Two-Minute Rule. The hardest part about meditation, or any habit, is getting started. It’s much harder to go from 0 minutes to 2 minutes, than it is from 2 minutes to 20 minutes.
Usually people believe they have to meditate for a certain amount of time for it to “count,” but the reality is that every person I know who has meditated daily for 2 minutes ends up reporting it made a big difference. Furthermore, once you’ve got down “starting the habit,” it’s pretty easy to scale up to 5, 10, 20, or 60 minutes.
For those who already have a consistent habit, ask, “what is an ideal balance of meditation in my life?” Basically, there isn’t a right or wrong amount of time you should be meditating. Of course, different quantities produce different results, but we are multi-faceted beings with varied aspirations and interests.
Does the amount of time you are currently meditating feel in harmony and balance with your life’s deeper aspirations? Look closely at that. A little more? A little less? The clearest you are on this question, the more fulfilling the habit will be.
3. Solving Easy Mental Friction
If you don’t meditate because you don’t know where to do it, pick a chair in your house or buy a cushion. If you can’t get yourself to meditate because it’s too noisy, buy ear plugs. If you resist meditating because you don’t know what to do when you sit down, listen to a random guided meditation on Insight Timer, or just feel your breath. And so on. Try not to get too perfectionist about this — just focus on the easy wins.
4. Simplicity
Don’t try to take on three new habits at once. One at a time. Even if you have a lot of motivated energy, stick with one new habit for at least a month before adding another. This way, it’s more likely to stick.
5. Anticipating Forgetfulness
Building new habits is hard. Part of the process is falling off the habit train and knowing how to get back on. It’s actually more important that you know how to “come back” than it is that you know how to “stay.”
There are lots of ways to do “come back,” but what I’ve found to be the two most powerful are (1) community support, like attending a meditation group, and (2) doing a regular check-in via journaling, asking “how did my habits go this past week?” Once a week is a good pace, though monthly can work too.
This is a sentence that captures all the essentials I described above. It looks like this: “I will [HABIT] for [LENGTH] at [TIME OF DAY] at [LOCATION].
If you actually write down your implementation intention, and keep it somewhere you will see regularly, studies show your chances of establishing a lasting habit increase dramatically.
As an example, “I will [meditate] for [2 minutes] [after coffee] [on my meditation cushion].”
If there is some healthy habit you want to initiate or deepen, consider taking a moment right now to write down your own implementation intention. It makes a difference.
Lowering Resistance
It really doesn’t matter how many meditation books you’ve read or habit theories you know when your inner toddler comes out and screams, “I don’t wanna!”
In turn, if you want to cultivate healthy habits, it’s essential to have some ways to work with, unpack, and ultimately release the grip of resistance — not abstractly, but tangibly in-the-moment.
Mindfulness is an invaluable skill in meeting real-time resistance. Rather than taking on a “power through mentality,” mindfulness simply notices, “resistance is happening.”
It’s not that “I” am the resistance, but rather that the resistance is a piece of weather moving through the mind-body. If you can breathe, relax, and feel your feet, there’s a little space that enters in that says, “I don’t have to follow this resistance.”
Perhaps the single best piece of habit advice I’ve received is “don’t rely on feeling like it.” Mindfulness is the secret sauce that helps us live that advice.
Weaving in a healthy dose of compassion is also quite useful, like attuning to that part of ourselves that doesn’t want to, and saying, “oh dear one, I totally get it, you’re not feeling it right now. It’s part of being human. I hold you with care.”
If mindfulness + compassion are still overpowered by resistance, it’s often useful to do some emotional unpacking.
What’s actually going on here? What’s happening in my body? What other emotions are present? What exactly am I afraid of or resisting? How is this resistance trying to keep me safe? Is there something this part of me is not seeing?
The above are questions to explore over months and years, not just in one session of exploration.
One angle I’ve found especially powerful is attuning to the underlying belief of the resistance. Beliefs often lurk unseen in the subconscious, and then “bubble up” into a vague diffuse resistance that I’ve been calling “the inner toddler.”
Here are the four primary beliefs that I’ve noticed at core of essentially all of habit resistance:
- I can’t do it. This belief says, “other people may be able to meditate or have a serene mind, but not me. I’m just wired differently. I think too much. I’m too anxious. I’m hopeless. It’s not possible. Why even bother trying?”
. - It’s not worth it. This belief says, “maybe I could do it, but the trade off is too big — it’s not worth the effort.” Maybe the trade off is the unpleasant feelings you’ll experience along the way, or the things you’d have to let go of to get there. Or, perhaps, to get to a point this habit would feel beneficial is too big a hurdle.
. - I’m too busy. In rare cases, someone literally does not have two minutes free in a day, but in my observations, deep down, this belief generally says, “I’ve got a lot going on that stresses me out, and with the additional time I have, I’d rather engage in passive distraction, like scrolling, TV, drinking, than meet the discomfort of meditating for two minutes.”
. - It doesn’t feel good. This belief says, “I prioritize what feels good, and meditating often feels heavy, icky, distractible, anxious, restless, and so on. I don’t want to have to face that. I’d rather do something else.”
To be fair, sometimes these beliefs are legitimate. We use discernment to know when resistance is coming from wisdom and when is it coming from aversion. For example, you might feel like meditating for four hours a day “isn’t worth it” or that “you’re too busy,” but four minutes a day is a different question!
Anyhow, when there is a habit you genuinely want to do but struggle to implement, a helpful way to unpack the underlying belief, is Byron Katie’s The Work, which means asking yourself the following questions:
- Is it true?
- Am I absolutely positive it’s true?
- What happens when I believe this story?
- What would happen if I release this story?
- What’s another story that’s just as true, if not more so, but also more helpful?
Importantly, as I started this section with, if you just treat this as an intellectual exercise, it’s unlikely to yield much fruit.
Instead, the route to transformation comes through engaging with the questions holistically, feeling into whatever thoughts, emotions, or reactions arise in you, particularly with #5.
Be willing to feel and move through those places — as they unlock, resistance drops.
Increasing Desire
In the way I’m speaking of it, you might think of desire as “emotional buy-in.”
This is different from motivation, which changes rapidly and unpredictably.
Desire is touching into a layer deeper — into the part of you that really understands why you are doing this and is fully on board. Typically, it’s a part that operates out of genuine care and compassion for yourself. It’s a part that wants to truly, deeply be well — not just through some instant gratification, but that kind of well-being that is enduring.
I’ve found no one-size-fits-all formula for increasing emotional buy-in. Rather, there is a long list of different qualities we can draw upon.
Sometimes, it seems most fruitful to lean into the ones that are stronger for us. Other times, it seems most fruitful to nurture the ones that are weaker in us. It’s all a big playground — what actually cultivates emotional buy-in?
I offer the following list for your skimming pleasure. It is not exhaustive, but represents qualities I’ve drawn upon over the years to increase emotional buy-in.
- Attune to your why. Reflect deeply and frequently on why you want to do this habit. Not a surface answer, like, “because it’s good for me,” but some more emotionally resonant why. Some teachers recommend asking this question every time you sit to meditate. It’s powerful. Very powerful. If you engage in a weekly check-in, like I described in the “anticipating forgetfulness” section, this is one point you should absolutely include every time.
. - Attune to a deeper satisfaction. I do a lot of sauna and cold plunge. On the surface, it often feels rather unpleasant, but on a deeper level, I feel the satisfaction of challenging myself, learning to be with discomfort, and finding somewhere within that runs deeper than the surface resistance. When you’re met with resistance, attune to that deeper part of you that is learning, growing, and peaceful.
. - Celebrate. Every time you actually do the habit, be happy! If you layer on, “I could have done more,” or similar self-critical thoughts, you short-circuit the brain’s natural motivational system, making it less likely to do the thing next time. However, if you feel gladdened by small wins, you condition the brain to want to do it again.
. - Enjoyment and playfulness. Drop fixed ideas of what meditation is supposed to look like. Is there a way you could do this habit that’s enjoyable and/or relaxing? Play with it. Maybe it’s just an attitude shift. Perhaps it’s a more overt change, like laying down, listening to peaceful music, doing a guided meditation, or letting go of the method you think you should do but gives you a headache and doing a method that is more easeful.
. - Curiosity. Rather than aim for results, like, “I want to have a perfectly serene and concentrated mind, and I’ll be subtly agitated until I get there,” go into meditation with a curious spirit. For example, “what’s it like to be a human, in a mind and body? Is it true that this body breathes all by itself? What happens when I just sit down and observe? What’s it like to be distracted and irritable? To be peaceful and energized?” Imagine yourself as an explorer of consciousness!
. - Faith. Sometimes the suffering is strong and we want to quit. However, we’ve heard the shares and read the books — other people have benefited from meditation, and we are a person just like them. If others can do it, so can we. We can harness that deep faith in our capacity to change. In Buddhism, faith essentially means placing the heart. Even though the outcome is uncertain, we are willing to take the leap.
. - Seeing the benefit. If you’ve been at this even a little while, you know that meditation makes a difference. It helps you be less reactive, less caught in ruminating, more at ease, kinder, more grateful, and on and on. Touch into that. Recall those benefits. Marinate in them. Keep an eye out for the part of you that says that’s not good enough — this is just a distraction! If you feel like you have had zero benefits, revisit the faith section. Give yourself a provisional one-month experiment of daily two-minute practice. See what happens!
. - Community. We are social beings. When we are around others who meditate, and we actually meditate with other beings, it instills the value and behavior deeper within. There’s built-in accountability, support and inspiration. There’s a reason the Buddha said spiritual friendship is the whole of the path.
. - Longing. There is some raw energy of desire that we all know. Some deep yearning or longing for wholeness, happiness, peace, and so on. In Buddhism, sometimes it’s pointed to with the term, samvega, which is translated as spiritual urgency. It’s said to arise when we’re tired of living life as the mainstream suggests and we’re ready, in our bones, for a deeper experience of life. There’s power in harnessing this energy to cultivate habits that support our deepest values.
. - Suffering. Suffering is often the greatest teacher. If we convince ourselves that everything is perfect, we’re completely happy, and there are no problems, then we would never bother to do anything. However, when we can have the self-honesty to see there is still some pain within, there is an incredible amount of wholesome desire that can spring from this place. In the Buddha’s step-by-step teaching on going from total beginner to enlightenment, it begins by acknowledging suffering.
Perhaps pick one of the above that piques your interest; that feels alive or has some energy. Spend some time exploring that quality. See if it can draw out your deeper levels of desire that grow bigger than resistance.
As a note, desire often gets a bad rap in Buddhism, though this excellent & approachable article from Gil Fronsdal maps out the essential role of desire on the Buddhist path.
In brief, for the Buddha, there is a difference between (1) desire rooted in delusion & flavored with expectation and (2) desire rooted in wisdom & flavored with aspiration. The latter is essential for everything from healthy habits to total enlightenment.
Conclusion
All of the above was essentially commentary on the following math equation:
Habit success = (Desire — Resistance) x A Clear Plan
You might think of both desire and resistance as existing on a 0 to 10 scale. When there is at least a shell of a plan and the desire number is higher than the resistance number, the habit is likely to happen.
The more familiar you are with these three parts, you’ll likely notice where the weak link is pretty quickly. That can start to become the place to put your energy, mindfulness, and curiosity.
Of course, this is all probably way too many words. Here’s the simpler habit advice that works extremely well:
Don’t rely on feeling like it — just do it.
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