Dan St

Falls Church, VA, USA

Reston, VA, United States

Identify a core value, choose a simple behavior that aligns with it, and visualize yourself taking action to create a new, value-based habit.

Science

Psychology

Health & Happiness

Mindfulness

Happiness

Insight Meditation

English

This meditation is about creating a meaningful life through building value-based habits. In this meditation, you will contemplate your values, and select behaviors to connect to those values, so you can make this day, and the days to come, meaningful to you. If you are curious to know more about how habits form, you may find "Science Insight: Rewards & Habits worth listening to".

Journal Meditation - Values & Habits

 Hello and welcome. This meditation is about value-based habits. Value-based habits are automated behaviors that are connected to something that is truly meaningful in your life. For example, kindness can be a core value to you. A value-based behavior that is connected to kindness may be smiling to a stranger on the street or helping someone carry their groceries. A value-based habit would be to smile to strangers and help people without consciously thinking about whether or not you should smile or help. In this meditation, we will contemplate your values and think about behaviors you could consciously choose to connect to those values in order to create new habits that align with who you want to be. When you are ready, come to a comfortable seated position, take a moment to align your body, gently pressing your sits bones into the support beneath you, creating an upward lift from the base of the spine as you slowly inhale, allowing the belly, side ribs and chest to open and exhale releasing your shoulders down the back, relaxing ribs, belly, arms and hands. Take a few gentle breaths through the nose, noticing the base, the warmth and the quality of your breath as it enters and leaves your body. Today is a bright new day. You can start all over today. To create meaning and fulfillment in your day, I'd like to invite you to call to mind a quality, a value or a skill that feels important to you. This value or quality can be kindness, compassion, humility, loyalty, courage, curiosity or something completely different. How do you feel this morning and what comes to mind today? Try not to get it right but see if you can be open to what comes up intuitively. When you feel your value clearly, please say it out loud, either in your mind or using your voice. Notice what happens in your body when you express this value. Now think of one behavior you can do today that would align with this value. For example, listen to a colleague without judgment, share one idea in a meeting, write down what you're grateful for or take regular breaks. Whatever it is, it should be easy for you to do today and easy enough for you to repeat tomorrow if you'd wish to do so. When you have found your behavior, create an intention today to do your value-based behavior. Take a moment to visualize yourself doing the behavior. Where are you? What happens right before you do your behavior? What do you see and what do you say? Notice how it feels to do this behavior. Understanding the chain of events will help you wire in new habits faster. Thank you for taking the time to sit down and think about what is really important to you. When we walk our talk, when we behave aligned with our values, we create meaning and fulfillment throughout our days. Thank you for meditating with me. Have a lovely rest of your day.