Your Checklist

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The most important daily nirvana practice is one we talked about a lot. It’s your Daily Nirvana morning practice.

Today, revisit your morning practice. How is it going? Are you showing up for it?

If not, reflect on what’s going on, what’s showing up that’s getting in the way.

Is there something you need to change about your practice to make it more enticing?

Lovingly encourage yourself to re-engage.

Commit to 40 days, and see how you do.

“There is a natural 40-day rhythm to habits in the body and mind. It takes about 40 days of consistent practice to break a habit. It takes about 90 days to establish a new habit in action in the subconscious. It is good to take these biorhythms into account when designing your practice.”
– KRI International Aquarian Teacher Training Manual Level 1

“There are two guiding instincts in man. He is either improving his future or blocking his future improvement. If you are conscious of this, and have an honest and sincere urge to improve the future, you will always have promoting habits. If you cannot care for God, at least care for the future.

If we have to ultimately become a slave to our habit patterns, why not begin with creating positive habits?” 12/16/70 – Yogi Bhajan

“In your life, first you create habits, then habits create you. And today is a day when you can create a habit of meditation. Then meditation will make you intuitive, and intuition will solve your problems.”
5/11/90 – Yogi Bhajan

If you are doing your morning practice, that’s awesome. Is there anything you want to change about it?

Your Checklist

I read this book earlier this year called Slight Edge, and I learned a fabulous new concept. I learned about how to implement the slight edge in inching towards my targets. The main idea is that with your targets, especially one that might feel lofty or too much or have caused challenges in the past, choose a small, tiny action you can take towards it today. Then, do that again tomorrow and the next and the next day.

Here’s what that looks like.

In April of this year, I was on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. I was having so many issues with my right leg and knee from a car accident several years ago, aggravated by me not taking good enough care of myself and also the weight I had gained.

I read the Slight Edge and decided to Slight Edge my way to health and fitness.

I began by starting to take short walks. I ran into a roadblock because my knee pain increased significantly the more I walked.

So, then, instead of walking, my goal became to heal my tendons, ligaments and joints allowing me to walk and do other exercise.

Through taking small steps each day, I found some amazing healers who have healed my knee and leg.

I went from being unable to take a walk to being able to easily take 75 minute walks (I LOVE walking), do spin class and kickboxing class and do Kundalini Yoga daily.

Share your thoughts on what target(s) you want to slight edge your way towards and share at least one slight edge practice you will engage.

Your Checklist

If your practices aren’t specific enough, if they are vague, it can be easy to not do them.

It gives you much more reason for your resistance, your desire to stay in your comfort zone, to win.

Don’t give yourself that out. Be specific.

If you have a practice that says work out regularly, that’s too vague.

Instead say, I enjoy at least three walks a week of 15 minutes or more. Or, I love doing at least 30 minutes of some kind of movement at least 3 times a week.

Do you see the difference between that and work out regularly.

Take each of your practices and put a meeting time(s) with yourself to actually DO each of the practices or actions.

Do this first for daily or more regular actions. Then, move to weekly. Then, to monthly. Then to yearly.

For those of you who feel constrained by being so tied to your calendar, make sure to schedule some free days with nothing scheduled and/or some blocks of hours that are open and free with nothing scheduled.

Another idea you can try, if you are a person who needs unstructured time, you could choose one week a month during which you schedule nothing on your calendar. The other three weeks of the month, you can be more tightly scheduled.

Share in the comments below about how this idea lands with you. Any questions?

Everything you desire will come from your energetic congruence which is created in part by your practices.

Here are some great quotes/reflections from Yogi Bhajan about habits. FYI, Sadhana is another word for your morning practice.

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Sometimes we make it a habit to live with our habit. And when we make a habit to live with our habit, then we don’t want to change it. Then we make excuses. Then we need to go to a psychologist, psychiatrist, to friends. Then we need shoulders to cry on. Because once a human makes a habit to live with a habit, that human is done. Because to break a habit pattern, you need mind. To need your mind, you need Sadhana.
3/27/88
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In your understanding and in your life comes ups and downs; sometimes you get confused, sometimes you get into your past habits—patterns, I call it. Those who live in their past will never have their future. Those who live in now, future will bless them.
12/28/72
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Q. I’ve always heard that to improve a bad habit, you must replace it with a good one. Is this true?

A. No. First you must neutralize yourself.

Q. So then how do you establish the good habit?

A. Through meditation. First burn your bad habit pattern through meditation, and then you have to substitute it. Then you have the choice.

First you make habits and then habits make you. It’s a very old saying.
11/20/73
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Post any thoughts, reflections or questions about habits in the comments below. What did this post bring up in you?

Do you have any resistance coming up as you work through the materials in this 40 day practice? Are you feeling “behind”, and perhaps judging yourself? Are you creating practices, but then not doing them, or only half-heartedly doing them?

Or, are you feeling torn in some way about something in your life, a decision you are trying to make but aren’t making about something important in your life?

We waste a lot of time in resistance and inner conflict! There’s a way through it all …

If you are in either of these time and sucking patterns, you are in a false priority. You are NOT in a True Self Priority like you defined in week 1.

Go back to the energies you chose in Week 1. If you find yourself in resistance and/or inner conflict, refer to these energies you chose and bring those to bear.

The best way to stay in touch with your True Self priorities is to do your Daily Nirvana morning practice! When you your actions are congruent with your inner truth, the energies that you truly be and not all the false shadow energies, resistance and inner conflict disappears and you actualize what you want with easy and joy!

A great way to identify a false priority is to take one of the areas of your life and do the following exercise:

What I say I desire is __________

What’s showing up instead is ________

And, then define the energy of what is actually showing up … that’s your false priority.

Is that what you really want to be focused on? Your false priority? No way!

Do this in every area that resistance and inner conflict is showing up, and you will have identified HUGE shadow parts that are actually running so much of your life.

Summarize the false priorities that you found. Are you noticing any patterns? What are they?

Do you really want to give these shadow parts that much power? Or, would you rather reclaim that power and give it to your True Self priorities?