Yes, you read that right. That is irregularity, with an ‘ir’ prefix.

We talk a lot about the power of regularity. But let us switch gears from what we all know to be true (i.e., the power of regularity or the power of consistency) and dip into the power of irregularity for a bit.

My struggle for regularity is old. I was in graduate school in upstate New York. I had learned to meditate in Ithaca in a Yoga class, and I was trying to practice meditation regularly. (I grew up in India, but never learned to meditate there.) I had a very modest goals, 10 minutes a day. (Well, now I realize it was not modest at all; 10 minutes a day to start meditating is almost surely an invitation to failure. But that is a topic for another post.) I remember some day I would not meditate and give an excuse (to myself) that I did not have time. But I also noticed the hypocrisy of it when some mornings, I would read about meditation for 45 minutes, but won’t actually do it for just 10. You know how it goes!

After a few years of this on-and-off meditation, feeling guilty and frustrated over my lack of regularity, I was talking to my then new apartment-mate one day. His name is Ankush G. I was giving my usual spiel to him about how I am not able to start doing meditation regularly and my guilt over it. (You see, I had also gotten good at the art of self-deprecation, if not at the art of self-meditation.) He was and still is a very patient fellow. He listened to me for a while. For a few minutes, which turned to many days, and then some months. But after a few months, I think he lost his cool and very gently told me: Yogi, if you cannot do meditation regularly, why don’t you just do it irregularly?

I thought he was kidding. But he was not, of course. Wise words always smell incorrect at first. Just do meditation irregularly!

What he meant was that if we are not able to build a regular practice, instead of beating ourselves over not doing meditation some days, instead of berating ourselves for lack of discipline, we just tap into our promise of irregularity and proceed to the next day — emotionally unscathed. Next day is a new day, and we can decide again if we want to do meditation that day or not. There is no baggage carried over from the frustrations of the previous day.

The problem with expectation of regularity and not being able to keep regularity is that we feel like a failure even if we have done meditation many days last month. And once we fail, once the streak is broken, we have less of a motivation to start the streak from square one the next day. You see, the breaking of our promise breaks us down. It undermines our trust in ourselves. That makes marching forth especially challenging.

So, let us keep the expectations low. Just have a belief that meditation is good for you (why are you doing meditation to begin with?), and you will sincerely do whenever you can. Even if it is irregularly. Really drop the expectation for regularity. Enjoy irregularity.

See, the choice is not between doing regularly or doing irregularly. (If those were the options, choice is clear.) The choice is between not doing regularly (which becomes not doing at all) and doing irregularly. 

The choice is not between doing it perfectly and just doing it. The real choice is between not doing it (because perfection never arrives) or just doing it however you can do it.

Isn’t the choice much easier now?