Classic Replay! Meditation- -Where to Start

🪷 Episode Summary: In this classic replay, Cheri Flake brings us back to basics with heartfelt humor and soulful honesty. Through personal stories, down-to-earth wisdom, and a warm shout-out to Louise Hay and Davidji, Cheri shares how to truly begin a daily meditation practice—without overcomplicating it. Whether you’re a binge meditator, a meditation dropout, or totally new to the cushion, this episode is your permission slip to just start—three minutes at a time. Bonus: includes a calming breathwork-based meditation to kickstart your practice with presence and grace. ✨ Three Key Learning Points:

• Three Minutes > Zero Minutes: Starting small, even just three minutes a day, beats lofty goals you never stick to. Build the habit, not the hype.
• RPM = Rise, Pee, Meditate: This simple formula helps anchor your practice before the world (or your phone) steals your focus. Mornings work best—even for night owls.
• Feel Good to Change: You can’t shame yourself into transformation. Real change starts with compassion and showing up, not should-ing yourself into guilt.

💌 Mentions & Shout-Outs:

• 📖 Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki – Back-to-basics spiritual inspiration.
• 🎉 You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay – The queen of affirmations and thought power.
• 🌬️ 16 Seconds to Bliss by Davidji – Breath practice featured in the episode.
• 🎙️ The Skeptic Metaphysicians – Podcast Cheri recently guested on. Woo meets wonder.
• 🧠 Quote Drop: “Your personal reality creates your personality” — Joe Dispenza.
• 🎯 Accountability Tip: Text a friend “RPM” every morning to build the habit together!
• 💻 Cheri’s site: ilovetherapy.com – For retreats, consults, and sweet stress therapy mailers.

Produced and edited by Owen Flake | Audio production, editing, and creative direction 🎛️🎚️🎧

 

Hey, beautiful people. What’s up? Okay, so today we’re gonna listen to a past episode that I really like because it gets us back to the basics. Back to a Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, which is a great book by Suzuki, if you wanna pick it up.

But when we come back to the basics, we remember exactly what we want, and that is to be meditating every single day. Listen, I know we’ve been talking a lot about changing our thoughts and how hard that can be, and I am not naive.

Listen, I know that some of you are like, whatever, lady. Like, as if. But I’m saying that I am not naive. I get it. I get it. I totally get that we cannot control every single thought that we have.

We’re having 60,000 thoughts a day, man. I get it. But I do know that if we pick the big ones, the ones that make us miserable, that are not true, and we manage to change those,

those sticky thoughts, they flourish out, they bloom, they just keep growing and growing and growing. And life gets grander because you start to attract different kinds of thoughts. I totally get that.

And the way that we do that, the way that we become more conscious about what we’re even thinking and more aware because usually it’s just a default thing. We’re just letting thoughts in and thinking them and believing them and feeling rotten.

But the way that we can get much, much better at that is by meditating every single day, by making meditation habitual, by making it not negotiable.

So here’s our classic past episode from stress therapy,

Meditation. Here is where you start. Here’s where you start, baby.

Hey, beautiful people. It’s time for some stress therapy. A podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living in the real world.

Finally, a place to Park. My 25 plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental health field.

And now your host, me, the stress therapist, Sheri Flake.

Hey, beautiful people. What’s up? Okay, so I was just a guest on a podcast. Oh, it’s like one of my favorite ones. You have to check it out. The skeptic metaphysicians.

These guys are awesome. They are, like, looking into all of the woo to see if it’s true. You know what I’m saying?

And it’s so cool. And they are just the best couple. And I just love them to pieces. They’re super cool. Anyway, you have to check it out. It’s wonderful. So every single question that they asked me was a podcast episode pretty much.

Because of course they’re trying to figure out, you know, what I do and how I work and what works and how to get to meditate all the time. That was their basic agenda.

And we can talk about mental health, we can talk about hard conversations, we can talk about personality problems or how your, you know, personal reality creates your personality. In the wise words of Joe Dispenza.

We can talk about how to stay motivated, we can talk about how to create healthy habits. All these lovely things that I love to talk about.

But sometimes every 20 or 25 episodes or so, we need to come back to the basics and talk about where to start. Okay? So I want to be better.

I want to be a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. So I’m a lot better later.

But how do I start with just a little bit better,

right?

I mean, that can be really hard. I totally get it. And we’re all starting there with something. Even if it’s pickleball, even if it’s, I don’t know, like my boy’s killing it at pre calculus, even if it’s whatever it is, whatever new thing you want to do.

Learning to play chess, playing ping pong, getting better at Spanish, whatever it is that you want to do and get a little bit better, where do you start?

You know, and so you gotta kind of think about it, about other habits that you have in your life that are true and steadfast and in place and you don’t even think about them.

And that’s the rub, right? Like we’re not thinking about what we’re doing, right? We’re obsessed with what we’re doing wrong. We’re obsessed with feeling bad about what we’re not doing rather than feeling good about what we’re working on, right?

And. And you gotta change that around. If I could make a big billboard,

okay, I used to have my business on a billboard and it was so awesome. It was right in this really high traffic area and it said, stressed, start living now.

And I got so much business from that billboard. It was amazing. If I could make another billboard, it would say,

if you want to change anything,

you have to feel good about it. Okay? And so that’s why Louise hay, her birthday was this week.

And I mean, I just love her to pieces. She’s the queen of affirmations. Look up her book. It’s called you’d Can Heal youl Life.

She’s got a very beautiful version of it that you could just put on your coffee table for the rest of your life. It is lovely. And it’s how you think about your body, how you think about your life, how you think about your.

Even your ailments, your aches, your pains, your physical problems, your diagnoses, you know, and how you could change your thoughts and how that can change your life. And it’s just a magical, magical book.

So this week I put a picture of me and Louise on my Instagram page and you can take a look at it. She was just delicious, most wonderful person to meet.

We went on an I can do it cruise with her. My husband was very tolerant. It was one of his first little insights into how I think. You know, we’d only been married a couple years and we learned so much from that cruise and from Louise and her, her people and her authors and her,

you know, she has the biggest self help publishing house in the world, you know, and she started with just a pamphlet when she was like 54. She has an amazing story.

Anyway, Louise Hay is the one that taught me not to use should, don’t should on yourself. Don’t constantly be saying what you should be doing because you’re you. You make yourself wrong and you make yourself feel bad one of the time.

And side note, oughts are just shoulds in disguise, right? So you want to think about the way that you’re talking to yourself, right? And she’s the person that I learned this from.

And one of the ways that you can do that and trick yourself into feeling good about something that you haven’t accomplished or that isn’t going well or that’s super hard is just, you know,

forgive yourself a little bit, man. I mean, I think when people think about meditating especially,

there’s like this goal they want to get to. Like, yes, we all want to be meditating an hour, twice a day, or whatever it is, whatever lofty goal you have, because yes, the, the more you do it, the better you feel all of those things, the more benefits you get.

But where are you right now? And you have to meet yourself there and understand that the journey in finding that practice is the enjoyable part, right? There’s nowhere to get to.

You’re already here. And when you think about the habits that you already have in place, like I just mentioned,

like brushing your teeth, you. You’re not thinking constantly about when you’re going to brush your teeth, if you’re going to have time, if it’s worth it. You’re not explaining to people at parties why you missed it this morning or why it doesn’t work for you or people say to do it twice a day,

but you can’t or whatever. You’re not doing that. You’re probably just brushing and flossing when you get the chance and then that’s it. You know what I mean?

And you want meditation to become normal, but how do we start in that long effort to have meditation become normal? Some people talk about,

you know, habits being 21 days or it takes, you know. No, I don’t know about all that. I think that James Clear does an excellent job of really putting together the massive library that we have regarding creating healthy habits.

He’s got excellent points in his book. People have talked about motivation and habit formation, David Allen and all these things for so long.

And then Wayne Dyer and the father of motivation. We can read all of that, we can be involved in all of that. But when it comes down to it,

are you showing up?

Right? And so that’s where you start. You just practice showing up. So I was, you know, teaching someone how to begin a meditation practice that really meditates, you know, might be like more of a binge meditator or maybe a crisis meditator where they meditate and do really well meditating.

They enjoy meditating and they might meditate for 20 minutes or a half hour, but they only do it like, I don’t know, once or twice a month or something, right?

So it hasn’t become habitual.

And so I told this person,

you need to start with three minutes just every day. Like David G. Says, rise, P, meditate, rpm I’m from Detroit, I get it. Like that sounds like rotations per minute, but it’s not.

It’s rise, P,

meditate, rise P, meditate and just do it for three minutes. And this individual was really frustrated because he was like, listen, I already know how to do it for 20 minutes.

Why would I do it for three minutes? That doesn’t even matter.

And it matters more than anything because we are not trying to talk him into meditation. We’re not trying to tell him that it’s good for him.

We’re not trying to convince him to do it. We’re not trying to convince him how great it is and how fun it’s going to be. He already has all those things.

What we’re trying to do is make showing up every single day habitual and non negotiable.

You just show up and it’s only for three minutes. And if it’s only for three minutes, you’re going to win that private battle in your head and show up for the three minutes.

Why three minutes? Because it’s less than five. So you’ll win that battle in your head. How long for three minutes?

I don’t know. I would say two weeks.

Especially if you’ve never done it, do it for a month. Like that. Do it for two months. Who cares how long? You only do it not making quote marks for three minutes.

If it’s a lifelong journey to be doing it every single day, right? You have your whole life to make it, whatever, perfect, or when then trap you’ve got yourself stuck in.

When I do this, then I’ll be happy. When I’m doing this, then I’ll be happy. When you show up, you are meditating when you show up every single day, okay?

And three minutes is better than zero minutes 100% of the time. So if you have fallen off of your practice, I want you to start with three minutes. And for those of you that are teenagers or under the age of 24 or 25, where your prefrontal cortex is still developing,

you might want to do it at night. So it would be more like,

you know, right before bed,

rbb. But you have to, like, figure out what that behavior right beforehand would be.

So, like, a lot of my clients would be like right after shower or right after unmake my bed, right after I turn off the lights or right after whatever. And I would suggest that you do not meditate in bed so you don’t fall asleep.

And I have a whole episode on meditation if you want to check that out. However, most of you are going to say, well, I’m going to do that. I’m going to do it at night.

And if you’re not under the age of 23, 24, 25 and older if you’re a boy, and younger, if you’re a girl, biologically, you’re going to want to do it at night because it’s going to seem easier than waking up earlier.

However,

if you want success at this, even if you are 23, even if you’re 20, even if you’re 19, even if you’re 18,

you’re going to have massive more success if you do it first thing in the morning, before you look at your phone, before you brush your teeth, before you let the dogs out, before you make the coffee rise, pee, meditate.

Davidji explains this so eloquently.

And this advice is the best advice that I can give before anything.

You sit only for three minutes, and you make that the goal each day. Okay? So say that you do miss one. Like you wake up and your cat was throwing up, and you got wrapped up in that, and then you just took a shower and went to work or something like that.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Happens to all of us. I mean, nothing gets me out of bed faster than.

Than my cat puking. She never pukes on something I don’t like ever. It’s always something I like.

Okay,

so maybe that happens. That’s fine. Things happen. The same thing could happen with brushing your teeth. You might go to work one day and be like, oh, my gosh, holy smokes, I forgot to brush my teeth.

That’s crazy. It never happens. Or whatever. Or I. I put conditioner on, but I didn’t put shampoo on or whatever. I mean, things happen,

right? But you get to it that night, you make sure that it’s the last thing that you do, then get into bed, then sleep or whatever you’re gonna do in bed.

Okay? That is where you start.

Okay. And I would say without meeting you, knowing you. And you are welcome to send me questions. I love questions. And you are welcome to use me as an accountability partner at any given time.

I am. I’m. I mean, my clients,

my friends,

people that I meet on podcasts or whatever it. In my business, I am getting texts each morning from someone telling me that their RPM that they did it.

And it’s. At any given moment, it could be six or eight people a day.

And I love it. I love it on vacation, I love it on my birthday. I love it on the weekends. I love it all the time because I’m rooting for you.

And what you need is someone who is rooting for you. So find a friend that you want to do it with, and send each other a text every single morning as soon as you’re done.

When you finally do get you to your phone that says, I did it, RPM whatever, but that is where you start. And you stay there. You stay there at RPM three minutes every morning until it’s normal.

It feels a little bit normal. Just the littlest bit normal. Now, that means that when your friend comes to stay with you for the weekend, you still have to do it.

That means when you have a cold, you still have to do it.

That means when you’re on vacation, which I find the hardest for most people,

you still have to do it. And if you do it, if you stick to it, this the three minutes, okay. The sense of accomplishment that you will feel in that moment is one of the benefits that we don’t even talk about meditation, how good it feels to be productive in learning Something new and bringing a new,

healthy habit into your life. That’s not that easy,

right? I mean, that is the coolest thing of all. When you finally are nailing it. And if you don’t believe me, talk to someone who is playing pickleball on the reg right now.

They are excited. They’re not excited about when they’re going to play perfectly or when they’re going to win that tournament. They are excited about showing up and playing. And that’s where you need to be.

Because the number one thing if you want to bring a new, healthy habit into your life is you have to feel good. And this is the way it’s showing up every single time.

Not giving excuses, not talking about why you can’t do it. I don’t care about those things. If you’re going to tell me why you can’t do it, I am going to believe you, okay?

Until you can turn it around and say, I would like to do this. I can do this. I’m going to do this. And this is where I start. It ain’t going to happen.

You have to turn those thoughts around. And when you start thinking differently about things, the things that you think about start to change.

And that’s whether you believe it or not. And I want this for you. I want this for you. There is nothing like meditating every day. Nothing has changed my life or my client’s life more profoundly than simply just adding a meditation practice into your life with regularity.

Okay? You got this. Okay? You got this. Okay. Okay. Now we’re gonna learn a little bit of a breath that you can try when you’re just starting out, when you go to sit down, that can get you a little bit centered right before you meditate.

And we’ll do that right after this.

Okay? So let’s find a comfortable place where you’re sitting up. Your chin is level to the ground.

Speaker B: Your shoulders are relaxed. Relaxed.

Speaker A: You’re not leaning forward or leaning back.

Speaker B: Find a place for your hands and.

Speaker A: Arrange yourself in a way where you’re.

Speaker B: Not fidgeting, where you’re comfortable.

And I’m doing this with you.

I’m doing this right along side of you.

Starting off really, really foreign.

We’re going to do what David G. Calls 16 seconds to bliss.

Empty your lungs and breathe in your nose. 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold it. 1, 2, 3,

four. Out of your mouth. 1. 1, 2, 3, Four. Hold it out. 1, 2, 3,4.

And just allow your breath to be whatever it is,

just watching it.

Okay, we’re gonna do it Again,

empty your lungs.

Breathe in your nose. 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold it. 1, 2, 3,

four. Out of your mouth. 1, 2, 3, Four. Hold it out. 1, 2, 3,4. And then allow your breath to find its natural rhythm once again.

All right, we’re going to change it up a little bit. Empty your lungs. Breathe in your nose. 1, 2, 3.

Hold it.

1, 2. Breathe out. 1, 2, 3, 4.

That’s 3,

2,

4.

3,

2,

4.

I’m gonna leave you just for a few minutes alone to meditate.

And I want you to count during your inhales.

If you pause between the inhale and the exhale.

Count during your exhales.

And then notice if you pause between the exhale and the inhale.

And it could be really easy just to start with. Breathe in two.

Breathe out three.

If that seems too short, you can breathe in three,

breathe out four.

And just really immersed in the breath,

keeping your exhale just one count longer than the inhale.

And just noticing any pauses and just allowing your breath to be what it is,

counting along with it.

When you notice.

Speaker A: That you’ve stopped counting.

Speaker B: Or that your attention has moved away from the breath, you simply come back to the breath counting.

And I’ll be back to guide you out.

Sa Sa.

Allow the numbers, the counting,

even the breath to fall away from your awareness. Awareness.

Bringing your attention back to this time, this room, this moment,

this body.

Sitting quietly still with your eyes closed onto your lungs and take a long, slow, deep breath in your nose.

Let it all go out of your mouth.

Speaker A: And this time, you could bring your.

Speaker B: Shoulders with you, breathing in your nose all the way up to your ears, and then let it drop.

Breathing out of your mouth.

One last breath in your nose.

Speaker A: Letting.

Speaker B: It all go out of your mouth. And when you’re ready, you can open your beautiful eyes.

Speaker A: I so hope that was helpful for you and getting you grounded,

started and feeling good about just showing up, counting,

breathing. That’s it. You just showed up, and you can feel good about it. Kick those shoulds out of the way.

You don’t need them. And at any time you want to send me a question, I’m happy to answer it. I’m rooting for you. I want this for you. It’s so good.

I just. I want you to have it.

So find an accountability partner. Show up tomorrow, text one another, keep track of one another, root for one another, and have a lovely, lovely day.

Hi, y’ all. All feeling after that stress therapy session? Good. Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, the stress therapist on social media,

hestresstherapist on Instagram and restherapy on Twitter. You can always go to ilovetherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and other offerings that I have there. If you live in Georgia and you’re ready to be one of my clients, go to my website to find out how you can sign up for a free face to face consultation with me.

At the very least, jump on my mailer so you don’t stress or miss one thing.

Until next time, have a lovely, lovely day.