Habit Archives - Page 18 of 19

Curiouser and Curiouser

April 11, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

In his book, Waking Up, Charles Tart points out that most people, especially in the West, aren’t taught self-observation skills at an early age. What if we had spent as much time learning how to observe ourselves as we spent learning how to read?

I’m a fanatical reader, so I don’t say this lightly, but maybe self-observation skills are even more valuable than reading skills. In many ways, reading helps open up the outer world to us, but self-observation opens up our own inner world—which is no less vast, really.

These are a few things Tart has to say about self-observation.

It’s All Grist for the Mill

In its most general form, the practice of self-observation is simply a matter of paying attention to everything, noticing whatever happens, being open-mindedly curious about all that is going on. This everything will almost always be a mixture of perceptions of external events and your internal reactions to them. You should drop all a priori beliefs about what you should be interested in, what is important and not important. Whatever is is an appropriate focus for observation.

Three Ways to Pay Attention

This open-minded attention must be more than just intellectual attention. Remember that we are three-brained beings. Thus the attention we should strive to pay to our world and our selves is an emotional attention and a body attention as well as an intellectual attention.

Above All, Be Curious

The practice of self-observation…is the practice of being curious, along with a commitment to do your best to observe and learn whatever is there, regardless of your preferences or fears.

I have to keep reminding myself to stay curious about what is going on around me and within me. And also to stay curious about my own actions and reactions. It’s so much harder for me to get sucked into the drama, the compulsions, and the autopilot behavior when I’m able to maintain an attitude of curiosity about everything that’s happening.

My usual modus operandi is probably the same as everyone else’s. I operate on the assumption that there’s a way things should be and when things are going the way they should be going, all’s well. But more often than not, things do not go the way I think they should. And people do not behave the way I think they should. Even I don’t behave the way I think I should. And don’t get me started on the weather!

As an 8, when things are not going as I expect them to go, my resistance kicks in. That’s a perfect opportunity to wake up and pay attention. When I’m able to do that, I feel much lighter and more expansive. When I don’t or can’t do it, I dig myself deeper into my resistance. No good ever comes of that.

What kicks in for you when things aren’t going your way?

If I want to use the moments when my expectations rub up against the edge of reality to wake up, I have to have the intention to do so.

The practice of self-observation begins with a desire and resolution on your part: “I want to know what really is, regardless of how I prefer things to be.”

As per my previous post, self-observation is not for wimps. It isn’t easy to let go of our preconceived ideas about how the world should work. It’s hard to give up having a temper tantrum when we don’t get our way. Growing up can be painful at times.

If you diligently practice self-observation, you will see much that his painful and much that is joyful, but seeing more of reality will turn out to be highly preferable to living in fantasy. You will begin creating “something” in yourself, a quality, a function, a skill, akin to learning how the controls of your automated airliner work. And you will be pleasantly surprised at how much more there is to life.

Self-Observation Isn’t for Wimps

April 7, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

In order to know ourselves, one of the things we need to be able to do is observe ourselves. But observing ourselves doesn’t come naturally. It isn’t that we lack opportunity, since the object of self-observation is always available. It’s that even if we can detach long enough to engage in the process, we find it difficult to observe any aspect of ourselves—from the most significant to the most trivial—without having an opinion about it.

We like it or dislike it, approve of it or disapprove of it, want to keep it or get rid of it—or get more of it. We find it satisfying (occasionally) or dissatisfying (more often). What we observe puffs us up or deflates us. Not only are we constantly evaluating whatever catches our attention, but the same attribute, behavior, feeling, or thought can be judged acceptable in one instance and unacceptable in another. The criteria we use for our self-evaluations are based in compulsion, so there is no rest for the weary—meaning each of us is just another moving target for self-judgment.

Most of the time, we use our self-observations to identify how and where we need to be fixed, so we can improve ourselves. Alternatively, if we like what we observe, we congratulate ourselves.

I let myself get sucked into helping him again. Damn! I need to learn how to say “no.”
I keep finding excuses not to exercise even though I make plans to do it. I am so lazy.
Gee, I handled that situation pretty calmly this time. I’m getting better.

Self-Judging Machines

It’s an automatic process to move almost instantly from observation to judgment. It happens so quickly and so automatically we usually aren’t aware of it. So our observations just become fodder for the judgments that follow. It’s a vicious cycle.

If we judge something about ourselves negatively, we experience an internal conflict. Staying present to the experience of conflict or dissonance isn’t easy. It’s so hard that almost anything—any kind of activity, even useless activity—is preferable. At least it’s distracting.

But the goal of self-observation is to be able to stay present to what we observe without moving into judgment or trying to change things. Yes, the judgments will inevitably arise, but we can turn the tables by making them fodder for self-observation.

This requires commitment, patience, courage, and a willingness to surrender our overpowering desire to be in control since one of the first things we’re likely to observe is how little control we actually have.

Every now and then, we wake up for a brief instant of clarity and cry out, ‘What the hell is happening here?’ And then we fall back into our semi-conscious state as we continue bumbling about, half asleep at the wheel of our lives. –Lama Surya Das

Meditation and journal writing are both great vehicles for practicing self-observation, even if practiced in short bursts.

(originally posted in Nine Paths; slightly revised)

What Gets in the Way

March 28, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

What keeps us from achieving the things we want or even set out to achieve? Science writer David DiSalvo (What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite) seems to like why questions—which I’m on record as opposing. He wrote an article for Forbes titled “The 10 Reasons Why We Fail,” which he describes as reflections on falling short—more precisely, why we fail despite ourselves.

Two of his reasons—the first and last, as it happens—really resonate for me based on my own experience and the experiences of friends and acquaintances.

You Don’t Believe You Can Do It

Luke: I can’t believe it.
Yoda: That is why you fail.

The crucial part of Yoda’s dialogue with Luke is “believe.” The human brain is a powerful problem-solving and prediction making machine, and it operates via a multitude of feedback loops. What matters most in the feedback loop dynamic is input—what goes into the loop that begins the analysis-evaluation-action process, which ultimately results in an outcome. Here’s the kicker: if your input shuttle for achieving a goal lacks the critical, emotionally relevant component of belief, then the feedback loop is drained of octane from the start. Another way to say that is—why would you expect a convincingly successful outcome when you haven’t convinced yourself that it’s possible?

Believing you can do something is a precursor to intentionally changing or initiating a habit. If you start out believing you can’t do it, you will more than likely fulfill that prophecy.

You’re Confused about What to Do

Of all of these 10 ideas, this one is to me the most difficult because it plagues me almost constantly. Gearing up the cerebral feedback loop for achievement is one thing, but without a sense of focus and direction, all of that energy isn’t going to yield very much in the end. My experience has been that sometimes you have to let the energy flow for a while without too firm a sense of direction and see if focus emerges organically. Once it does, you can then nurture it into a more structured method for getting where you want to go.

Confusion abounds, especially when people think they ought to know what to do and where to go, but don’t. There are several ways to prime the pump to gain some clarity about what to do next. Often, however, we and our brains are so frantically busy going in whatever direction we’re going that we can’t slow down enough to realize we don’t actually know what the heck we’re doing.

Explain Yourself

March 14, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

amazing grace (Photo credit: eschipul)

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible. —Eugene Ionesco

I haven’t tracked this down, but I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said humans are cursed with explaining ourselves to ourselves. More often than not, any old explanation will do, as long as it can be woven into the fabric of our ongoing personal narrative.

It is a curse, a burden, a pointless exercise, and more than a habit. It’s an addiction. It separates us from our experience, too. We can’t be both explaining and aware at the same time.

But where—and who—would we be without our explanations? I think that’s one of those questions worth asking.

The Way of Habits

February 24, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

New Year's Resolution — New Year’s Resolution (Photo credit: AlaskaTeacher)

Just as trying to make the one right and perfect choice is a hopeless task that’s likely to leave you mildly dissatisfied at best and exhausted, confused, and depressed at worst, there’s probably no one right and perfect way to change or begin habits. I’m a big fan of Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) because his ideas make sense, are backed by research, and they work (I’ve used them). The more you know about how the habit loop works, the better your chances are of succeeding in having the habits you want and not having the habits you don’t want.

Another idea, however, is to make very, very small changes. This idea is explained by Leo Babauta in his blog Zen Habits:

Actually doing the habit is much more important than how much you do.

If you want to exercise, it’s more important that you actually do the exercise on a regular basis, rather than doing enough to get a benefit right away. Sure, maybe you need 30 minutes of exercise to see some fitness improvements, but try doing 30 minutes a day for two weeks. See how far you get, if you haven’t been exercising regularly. Then, if you don’t succeed, try 1-2 minutes a day. See how far you get there.

If you can do two weeks of 1-2 minutes of exercise, you have a strong foundation for a habit. Add another week or two, and the habit is almost ingrained. Once the habit is strong, you can add a few minutes here and there. Soon you’ll be doing 30 minutes on a regular basis — but you started out really small….

Your mileage will vary, but on average most people get farther with a habit when they start small. One glass of water a day. One extra vegetable. Three pushups. One sentence of writing a day. Two minutes of meditation. This is how you start a habit that lasts.

I think this method can work if you’re especially resistant to doing something or if you tend to overreach, fail, give up–and repeat the cycle.

But sometimes there’s a greater urgency to the situation. You don’t have time to go slow and small. You need to change and you need to do it now. When you recognize and accept the urgency, you may be surprised at how quickly you can change your habits. But that’s the key: recognizing and accepting the need to change, to either start doing something you weren’t doing or start doing something differently.

So rather than trying to figure out the best way to start or change a habit–any habit–you may first need to clarify some other things, such as how important this particular thing is to you, how urgent it is to deal with, what your past experience (if any) has been with it, and what your own personal inclinations and tendencies are. Then use that criteria to select a habit-starting or habit-changing method.