Atomic Habits

 

That's the power of atomic habits. Small changes. Remarkable results.

James Clear (page 253)

I am about to start sharing the wisdom from a little book I just finished by James Clear called Atomic Habits. As I read and then studied the book passage by passage, I found myself in a bit of emotional turmoil. I questioned if this book lined up well with what I am discovering to be true, or did it offer directions to a contrary path? 

• In one breath it felt like Clear was supporting those truths I am picking up from Yoga, Buddhism, the Vedas, about the spiritual mandate for life, and in another breath it felt like he was supporting ego's mandate. 
• What was he saying about "craving" exactly? Was he saying that it was the source of all suffering, as the Buddha taught, or a positive motivation that can lead us from suffering into "success"? 
• This habit stacking, and this commitment to seek one new thing after another he writes about with the intenton of keeping ourselves challenged, is that not a glorious form of distraction...reinforcing society's problem of not being able to sit still and do nothing? 
• And this talk about making  a habit  a part of our identity....I love focusing more on what we are than what we do...but we do not want to reinforce "identity" do we? 
• I do love what he says about beliefs and how they are learned, how we are conditioned to believe what we believe, and how these beliefs can get in the way of us being the best versions of us we can be. 
• I aree 100% that beliefs need to be edited. 
• He is basically talking about samskaras and psyches, is he not, when he discusses how our identity is our "repeated beingness"...how we learn to repeat behaviours or avoid repeating behaviours based on the experiences we had with them and on the beliefs that grow from these experiences? 
• The thing I question though...is the whole premise of this book, then,  about serving this self-image which I call the ego? 
• Is the process of building habits the process of building yourself? (Page 37). 
• What self? The little me self or the Greater Self? 
• What does he see as progress and success? Is it internal or external? 
• I like how he describes suffering as being the space between craving a change in state and getting it. (Page 260) 
• What about being here now?
• Change of state I can see as something that relieves suffering but is he stating that craving and wanting is good because they lead to suffering and suffering motivates us to go after what we want?
• What is the wisest course of action?  Are we to go after what we want? Or are we to settle with what is?

Anyway, I will look into these questions and do my best to answer them.

All is well. 

James Clear (2018) atomic Habits. New York: Avery