What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
James Clear page 186
Are your habits working for you or against you? So you hit a challenging circumstance in life that is right in yor face. Your lifelong habit to date was to judge the situation as unpleasant, then to avoid it, push it away, resist it, suppress it, repress it or numb from the reality of it. Hmmm! How did that habit tendency work for you so far? If you really explore your inner world, you will see that this really has not worked well. Your resistance, storing, stuffing and averting has made your insides a mess hasn't it? You now see and experience the world through that mess. Therefore you live a messy life of dukkha. Your self protecting habits did not benefit you; they worked against you, didn't they? If the habit of closing has worked against you, is it not time to change those habits?
Instead of closing, we want to make the habit of staying open our ultimate goal in life. How?
The Habit of Staying Open!
Well let's look at James Clear's habit building and deconstructing directions. The basic teaching in Atomic Habits is this: To make a "good" habit stick: Make it obvious; make it attractive; make it easy; and make it satisfying. To make a "bad" habit go: Make it invisible, make it unattractive , make it difficult; and make it unsatisgying( even painful).
Make it Obvious
So we need to make the habit of staying open the most obvious choice when we face a challenge. The mind is going to say "close": push away or down because that is the habit it has established. Be aware of that. Remind yourself, however, how closing has not worked for you to date. Resistance is not the , answer. It may give you immeduate gains, but immediate gains, we know from Clear, lead to long term losses.
With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. In good habits, it is reversed: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good. ..."Often the sweeter the first fruits of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits." Frederick Bastiat/James Clear Page 189
Though it immediately feels good to push away the unpleasant, to stuff and store it away from conscious awareness so we do not have to deal with it...relief!..the long term consequences for doing this over and over again will destroy any chance at happiness we might have.
We need to break the habit of stuffing and storing, of resisting the reality of life now because we will not feel good later on.
As soon as you find yourself beginning to close, (maybe you feel a tightening in your gut, for example), have a very obvious trigger available that will keep you open. The breath can be that trigger, that obvious reminder. Get in the habit of everytime that belly begins to tighten, to take a deep breath. The breath is the obvious reminder to stay open. You breathe because you are alive. You are alive! That is obvious reason enough, is it not, to stay open to this amazing expereince of life? Make it even more obvious. Have cue cards all over the house or car that remind you to breathe...to let what ever is happening to pass through you
Make it Attractive
Life is so dramatic, full of all these distracting ups and downs that suck us in . The drama of "little me" is very, very attractive, for some strange reason . It can absorb us. The spiritual practice of looking inward, instead of outward, of learning to sit quietly with what is, on the other hand, is not so attractive. Some may even call it boring or painful. Most of us will avoid the practice of sitting alone with those 60 thousand thoughts a day that flitter through our heads. It can be disturbing! Realize this tendency many of us have to avoid stillness! From that realization, start making the spiritual connection more attractive than little me's drama. We need to learn to do that which we might initially find unattractive...to sit quietly alone as part of a practice of nonresistance. Quiet and stillness in the present moment will give us strength in times when life seems to be disturbing.
How do we make stillness attractive?
Begin in an area that is attractive to the soul. If you are even partially attracted to the idea of seated meditation, create a quiet space, with lovely music, wonderful aromas, lovely colours, light and atmosphere. Practice in a way that is attractive to you. Maybe nature and the woods are attractive to you. Try a walking meditation in the woods. If movement is attractive to you: try Tai Chi or hatha yoga. Etc Most importantly, make getting connected to the higher self attractive in any way you can.
Make it Easy
Start with staying open during simple little things that happen in life. Start with Michael Singer's "low hanging fruit" and Clear's 'tiny habit changes'. When this or that happens have a well-practiced mantra ready to use, "I can handle this." and repeat that over and over again, even before life hands you a curve ball. Or be ready to take a few deep breaths. Practice breathing prior to the crisis so you are ready to do so when that disturbing thing shows up. That is all you have to do: Take a breath and repeat a short mantra. These two little thing will help you to relax in the face of aversity. Don't worry about dealing with all the big stuff inside until its time. Start with the tiniest simplest steps and progress will follow naturally.
Make it Satisfying
Do that which gives you immediate relief from dukkha, that which is satisfying. Don't start by saying I am going to sit for an hour everyday knowing that I will eventually, maybe in a decade or so, be rewarded by enlightenment. No, the thing is to do tiny things that reward you now. Find some semblance of satisfaction: peace, relaxation, relief each and every time you practice. Make it satisfying!
I have one little spiritual practice that I do that opens me instantaneously. It literally takes ten seconds. It is easy and immediately satisfying. I call it the ten second reboot.
The Ten Second Reboot.
Several times a day, especially when I find myself curled over in the "stress" position, I will stand up and stretch my arms up over my head, stretching until I feel an opening in my core (a physical cue of obvious opening). I will look up with a big smile on my face, saying out loud, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" ( This ensures an obvious opening and a willingness to accept what is). Then I will recite "Thank you! Thank you! Thank You!" ( Nothing brings us quicker into opening than gratitude does).
Try it! This little trick I refer to as the ten second reboot opens us up quite dramatically and physically. It is obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. It feels so good to stretch, and both smiling and gratitude have been proven to release feel good hormones into our brain and body.
This is just a little example of a positive habit we can add to our lives that will help us to develop spiritually. It is an obvious, attractive, simple, and satisfying way of building better habits.
All is well.
James Clear ( 2018) Atomic Habits. New York: Avery
No comments:
Post a Comment