Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am hoping that these final weeks of summer find you
refreshed and renewed - the grasses of your spirit a
deep verdant green, the sky of your mind a bright and
brilliant blue!
I want to thank the many readers who wrote in
response to last month's newsletter on embracing the
possibilities wrapped in each new day. Your comments
reinforced two important things: first, that ideas do
not need to be be need “new” or “complex” in order to be
valuable – what we need is to put into practice the
simple ideas that we already hold to be true. Secondly,
the readership of this newsletter longs not just to
preach wholesome ways to live and work, but to practice
them as well. In that spirit, I’d like to pick up where
I left off in last month’s issue by suggesting that it
is in the power of making just one new choice within a
given day, coupled with the discipline and practice of
repeating that choice until is becomes a habit, that we
hold the key to personal transformation.
Above and beyond everything we are involved in within
the scope of a day – at the core of all our relating,
doing, working and being – we are laying the platform
for our lives, erecting choice by choice that which we
come to experience as “destiny”. English novelist
Charles Reade summarized it beautifully in his
celebrated passage: “Sow a thought, and you reap an
action; sow an action and you reap a habit; sow a habit
and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap
a destiny.” While few would argue Reade’s point, rarely
do we live with vital and palpable appreciation for the
profundity of his assertion. Can you imagine what our
lives would look and feel like if we lived with day to
day consciousness of the power and substance of our
thoughts, deeds and habits?
There is no disputing the fact that we are creatures
of habit. Some psychologists believe that up to 95% of
our behavior is formed through habit which is largely
unconscious, and through its repetition, becomes
automatic. Many of our habits are born by design – like
brushing our teeth, checking our email at a particular
time each day, or engaging in a daily spiritual
practice. Others are unintentional, beginning innocently
enough, but becoming automatic just the same, like
biting our nails, cruising the web until deep hours of
the night, or drinking cup after cup of coffee.
As with the original meaning of ‘habit’ being a
“garment” or “a piece of clothing”, we come to wear our
habits, often oblivious that we have donned this
particular behavior, attitude or expression. Habits
become comfortable, like our favorite blue jeans or worn
out pajamas. They feel good because, well, we don’t feel
them at all! Eventually we fail to recognize the
difference between the habits we wear and the feel of
our own skin – preferring the mind-numbing comfort of
our habits to the rub of our flesh against real life
choices and circumstances. If we care to live “the
examined life”, however, becoming conscious of and
choosing our daily habits is paramount. As English poet
John Dryden put it over three hundred years ago, “First
we make our habits and then our habits make us.”
This isn’t to say that living by habit is a bad thing
– in fact, our lives would be torn asunder without them.
Can you imagine getting up every morning having to
rediscover and choose how to wash, dress, and prepare
breakfast for yourself and the family? We’d be exhausted
even before we headed for work! What if you had to pay
attention to every twist and turn in the road and “find”
your way to work everyday rather than enter that lovely
state of oblivion in which the car delivers you to the
door without your even having noticed that you in fact
were behind the wheel? (A scary notion when you think
about it.)
The point is that good or bad, wholesome or hurtful,
healthy or toxic, it would behoove us to become aware of
the habits that constitute our daily lives should we
care to have a hand in the molding of our character and,
ultimately, our destiny! This means choosing to be at
the helm of our experience and not allowing ourselves to
lapse into the familiar simply because it is what we
know. Adding a pinch of consciousness here and a tad of
awareness into the daily stew of life may impel us to
make small changes… that eventually become habits …
slowly but surely evolving into the fabric of our being
… into the kind of character upon which we would be
proud to base our lives. Here are five simple
suggestions for consciously cultivating wholesome life
and work habits.
1. Become aware of the degree and extent to which you
live out of habit.
We tend to think of habits in terms of the physical
as when we refer to eating habits, sleeping habits or
working habits. Consider the degree, however, to which
many of our basic personality traits and patterns of
thinking, relating and emoting are also just habits.
That recurring feeling of resentment that arises towards
a person who once let us down - perhaps it’s a just a
habit of our thinking. That extra 20 pounds we blame on
our family’s relationship to eating – the ole’ “food is
love thing” – maybe that’s just a habit. Or the way we
lose our temper with our kids that we attribute to the
parent-child dynamic – is that too just a habit of our
relating? Stress, fear, being over-worked, boredom,
procrastination, and a whole host of other challenges
might be nothing more and nothing less than habits.
Likewise, of course, happiness, health and
well-being, financial security, loving relationships,
and spiritual practices are also habits. The same could
be said for what we consider to be “personal qualities”
such as gratefulness, honesty, playfulness, compassion,
attentiveness and integrity. What are these attributes
if not the results of continuous ways of acting, doing
and being over time until they became natural and
automatic? Consider too how we hold to certain beliefs
as if they were “truth” simply out of habit, rarely
questioning our habitual ways of perceiving the world
around us.
Perhaps a good first step in living consciously is
becoming aware of the areas of our lives in which we
react out of deeply embedded patterns. In thinking about
this for the past few weeks, I have kept a growing list
which has both astounded me with its length and
disturbed me by the importance of the some of the items
listed. For example, my tendency (habit) to jump to the
defense of my daughter unless I am the one who is mad at
her, my need to please people, my long-standing fear of
snakes, singing the same string of songs in the same
order every time I pick up the guitar, my loyalty to
buying the same face, skin and hair products, my long
“inhabited” beliefs about work, money, love and
parenting, my attitude towards individuals and my
expectations of how they will respond in any given
situation, and my inclination to smile rather than wince
when I feel hurt or embarrassed.
Perhaps my examples spurred consciousness of some of
your own physical, mental or relational habits. With the
realization of how we are living in an automatic mode,
we should take heart and be encouraged with this truth:
Habits are learned, and what has been learned can be
either un-learned or reinforced through greater
consciousness! We cannot change or affirm, however, what
we don’t acknowledge first!
2. Know what you are ripe and ready for.
Life is not meant to be one long self-improvement
project... we are meant to enjoy our lives with
humility, integrity, and some semblance of balance. But
wholesome living requires ongoing growth, growth often
implying change. Surely there may be many aspects of our
lives at any one time in which we wouldn’t mind a little
renovation (if not complete overhauling) but I also
believe that “there is a time for every season, a time
for every purpose under Heaven”. The kinds of questions
we must continually ask ourselves are: What is it time
for now? What is ripening within me, the fruits of which
I should be preparing myself? What is ready to be born
in me and what is dying away? The answers to those
questions are not to be found in a book or in response
from a mate, a friend, a minister, a counselor or a life
coach, although input from trusted confidants can be
helpful. These are “soul-questions” that must be
entertained from the inside, where instinct and
intuition come on to the field and the rational mind
takes a seat on the bench.
Depending on the circumstances you might ask: Is it
time to assert myself and speak up, or it is time for
stillness and non-action, practicing the art of
patience? Am I ready to commit to my physical health and
well-being or is this the season for intellectual
stimulation and a leap into a new vocational arena? Am I
feeling the inclination to expand my social circle, or
is this the time for spiritual renewal, when retreating
from the world holds more appeal than entering new
social circles?
While changes such as these need not be mutually
exclusive, enduring change typically evolves more
slowly, paying more focused attention on one area of
your life and making accommodations in other areas to
support it. For example, for the person who is looking
for work, “readiness to become employed” is their season
and other areas of their lives should attune themselves
to that purpose. It is important for job seekers to
consider the ways in which their current habits are
helping or hindering their efforts. Are they getting
adequate sleep, physical exercise and nutrition for the
amount of physical and mental energy required in a job
search? Are their daily job search activities scheduled
around the time of day when they are at their best, or
are they putting them off until later in the day when
their energy is on the wane? Is their habit of “being
independent” overriding the necessity to reach out and
connect with other people for resources, support and
ideas?
3. Identify what you are hungry for and where your
intentions lie.
Every action begins with an intention, an inner need
or desire, a hunger for something. Before we can
relinquish or strengthen a habit, we need to understand
the payoff behind it. The actions we take and the
choices we make in the course of a day either move us in
the direction of who and what we want to be or, if even
in some small, seemingly unimportant way, steer us in a
different direction. Therefore, it is important that we
know where we want to go, where our intentions lie.
Since desire occurs before thought and action, it
makes an ideal place to catch ourselves before careening
into some line of thought or action that we will later
regret, leading us away from our intended destination.
When heading towards the mall on a Saturday night, we
might pause and ask: Is my intention to assuage my
boredom, my loneliness, or my need for yet another
“great find” on a sale rack which will end up in a bag
for Goodwill? If it is boredom or loneliness I wish to
appease, where else might I go to connect with the world
that does not require an unnecessary purchase and,
instead, sparks my creativity?
As our day unfolds, what if we were to pause in the
heart of action to ask ourselves, “What is my intention
right now?” Is my need for an extra hour of sleep
greater than my need to be on time for my appointment?
Is my need to feel comfortable right now greater than my
desire to grow in assertiveness? Which option is going
to make me feel better in the moment and which option is
going to contribute to a sense of well-being over time?
Which makes me feel good and which one makes me feel
good about myself? Which path is easier and which path
leads me to where I want to be going?
I am not suggesting that we need to be judgmental
about our responses to those questions – sometimes
immediate gratification is exactly what is in order!
What is important is that we are aware of what we are
hungry for in the moment so that we can appease the
right appetite, scratch the right itch. Whether we like
it or not, all the chocolate in the world is not going
to satisfy the desire for an intimate relationship – a
tenth hour of playing video games won’t make the message
from your mother go away! (Clearly, however, there are
times when nothing beats a dish of Haagen Dazs, and why
tamper with perfection?!?)
4. Shift your focus from “breaking bad habits” to
cultivating good ones!
There seems to be far more attention in our culture
to the idea of “breaking bad habits” than there is to
developing and maintaining good, wholesome or
life-affirming habits. What most of us can attest to,
however, is that trying to break a bad habit through
sheer willpower rarely works. What has proven to be far
more effective is replacing the unwanted behavior or
pattern with one that is positive. I think the human
spirit will more readily rally “for” something than
“against” something. Wouldn’t we rather work for peace
than protest against war, or move towards health and
well-being rather than escape illness and disease? As I
heard my minister say again and again, “Pain pushes
until vision pulls”. Inspiration is a far more appealing
motivation than desperation!
5. Know what you are committed to.
If as humans we were only led by carnal desires,
physical pleasures, social needs for fame, fortune and
power, and alleviating discomfort and pain, we would be
in even deeper doo-doo than we are. But by divine
birthright, we are called by forces greater and deeper
than our base needs and desires would reflect. Sometimes
we are led by powers of the spirit, influences of the
intellect, or by sheer forces of grace. When inspired by
our deepest values, aspiring to our highest ideals, or
called by the divine part of our nature, we wield the
weapon of a warrior that no hanky-panky, half-witted
habit holds a chance of standing up to – the commitment
to change!
At all times we are committed to something, whether
it is to our comfort and complacency or to our growth
and well-being. It is easy to identify what we are
committed to now – we need only to look at our lives and
the way we are living it. Some people who claim to be
committed to their families, on closer examination find
that they are actually married to their work. Some who
claim to be committed to the virtues of charity, love
and generosity, need not look far to see that they are
more committed to their need for money and material
worth. In an examination of the habits forming our
present realities, we see our true commitments spun in
the thick tangle of the truth. When we like what we see,
we can choose to reinforce and affirm those commitments.
When we don’t like what we see, we can draw the sword of
commitment and align ourselves with deeper values. With
the decision to change, (notice I did not say the “goal
of changing” but the decision to change) we commit to d
ifferent purposes than those which drove previous
actions and choices. When our commitment changes,
everything changes!
I have met multitudes of passionate people in my work
throughout the years, individuals whose eyes shine with
purposefulness! Unfortunately, I have met just as many
whose eyes barely shine at all. I do not believe that
the latter are people who are particularly unhappy; my
sense has been, rather, that they are individuals whose
commitment to the familiar may be stronger than their
commitment to living their full potential. Perhaps,
creatures of habit that we are, we are as full of
impotence as we are of potentiality, but the powerful
truth is that we get to choose which gear we operate
from!
What if we our commitment to learning and growing was
greater than our commitment to staying the same? What if
we shifted the context from which we make our daily
choices from reactionary to proactive, replacing a
general lack of consciousness with a constancy of
purpose? What if we inquired into the hungers of the
soul before leaping to satisfy the hungers of the mind
and body? What if our stance in relation to the world
moved from distance and defensiveness to one of
discourse and discovery? What if we refused to be
passive spectators of our lives and took on the roles of
designer, architect and voyager instead? It has been
said that everyone has within them a continent of
undiscovered character … what greater riches shall we
seek, my fellow explorers? What treasure could be more
deserving of the ache and yearning of our hearts? Is
there a holier grail?
With wishes for our expanded collective and
individual consciousness,
Denise
© Denise Bissonnette, August 2004 (If not used for
commercial purposes, this article may be reproduced, all
or in part, providing it is credited to "Denise
Bissonnette, Diversity World -
www.diversityworld.com." If included in a newsletter
or other publication, we would appreciate receiving a
copy.)
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