Exploring Habits

I’ve noticed that when people think about habits they are usually focusing on what they perceive as bad habits and looking to break them.

Good habits / Bad habits, either way they structure our lives.

Habits are activities that have connected to our autonomic nervous system and have quietly transformed what we do into routine. Habits are structural in the way that they impact our lives. And the beauty of that is that we don’t have to expend energy deciding over and over again. I don’t have to decide whether to have my first cup of coffee in the morning, or whether to give my daughter a hug and a quick kiss before she gets on the school bus, or whether to review and update my list of tasks for tomorrow at the end of my work day.

Recently I had the pleasure of hearing Gretchen Rubin speak about her new book on making and breaking habits.  One thing she said really stuck with me, “What we do everyday matters more than what we do once in a while.” I got a subtle and significant perspective shift when I went from thinking about habits to thinking about what we do everyday, and my practice design “elf” awakened.

So, if daily habits are the architecture that structure our lives then the practice of tracking and appreciating what we do on a daily basis for a week could be very illuminating. Tracking something puts your attention on it and attention is a form of currency. (This is what I call a Noticing Practice.)

Start a list of your daily habits. Add to it every day for a week. Then at the end of a week give yourself 15 or 20 minutes to reflect on your list.  A few key questions might then be:

What abilities am I maintaining and even building with my habits of doing?

What neural pathways am I maintaining and building with my habits of thinking?

What are the things that I’m doing every day that presence* what matters most to me?

Then pick a few new habits to invite into the daily-ness of life.

And if, during your noticing practice you trip upon a few habits that you want to break, Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies Framework is a great resource.

If you’d like support with venturing further into inviting new habits into your daily life, or breaking a few, you can contact me by clicking here.

*Note: I’m using presence as a verb here, meaning to be able to sense and bring into the present. See Otto Scharmer’s Presencing Institute

Your waning energy can be a marvelous invitation . . .

Are you heading into mid-life and noticing that your energy levels seem to be waning? Noticing that you can’t just reach into that deep reserve of physical energy that used to be so readily available? This is a reality that most of us fight against. I certainly did!

But what I've found is that this ebb in energy is actually an invitation to step into a radically different efficiency. Once the reality becomes inescapable and we finally begin to turn our efforts away from recapturing lost youth and towards the future, a new vitality comes online. Many of us injure ourselves repeatedly, or get sick, before we recognize and accept this invitation. We humans have a tendency to move into grace kicking and screaming.

What does accepting this invitation mean in practical terms? First, it means admitting that there has been a dip in your energy levels. Once you get real with yourself, you can start caring for your physical body differently: adjusting diet and exercise, focusing on the body's brilliant design, its virtuosity. Start relying less on brawn. Then it means softening those youthful ambitions enough to listen for what is important to you now.   It involves actively downshifting and finding engagement in a deeper, wider sense of meaning that then provides you with an unassailable updraft.It’s not easy, especially at first. It is essential to your well being. It is after all an invitation into one of life's gnarly, necessary and marvelous transformations.

Making the most of the updraft involves developing the ability to attune to your body, reckoning with a natural sense of loss, and recalibrating to the needs of your spirit. It may lead you to courageously planning and implementing graceful exits and well-considered entrances. This is the work of transformation. It is not magic, though the results can seem magical. It requires being realistic, developing new strategies and garnering significant support. Contact me, I'm not offering you any quick fixes here (No 3 Keys or 10 Secrets) but I can help you accept the invitation of this natural ebb in energy and, using some of the latest intel, move into grace.

Your waning energy is an invitation to soften into a new productivity, to activate a radiant eldership. Turn towards your future and join the party. You will be in good company.

You see, I want a lot.

Perhaps I want everything:

the darkness that comes with every infinite fall

and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing

and are raised to the rank of prince

by the slippery ease of their light judgments

But what you love to see are faces

that do work and feel thirst . . .

You have not grown old, and it is not too late

to dive into your increasing depths

where life calmly gives out its own secret.

Rainer Maria Rilke, From The Book of Hours