Since you were a kid, you’ve known that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Perhaps it’s news to you that four consecutive “rights” will feel wrong, uncomfortable, and yet you’ll end up moving in the right direction once again.
Huh?
Four right turns on any city block and you’ll be heading in the original direction once more. Yes, you go in a circle. Yes, it may seem like it’s taking longer to get where you’re going. Yes, it may seem like others are flying by you. And yet.
You’re back moving toward a destination that matters.
The same applies when you’ve set an intention toward healthy changes in your habits. Decluttering your habits of overindulging, avoiding, self-medicating, controlling others, or even cluttering your home and workspaces. You set an intention to change and then, inevitably, something blocks your way forward.
A heated argument leaves you angry, hurt, and craving—something, anything other than the healthy options.
A poorly performing initiative at work leaves you riddled with doubt and “forgetting” to turn back toward your career goals.
An obstacle or upset becomes a slip, which becomes a slide, which becomes a spiral.
You think about your past missteps, present situation, and future (negative) prospects FAR too much.
You wait for renewed willpower to magically descend on you from Mount Motivation. It doesn’t.
You blame others, the world, and yourself (again with the thinking).
What are you not doing? Turning right.
Ever missed your destination on a busy city street? You just know you need to go around the block. You don’t need to ponder it. No need for reviewing all your past trips around city blocks. No sense in wondering how future block-lapping might go. You just turn right. And then you do it again, and again, and again.
Because you kept the intention of heading in your desired direction to a destination that mattered bold and beautiful in your present moment experience. Here's where mindfulness becomes helpful: you are so aware of what is happening in a given moment—and you're doing so without labels, bias, distortion, and negative judgments—that you show up to action based on your original, healthy intention.
Turning right is a simple action of alignment with intention.
As someone who has "been around the block" many times, you've learned that you just turned right and accepted you’d need to do it four times to head back toward where you’re going.
Turning right is a disciplined action in the present moment.
It is discipline because you do the intended, healthy, higher-aiming habit action without thinking about it much, or even if you are thinking, the thoughts don’t matter. Again, here's where mindfulness practice is crucial. Mindfulness helps you learn to "see" thoughts as they occur without being "lost" in them, without "being" them. The feelings or “motivation” to act doesn’t matter either. Your mind and body could be screaming “no!” and yet you turn right.
Right because it’s what you intended to do from a place of clarity, growth, compassion, and presence.
Right because it resonates with a clear vision of the relationships, career, and vitality you need to create, connect, lead, and make a lasting mark.
Right because when you turn right with enough consistency you end up living with character.
Right because it just plain matters.
Soon, perhaps today, you will face an obstacle to a growth intention in your personal or professional life. Will you overthink, bemoan, blame, or honk your horn in various self or other destructive, reactive habitual ways?
Or will you just turn right (do your growth-change action)? Then do it a second time (do another action that supports the first). Then do a third action, then a fourth. Do these actions without waiting to “feel like it” or without needing to dream up great “reasons” for doing them.
Oops! You skipped a workout, binged two-thirds of a pizza, and just sat down to binge some Netflix. You are amid a bad habit trigger-fest. Take a slow, deep breath.
And turn right.
- Put on your sneakers
- Walk into the gym past all the six-packed, mirror-gazers
- Do your set of exercises despite inner whining and inner bargaining
- Sit dripping with sweat and set an alarm on your phone for the next workout session
Nike had it “right” years ago. Just do it. Turn right already. Do it four times and then pause.
How does it feel to just turn right?
Right, right? Right. Right on!
The Link LonkFebruary 25, 2022 at 04:00AM
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/compassionate-warriors/202202/habit-change-is-hard-keep-it-mindfully-simple
Habit Change Is Hard, Keep It Mindfully Simple - Psychology Today
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment