Don't Make It A Habit.

This may be the most profound statement I’ve written.  It is a key tenet in Curing Seriousitis™ . 

I am challenged by the statement’s negative aspect, the ‘don’t’. How can I not? Many teachers’ state that affirmations, goals, and intentions need be framed in the positive because our conscious mind doesn’t hear the ‘not’. 

Are our minds so crazy that when I state I am not going to eat after 8pm, my mind default to eating after 8pm? Are we that incongruent and contradictory? 

Wise friends have cajoled me with; “That’s what you don’t want, what do you want?”

“I don’t want to make it a habit.”

“That’s what you don’t want. What do you want?”

“I want to consciously, deliberately, and by design, choose, my reality, my life.”

When and how do my positive intentions become a conscious habit? 

What is a habit? 

Is it a fall from grace into a rut doing the devils work; sleep walking, becoming robotic? 

Is habit letting our evil inner siblings loose? 

Is it doing the same thing and expecting different results? 

Is the habit of indulging in mechanical reactions, routine patterns and addictions that allow others to indoctrinate me?

Don’t make it a habit really means creating life how I want it. In the practice of physical exercise and dance ‘the don’t make it’ a habit‘ there is no should, an ought, or have to,’ but a decision to enjoy and appreciate, my intention.

How do I stop from making ‘it’ a habit? 

Using an exercise metaphor, my body will find the easiest way to do an exercise. It cheats. Doing crunches, if I don’t pay attention to form, instruction, and my intention, the legs take over and I cheat myself of the benefits of the exercise.

I have a habit of watching my fingers as I type. This was a tough paragraph to type without watching, I kept cheating and looking. I get disturbed if I make a mistake. I feel very uncomfortable ungluing my eyes from the keyboard. It’s a battle to not watch my fingers. My habits trapped me until I recall the gradient approach to learning. Then I practice and I gradually free my attention, stop looking  and stop judging myself.

A habit can free me to split my attention. Like multi-tasking and in aerobics I can keep the structure of the movement but add a new way of doing the arms for increased cardio or change the rhythm and create new more graceful movements. It’s a way of finding more moments in life, more time to be present. Finding the magic of the space behind a musical note, a beat, allows more freedom of expression, to exercise more fully.

Be aware of what’s a habit and what’s not. Use the feedback to support goals. Don’t make anything a habit unless it’s your intent. 

Potlatch and Cornucopia

The Northwest Indians lived in the land of abundance. The salmon seemed to leap into the pan, sans lemon, fileted upon a cedar plank, rich in good cholesterol, served with an abundance of berries sauces,   Black, Blue, Boysen, Goose , Marion,  Straw or Raspberry. Elk often came into the lodges and offered themselves up like the genetically engineered cows at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, to be feasted on. This was a time and a people who had such abundance that when they partied, they gave away all their material possessions. This was not a potluck, this was a conscious choice of giving all they had, the best and all the rest to all. It was called Potlatch.

These people so loved and appreciated each other they often had no words for you. It was always we, us, and ours. 

There was no word for yesterday or tomorrow.

No one spoke of another, unless that person was present, and when someone died, they were not spoken of again.

They were present time only, appreciative of each moment and giving everything to that now.

They told stories of adventures, of those miracles that happened on the edge of their way of being. They inspired and revered the moment.  

They appreciated the ease of how the cedar trees gave planks for shelter.

They appreciated the soft feel and fragrant smell of pine and cedar needles as floors and beds.

They honored gods of the clear rivers and were cleansed and freshened in the many waterfalls.

The things they labeled with names were words and phrases that sung with appreciation. 

We cannot venture back to that time with anything but our imagination. Most of our salmon are in restaurants or markets; the elk have stopped the custom of volunteering for dinner, but the Northwest Indians themes of appreciation are one of my tenets of Curing Seriousitis™.

Our times are rich in choices and often challenging to appreciate. Given a present moment, our imagination can free our attention of judgments, and become curious as to how, where, when, and why our attention wanders into judgments. 

With a new viewpoint, perhaps initiated from a point of origin or even a vanishing point, we can see and feel from a new place the appreciation of everything.

Nothing and everything is changing in the world. We only have control of our view point of how and why we are blessed with life. 

Thank you for this moment. Share and enjoy.