Thoughts In Time

I guess I'm on a role with this whole theme of changing habits and keeping New Year resolutions because I find myself once again writing about them.   Tonight it’s time to recognize a baby step, a little itty bitty “win”.  Two weeks ago I took the time to set some personal and business financial goals for the year – something I’ve never, ever done in my life.  It felt good to have my goals, and the steps I needed to take to realize them, written down and taped to my computer monitor.  But just this past week I’d already set my sights on buying a horse – which I can’t afford to do, but had convinced myself that I could, and in one brief instant completely forgot about my goals.  For three days I agonized over how I could make it happen, what steps I could take to generate the extra income, and what I could sell to have cash in hand ASAP.  When I say that I agonized over it, I truly did.  It has been a stressful three days. 

 This morning I talked with Zen about my thoughts, my desires, my silly plans, and thankfully he was the voice of reason that brought me back.  He knows how badly I want this and how hard I’ve been working to make it happen, but he also knows that I’ve set goals for myself and that to buy a horse means completely throwing those goals out the window.  He has a way of speaking to my soul.  A way of making me listen even when I don’t want to.  A way of helping me relax and think straight.  I’m not certain why he can do all this….nobody in my life has been able to….but he can.  I walked away from our short conversation knowing that my goals for 2008 don’t include buying a horse, and I was really ok with that once I reminded myself of it.  And in that instant all of the stress and agony that had attached themselves to me over the last three days just melted away.  I realized that it felt good to be relaxed, to know what I wanted and needed to do, and to know that my goals were achievable, valuable, and would provide me with the ability to buy a horse NEXT year.  The relief I felt was so overwhelming that I decided to remind myself every morning from here on out that what I want is inner peace, not stress.  If I can keep that in mind and plan my days and activities accordingly I should achieve this year’s goals.

My New Morning Mantra:

What do I want?  Inner peace. 

How will I achieve that right now?  By staying focused on my goals and the steps that I’ve outlined to achieve them. 

What will this give me?  A complete sense of control over my situation, immense satisfaction, and the ability to move on with something new once I succeed. 

Will this provide me with the inner peace that I’m seeking?  YES!

Did you know that on average, it takes a person 6 years of making the same New Year’s Resolution to actually succeed in keeping it?  If you’ve ever failed in your resolutions you’re obviously not alone, and let me assure you that there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with you – you simply don’t understand what you’re up against when you decide to change a habitual behavior.

All creatures, including humans, are very good at forming and using habitual patterns of behavior, and habits are formed for a reason – survival.  For example:

• When you’re hungry, you check the refrigerator (you know by habit that you’ll find food there). 
• When you’re bored you call your closest friend (you know by habit that she’ll go out with you on a moments notice). 
• When you need money you call mom (you know by habit that she’ll come to your rescue).
• When you want to pick up date in a local bar you use the same tactics (you know by habit which ones work).
• When you’re getting the jitters because you haven’t had a cigarette in an hour, you drop everything for a smoke break (you know by habit that this will take the edge off).

 
Obviously not all of these activities seem like they fall into the “survival” category, but they do.  If you had to go through the process of brainstorming resolutions, analyzing the potential for success, choosing a plan of action, and then testing through trial and error whether it would work EVERY time you were hungry, bored, needed money, wanted a date, or were “jonesing” how much do you think you’d accomplish each day?

 Habits save us from having to repetitively go through this process; they save us time, energy, and provide reliable, consistent results. The problem is that the results may not always be desirable; perpetuating a smoking, overeating, or compulsive spending habit may not be exactly the outcome you’re looking for, yet your habits do a very good job of accomplishing just that.

There is a reason why attempting to stick to your New Year’s Resolutions can be so difficult; when you try to replace ingrained, habitual patterns of behavior, you’re working against your brain’s programming.  Quite literally you have to retrain your brain to realize that the old habit is no longer serving a beneficial purpose – but your brain isn’t willing to do this without a struggle; its job is to protect and rely on the habits that it has learned.  They are so ingrained in fact that you don’t even think about what you’re doing – you just DO it.  Once you decide you’d like to change that process it requires an immense amount of awareness and resolve – first to catch yourself BEFORE you act, and then to remind yourself why you want to respond in a different manner.  This process can be uncomfortable, difficult, and exhausting. 

Don’t give up though – change IS possible.  Just remember that you’ll need support, a plan for helping yourself when the going gets tough, a reward for each baby step, and the willingness to work through it even when you think you can’t.

I wonder why life seems so difficult sometimes.  I wonder why I make it that way.

When I take the time to stop, breath, and center I recognize that the stress and struggle is a result of my own tendency to over think things, to worry so much about making the wrong choices that I make no choice at all, to want to control the outcome of things so badly that I fail to recognize that I’m beating my head against a brick wall.  How is it that some people are so good at simply being in the moment, satisfied to let things be the way they are, filled with unfailing confidence that all will be right in the end.

When I was in my early twenties my father once said that I didn’t know how to take the easy route – I always found the most complicated, most difficult way of doing things and then succeed in finding ways to pile on even more difficulties.  He was right.  It only dawned on me tonight that this pattern has always provided me both with an excuse for why I have not been successful and an “out” when I felt like I couldn’t see things through to the end. I also realized tonight that it has undermined my happiness, my financial security, and my sense of wellbeing.

To succeed, we must do things that we have never done before.  I’m not exactly certain what this means for me, but I do recognize the truth in it.  I also know that we are creatures of habit and to change ones pattern of behavior takes Herculean effort and unfailing resolve.  To succeed with my business, to succeed financially, to achieve the goals I have set out for myself is going to require more than just hard work – it will require a whole new mindset.

Once again I find myself traveling down the hardest road that I can find.