Habits and Change: How I look for new things and growth but can't seem to change myself
I almost missed my flight out of Saigon last night.
If you know me at all, you already know I've done this many times in my life. Being late—and/or being close and sweating—is one of the constant refrains in my life. And every time I notice this familiar melody, I am always like "this definitely needs to change.” But somehow over the years (I remember missing a flight to my job interview when I was 24, and writing a note to myself about never doing it again,) I could never quite get rid of this bad habit.
(The benefits of?) Trying New Things
I’ve been thinking about habits, and breaking out of routines. Like, how can I habitually break my habits?
Okay, bear with me. Please.
I consider myself to be pretty good at being open to trying out new things. Like, over at our Slow Media May group, we are talking about newness and getting out of routines this week, and I’m like, “ah, these are easy. I do it every day already!” I believe in disruption. There’s a lot of benefit to breaking routines and seeing things afresh from time to time, and making yourself doing things that’s uncomfortable is one of the quicker ways to growth. So I take trips for no reason, I try different cafes to work from, go to other people’s parties, ride buses out of curiosity, try new sports (very) occasionally.
But somehow, I noticed recently, I keep finding myself in some emotional and experiential territories there are annoyingly familiar, time and time again. I might be doing something new, but I’m ending up with the same range of experiences.
What do I mean? Well, when I decide to do something new, this is kind of how it goes, inside:
Ooh, this is new. I’ll try it! … yes, how interesting! … Dang, this is hard. well, I’m new at it, sure it’s hard. … Am I learning something new? Yes? Yay! … Hm. Is it still interesting? … Am I still learning? … I should do this more often. Yes. A new habit! … Great, another thing to stick in my todo lists … I wonder if buying this gear would help … No, no, I don’t need STUFF! … Wait, what time is it? Oh, no, I need to get back! … Do I need to try that again?
Am I really getting out of my routines, or am I going through the motion of trying something new?
Habits vs. Change (and growth) vs. Identity
I’ve agonized over this notion, too, over the years: How do I make and keep good habits, while getting rid of the bad ones, while still making space for trying new things from time to time?
There's a tension between doing new things and maintaining habits, good and bad. If breaking habits to do something new is so good, and I’m so good at doing it, how come I can’t change myself entirely, like, to someone who never misses his appointments?
Replacing bad habits with the good ones is how you change yourself. Sure. But do our habits define ourselves? Would we be the same if we didn’t X no longer? Do habits make us predictable, boring?
I don't have the answers. But I keep asking these questions, and I realize—there's this notion and ideal that we in this culture take for granted as fact:
Our ideal self is a collection of our good habits.
We control our behaviors (and thus the results of our bahaviors, because, if we behave, we should get the rewards, right? Santa?), and we become happy.
Are these facts? No. They are our beliefs. And sometimes, they are not very helpful. They don’t serve us, because, at least to me, GOOD HABITS MADE PERFECT is boring. It’s not healthy. It’s not sustainable.
What Mindfulness Means to Me
So, are we doomed to live in the never-ending loop of our bad habits, occasionally experiencing the “aha!” of new experiences, by trying out new things? Is it impossible to live near-perfect good habits and be happy ever-after?
Here’s a new thought that I’ve been coming to recently. What if the point wasn’t controlling WHAT we do or not, but controlling HOW we deal with the consequences? The key, I guess, and as always it seems to be the case, is to NOTICE. As I go through these experiences and reactions that are familiar AND new, I can choose to pay attention, or go into cruise control mode and tune out to something else in my head.
