Goodbyes and Hellos

It's easy to start, harder to stop. Most people begin forming habits without thinking about it. What's a habit but a groove worn into your mind and body, conscious and unconscious? (Merriam-Webster says : a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance b : an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary, as in 'I got up early from force of habit'). I'm looking at habits while I think about resolutions.

A friend of mine told me yesterday that good lists of resolutions include decisions not to do certain things. Which reminded me of Johnny Cash's hand-written To-Do List recently purchased for $6,400 at a charity auction.

 

Now there's a list that includes things you can stop doing! I am going to include a few things I will say goodbye to as well.

Goals guide habits most fundamentally by providing the initial outcome-oriented impetus for response repetition. In this sense, habits often are a vestige of past goal pursuit. Habits become part of the problem when they are only vestiges of not-so-good goals, like "I think I'll be lazy today, sleep in and not exercise. Hmmm, that sleeping in felt good yesterday, and today is Saturday, why don't I just take weekends off?"

Habit has allowed you to tie your shoes without thinking, If you seem to forget after wearing slip-ons for half your life, you can recapture the ability to tie your shoe, by setting the goal of mindfully tying your shoes. Tying the shoe is a goal-directed behavior now, and no longer relies on the habit mechanism.

This implies to me that goals ought to be routinely adjusted to ensure the brain does not rely on habits for control of day-to-day activity.

So, with this motivation in mind, I will focus on developing a goal-directed approach, using higher goals and sub goals, and developing a higher level of mindfulness needed to act mindfully in pursuit of these goals. So today, I'm choosing Twenty-Eleven habits to which I will say goodbye.

TWENTY ELEVEN GOODBYES

• Sitting in the same chair,
  
• Walking to work the same way.
  
• Eating meals quickly.
  
• Eating left-handed.
  
• Overeating
  
• Evening sweet or salty snacks.
  

 

And some new activities for the coming year.

 

TWENTY TWELVE HELLOS

• Practice of meditation daily,
  
• Tracking mindful actions each day on calendar dedicated to that use.
  
• Mindfully performing daily exercises.
  
• Regularly learning new exercises.
  
• Initiating conversations.
  
• Smiling
  
• Kissing my wife (thank you Johnny Cash)
  

 

You can see it's a work in progress, but so am I.