Training the Will: 4

[ecosophia]

Let's talk some more about training the will.  

Over the last three weeks, we've covered some of the basics of will training. We've discussed the two basic tooks of the will, conscious action and conscious attention; we've discussed the two great barriers to the will, conflicts of will and habits of will; and we've explored three exercises -- one to start the process of learning conscious action, one to start the process of learning conscious attention, and one to survey the events of your day and notice when you made conscious choices of action and attention, and when you coasted along on the basis of habit.  

Now let's move deeper into the training. 

Habits can be your friends as well as your enemies. They make lousy masters, but good servants. Thus the paired arts of creating the habits you want and dismissing the habits you don't want are among the core skills of using the will. We're going to start work on the first half of the equation this week -- or, more precisely, we're going to start conscious work on the first half of the equation this week. If you've followed the exercises so far, you've actually been working hard at it for three weeks now. 

The habits I'm going to suggest that you create are, as you may have just guessed, the ones you've practiced so far -- more or less. What I'm proposing is that you choose an exercise in conscious action, like the one that involved touching your nose, and an exercise in conscious attention, like the one that involved noticing colors. Choose one of each, do them for a week, then choose different exercises and do those for a week, and so on.  Meanwhile, once each day, take a few minutes to look back over the 24 hours just past and review them in terms of whether you used your will consciously or simply cruised along on autopilot. (Don't pass judgment, and especially don't berate yourself -- just notice.)

The exercises you choose should be things you know you can do. We'll go after bigger challenges later; the goal for the time being is to give yourself the habit of success -- the most important of the habits you can develop. It's exactly the same logic as learning to lift weights by starting with a weight you know you can lift.  Every week, you'll be making your own choice about what you want to do that week, doing it, and succeeding in it. That's crucial.  A great many people have been taught the habit of failure, and so undercutting that habit and replacing it with the opposite habit is an essential step. 

And if you can't think of anything? Well, one of the advantages of doing this as a virtual group is that those who have plenty of suggestions can offer them. I'm going to ask everyone who feels inspired to do so, to suggest some exercises of the sort needed here simple, convenient, and not emotionally challenging.  The one thing I'll ask in addition is that anyone who contributes any such exercises should commit to doing one of them, and say which one. 

So there's your assignment for this week, and the weeks to come:  one exercise in conscious action, one exercise in conscious attention, and a few minutes of reflection and review, done every day.  That will build on the foundations we've already laid down, and prepare you for the more strenuous work ahead.  Next week, we'll start exploring how to get rid of habits you don't want, and the fun will really begin. 

Got it?  Good. We'll go further next week. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Conscious Action: Keep a box of dry fruits and chips next to each other in the same place I had my note. If I haven't had it before the same day, pick up a dry fruit and avoid having the chips.

Conscious Attention: Move around a section of the house each day and try to notice things that could be out of place. Only take note during the exercise and not act on it. Examples of these could be tape on the couch, fridge magnet on a chair and so on.

Do they seem simple and convenient?

- Nomad

[ecosophia]

Yes, those will do very nicely. The injunction to notice things out of place and not do anything about them is especially good, since it contradicts a common habit.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for emphasizing the importance of not berating oneself for being on autopilot. By the last three days it made me super angry to realize that I just want to keep snoozing on.

[ecosophia]

Remember that you've been taught to stay on autopilot. A huge amount of what goes on in schools or comes over the media is designed to keep you in that condition. Don't blame yourself for it!

[grandswamperman]

Here are a couple of rather simple ones I am going to practice this week:
-For conscious action, scratch the left side of your head six times.
-For conscious attention, spend a few moments looking around for as many moving objects as you can see.

I hope these are helpful to anyone else following along with this training.

[ecosophia]

Good basic examples. Thank you.

[youngelephant]

Ideas for conscious action: one set of any exercise each day, 5 mins stretching, 10-20 mins meditating, one set of a breathing exercise, a cold shower, drink a certain amount of water each day, reread one Ecosophia post each day, read 10 mins of anything each day

Ideas for conscious attention: pay attention to one sensation of the body while lying down for a few minutes (choose a different one each day), pick a subject each day and read something on it or even just think about it for a few mins.

As I wrote this I realized that a conscious action can only be made after consciously paying attention to your options and a conscious action creates more options to pay attention to, often a more complex/progressed version of the original option. Does that sound right?


I will do one set of pushups each day, and noticing one type of sensation in the body for a few minutes while lying down.

[ecosophia]

Those are good, but a little more robust than I had in mind -- still, anyone who's up for those can certainly do worse. As for the relation between conscious action and conscious attention, good! Yes, and we'll be getting into that in more detail as we proceed.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,

Last weeks exercise brought up some questions. I hope you can clarify.

1) Does avoidance of negative consequences (vs. motivation for desired behavior) count as something that strengthens the will?

2) How does the use of rewards factor in wrt training the will?

I realize these options aren't always appropriate but just wondering if they have some usefulness.

Thanks for this forum and this series of posts.

[ecosophia]

Neither of those are useful, because they keep treating the self as an automaton -- do this, and (a) you won't have that bad thing happen to you or (b) you get this goodie. That's the wrong approach. The will is free and powerful when you do things just because you choose to do them, without any other incentive at all.

[northeastsouthwest]

Action: Make my bed every day (I never make my bed, feels like a waste of time)

Attention: Listen to one short piece of classical music a day (I never listen to music)

Review: I'm working through LRM, so I already do this, but I will focus more on noting when I was conscious and when I was on auto-pilot.

Thank you for these challenges.

[ecosophia]

Good -- but pay attention to the bed-making. You may find unexpected emotional reactions surfacing. (A lot of people these days have odd reactions around chores -- I think it has to do with childhood issues.)

[(Anonymous)]

Conscious action: When I make tea, as the kettle boils lie on my back with my arms out as if to an audience in the ceiling and sing the first verse of a song I've chosen. Maybe just the first tea of the day...

Conscious awareness: cars don't interest me and I don't notice their characteristics. Once a day note the make, model, condition and licence plate of a neighbour's car.

I find exercise 3 very difficult; it has highlighted for me my poor memory of what transpires each day. I've always been aware that I float through too many days in low awareness, but it's painful to be confronted with it. I think I can perceive a modest feedback loop developing where I'm a tiny bit more aware with repetition of the journaling, but it's hard going.

Thanks for this series; I think it is really going to help me.

Morfran.

[ecosophia]

Those will do very nicely. As for the review, yes, it's hard! Simply making a habit of remembering each day's events will give you plenty of exercise for the will.

Review

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry JMG, to be super clear - the review is a general review of will behaviour for the last 24 hours as in the previous week? Not focused to a review of the chosen exercises only, right?

Cheers,
Graeme

Re: Review

[ecosophia]

That's correct. Glance over the events of the entire day, seeing where you were acting deliberately and where you were just phoning it in.

[brendhelm]

Action: Shuffle a deck of cards and draw seven cards. The shuffling doesn't have to be casino-quality, it just has to be shuffled.

Attention: Think about the seven cards you just drew (I will post the examples from the drawing I did today), and answer the following questions:
- What was the highest card? (Red joker, technically.)
- The lowest card? (Five of spades.)
- How many red cards were there? (Four.)
- Black cards? (Three.)
- Face cards? (4, counting the joker.)
- What's the best poker hand you can make with them? (Three queens, treating the joker as wild.)
- The second-best? (Two pair, king and queen, again treating the joker as wild.)
- The worst? (Queen high.)

[ecosophia]

That sounds like good basic training if you want to play poker professionally -- but yes, it'll also fill the requirements of the exercise nicely.

Exercises

[2sw33t]

Conscious action: shuffle and select a rune card in the morning when I first sit down in my chair

Conscious attention: Identify the objects on my desk when I first see the note on my desk calendar (I move things on and off my desk all the time)

Re: Exercises

[ecosophia]

Those will do nicely.

My choices

[(Anonymous)]

Ok this is weird - I know this should be easy (because the choices are arbitrary), but I struggled a bit with choosing.

Anyhow, this is what I came up with:

Action - take a short bicycle ride each morning
Attention - notice what the people I see are wearing (during the short trip)

I normally don't notice what people wear at all, unless perhaps it's something like a gorilla suit or a pirate costume.

Cheers,
Graeme

Re: My choices

[ecosophia]

That works.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there a concern with doing something which involves both action and awareness? Such as walking around the block and paying attention to birds?

[ecosophia]

You can do that from time to time -- just don't combine them every time.

a method I've been trying

[(Anonymous)]

In order to save money and open up time to do other things, we decided to not drink alcohol during the week.
This is something we have done before and even cut it out altogether.
Wine over dinner is when we cook, sit and talk - almost a ritual in itself.

Anyway, something we've noticed is that when one decides to do something like that, it is surprising how the idea of opening a bottle of wine can pop into mind.

Previously one technique I used was to set up a substitute action - not suppressing the desire to drink, but that the distraction technique (like saying 'do this first and then see') can work well. by the time you've changed focus through the distraction action, the desire to raise a glass has passed.

This time I am doing something different.
If the idea of having some wine comes into mind - as soon as I notice that I ask 'where in 'me' did this idea come from?'
And continue with
Is there an emotion, is there a time, is there a circumstance etc
Is this the personality or the individuality or my gut or what?
Only at early stages of 'search' process.

I guess this might be a combination of thought/attention and action - if I can catch the thought through attention, the action of searching for the origin of the idea quickly causes it to vanish.

Haven't done it enough to discover any origins, but asking the questions is sending stuff scooting for cover at the moment and getting good results so far.
As for noticing and then starting a search for the origin of an idea - the way the idea/desire vanishes when I do that really has me wondering where it originates! If I was feeling paranoid, I could almost think it doesn't want to be found! ;)

Have also tried it with other things - I walk past a plant that needs watering, I note it needs watering and think "I'll do that later". If I can catch that thought, the action is 'do it now'.
Sometimes it works sometimes not, but practice does seem to help.

[earthworm]

Re: a method I've been trying

[ecosophia]

I see your crystal ball is in good working order; we'll be getting to things like that a little further on.

[(Anonymous)]

Usually I like to think of myself as a creative person but these latest exercises are proving difficult. For some reason all my ideas have some sort of benefit baked into them and I am trying to figure out something nonsensical.

Closest I got so far:

Whenever I feel frustrated think about a ridiculous creature like a cross between Yog-Sothoth and Dumbo, wearing cutie makeup and surrounded by bright candy and pink sparkles.

Sing "Thats All Right" when I take a shower because I never sing in the shower.

[ecosophia]

Okay, the second is fine, but the first -- while you can certainly do it also -- isn't quite what I asked for. You need something that you do for no other reason than that you choose to do it -- not something you do to distract yourself from a feeling of frustration.

The Letter H and the Numeral 8

[sothismedias]

HEre is what I am going to do:

Attention: Notice when I see the number 8, and the letter H as I go about my daily life. (The times I am not going to worry about it are when I am writing or actively reading a book.)

Action: 10 pull ups on the pull up bar and ten dumb bell (Arnold Press) presses a day. I can do more presses with the weights I've got (30 to 40, with breaks, no problem), but I'm setting the bar low here to aim for doing it every day, instead of sporadically.

Then of course, noting when I'm coasting and when I'm driving and noting it in my journal.

Other's who are working on strengthening the Will: Feel free to borrow or adapt! It's great to be working on this with all of you who are doing it, whether you are commenting or not!

Justin Patrick Moore

Re: The Letter H and the Numeral 8

[ecosophia]

Those will do very nicely.

teaching people to fail

[(Anonymous)]

"A great many people have been taught the habit of failure..."

This from a while back:
The Gospel of Consumption
It was this latter concern that led Charles Kettering, director of General Motors Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” He wasn’t suggesting that manufacturers produce shoddy products. Along with many of his corporate cohorts, he was defining a strategic shift for American industry — from fulfilling basic human needs to creating new ones.
https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-gospel-of-consumption/

It might be argued that Edward Bernays and his legacy minions are teaching people to fail.
By engineering 'desire' the will of the marketers is designed to override any sense of personal choice or will in 'the consumer'.

But I'm guessing you mean more than that - might you expand on people being taught the habit of failure? I can see many areas in life where this could be important!

Thanks

[earthworm]

Re: teaching people to fail

[ecosophia]

Excellent! The "gospel of consumption" is in fact an important part of teaching people to fail -- the gimmick settled on by marketers is to try to convince people that by buying products, they will get things that the product won't provide. We'll discuss this, and learned failure, in much more detail as we proceed.

[kylec]

Conscious action: there is an old globe beside my desk. I will rotate it exactly once, the first time I notice it each day, and never thereafter. If I am away from home all day for some reason, I will rotate myself exactly one.

Conscious attention: notice what objects have arrived in their places most recently. This could be due to familiariy with a place and a memory of the usual order, or in new places, determined by basic clues like superposition, cleanliness, a fragile thing yet undisturbed, freshness, etc.

I wanted something I could do even if away from home. I'm relying on memory to do it. The first time it occurs to me each day, I do it.

[ecosophia]

Nice. Those will certainly do.

[(Anonymous)]

If there's something fairly simple you want to start doing, could you make doing that into one of the habits? For example, I've read a lot about benefits which supposedly unfold from cold showers, and am interested in trying it at some point; would trying it for a week work for the will training exercise, or does the fact I'm interested in it for other reasons complicate it, for the purposes of this exercise?

[ecosophia]

For the exercise, you should choose things that have no positive or negative emotional charge at all -- you don't want to do them, you don't want not to do them, you couldn't care less about doing them, but you choose to do them for the sake of the exercise. If you take up cold showers, that's great, but do it alongside the exercises, not in place of one of them.

[(Anonymous)]

Conscious action: Select an object. Move said object back and forth between two selected areas. For example, choose a certain book, and move it to another shelf or onto a table. The next day, move it back. Or a rock in your garden, move it back and forth to a different spot every day. I'm using a small nick-nack and plan to move it between the kitchen table and the living room end table.

Conscious attention: Listen to a different style of music every day, for 15 minutes. I usually listen to rock/pop/country, so I plan on seeking out styles I rarely or have never listened to. What I can't find on the radio I probably can search for online.

Joy Marie

[ecosophia]

Those will also do very well.

here's mine

[syfen]

Conscious action
On a piece of paper draw a circle, at the head of the paper, large enough to seat a coin. Set the paper on your bed stand and place a coin in the circle.

Ever night before you go to bed flip the coin three times and record the results, but only the results of the majority or minority result from your first day. Eg. Day 1 you got heads, twice and tails once. Choose either and record only that result for the next week.

Conscious attention
Every hour or so fix your attention onto your right index finger, and don't move it.

Re: here's mine

[ecosophia]

By Frith, that'll do!

[ganeshling]

Action: 5 daily attempts to do a handstand away from a wall. I always wanted to learn doing them but it was only for the fun of it so it was never important enough to try. Now I have my chance!

Attention: Deciding on a particular herb and spotting it for 5 or so minutes when outside - either in a backyard or on a walk.

[ecosophia]

Uh uh... For this exercise, you should choose something that doesn't matter to you in the least, something so small, pointless, and absurd that the only benefit you get out of it is the will training. By all means learn how to do a handstand, but do that along with the exercises, not instead of one of them.

[(Anonymous)]

For the conscious action, I thought first that I would avoid, while working on the computer, to resist the first 3 impulses to check the news, but then again, that’s a bad habit so I should hold off. So instead I will take 3 deep, full breaths when I first see a sign I stick on the wall.

I will borrow the injunction to notice out of place things from the first commenter (thanks!) for the conscious awareness exercise.

[ecosophia]

Good. Choosing useful habits is something we'll do later on, once the habit of success is well established and we've explored the obstacles.

[(Anonymous)]

Conscious action: jump once
Conscious atention: notice every time people pronounce an "s" sound. (If you ever go to an ENT doctor to get your ears cleaned, this will be impossible to ignore for the next 24 hours, and also weirdly pleasant)

JP

[ecosophia]

The latter makes me think of the sserpent folk in the Cthulhu mythoss, who alwayss put a little extra emphassiss on every ssingle ss ssound... ;-)

The Ones I Plan to Do

[(Anonymous)]

Conscious Attention: do a five-senses check. That is, take a moment to pay attention to what each of the classical senses is observing right now (focusing on one sense at a time).

Conscious Action: move an object on my desk from one end to the other. If it's to tidy something up, though, that doesn't count.

Re: The Ones I Plan to Do

[ecosophia]

Good! That'll do nicely.

[(Anonymous)]

Conscious action: every day this week I will touch every doorknob in my house.

Conscious attention: every day this week I will notice the colour of the sky, and put it into words.

Remembering the events of the day is hardest. My working day passes in a whirlwind of interruptions. At any given time most of our team can’t remember what we were doing before getting side-tracked, we all joke about it. I basically have to just flow with it to function there. I probably only remember maybe a quarter of my interactions on a given day. It’s intense, and I really struggle with unwinding from it. Perhaps this training will help.

-Korellyn

[ecosophia]

That's fine -- do what you can. You'll find over time that your ability to recall your day will improve.