Training the Will: 6

[ecosophia]

Let's talk some more about training the will. 

(Yes, I know it's a day late. Yesterday was so stressful for so many people I figured it was better to move to Mercury's day and shift focus a little!)

In the earlier posts in this sequence we've covered the basics pretty thoroughly. You have some idea what the will is, how it functions or doesn't function in your life at present, and how to develop it by building the habits of conscious action and conscious attention.  The practices already given -- a new exercise each week involving each of those two habits -- are the mainstay of the work before you.  As you get used to them, you can make each of them a little more complex, and begin to probe at the edges of changes that actually matter. Don't hurry those, though -- it's easier to build the habit of success when you have no emotional commitment to what you're doing. 

With that same principle in mind, I'd like to ask each of you to choose a habit of yours that doesn't matter to you at all. It can be anything that doesn't matter:  the specific order in which you do things when you first get up in the morning, or any other routine habit in which you have no emotional investment. 

The exercise I have in mind with that habit is threefold. The first is to think about when, how, and why you picked up the habit, what benefits you get from it and what drawbacks it has. Become conscious of the habit in all its details.  Reflect on it, and relate it to anything else that it seems to connect to. That's the first part.

The second part, of course, is to change the habit.  Start doing whatever it is in a different way. If you need to put up a little note to remind you, do that. If you need some other device to jolt you out of your habitual state, use it. If you catch yourself doing things the old way, stop, and do it all over again from the beginning. Replace the old habit with a new one. 

The third part is to notice how you react to the change. Don't judge yourself, or belabor yourself, or for that matter praise yourself on how well you handle the change. Just notice the reaction.

The ability to replace one habit with another at will is a crucial skill in life, and it gives you a power over yourself and your circumstances that too many people never attain. Spend a week at this exercise and see what it teaches you.  

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

Comments

Emotions and motivation

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the post and the series JMG, so far, so good.

Last week the habit I decided to modify was to stop reading my phone in bed, and to read a book instead. Although, in fact I didn't use the substitute because it seemed easier to just not use my phone in bed. Success, seemed pretty easy.

That, in combination with the experience of choosing wilful activities, got me thinking about how my will interacts with my unconscious parts.

Choosing what to do with the exercises so far was agonising, actually doing it was dead easy.

Here's what I think is going on:
- my will is actually quite strong, but used to not listening to my emotions or other aspects of my unconscious
- hence, my emotional self uses an indirect strategy to delay decisions it thinks it won't like. What you were suggesting we do last week (substitution) also seems to be a trick my unconscious uses on my conscious will ("here, do this instead, for now")

The result is I experience conflict of will as indecisiveness and procrastination. Underpinned, perhaps, by a communication breakdown with my emotions (which I fear has been a long term problem).

I think this is why I asked what we should will, a few weeks ago - I don't know what to will, because I don't know what I want.

Does this seem possible / likely? Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Graeme

Re: Emotions and motivation

[ecosophia]

That seems extremely plausible -- and now that you know it, you can begin working with it. As always, start with things that don't matter to you, so you don't have to deal with the emotional dimension any sooner than you have to. As for not knowing what you want, good -- until you realize that you don't know something, you can't learn it. Live with the question, think about it, let it challenge you in spare moments, don't try to force an answer -- you'll realize in due time that you do actually know what you want, you just never got around to noticing it.

Re: Emotions and motivation

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks.

I'm also finding this will training and meditation practice are mutually helpful.

Graeme

Re: Emotions and motivation

[ecosophia]

That's very common, because meditation practice trains the will, and training the will makes for better meditations!

[temporaryreality]

Last week I had one success and one un-success. The repeating of "I sleep peacefully" when wakened in the night staved off disruptive thoughts and allowed me to fall back to sleep. Yay!

The "pray instead of get online before bedtime" was overcome by e-word (the one that's not to be mentioned until you say "when") nervousness.

I'm having a hard time coming up with a habit I'm not attached to - I've been trying to streamline my days with intentional habits to make accomplishing things go more smoothly (with the exception of the "get online to try to take the temperature of our ailing society one more time before bed" habit, obviously). This seems to imply that I'm attached to my habit-making in general. I'll keep mulling it over. There must be something I'm not seeing in my day-to-day actions.

[ecosophia]

The occasional un-success is inevitable in this sort of work -- that's why it's important to focus on little things at first. As for the habit-making, you may have to settle for something you're only very mildly attached to...

[temporaryreality]

Got one! I tend to drink ~2 cups of hot water at a particular point in the morning "schedule" I'm going to move its place in the lineup. The action itself is a habit I want to keep, its habitual scheduling can be explored and tweaked with without emotional attachment.

[ecosophia]

Excellent. That's exactly the sort of thing I have in mind.

[(Anonymous)]

This is very similar to Charles Duhigg’s conclusions in The Power Of Habit.

—Lady Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

That doesn't surprise me at all. We're dealing with the same raw material, after all!

[(Anonymous)]

May I suggest that everyone interested in this topic read Charles Duhigg’s The Power Of Habit? You’ll enjoy it anyway. You learn all kinds of nifty stuff.

—Lady Cutekitten

It's Everywhere

[weilong]

Over the last few weeks, I've been doing things just to get into the habit of doing what I've decided to do. Then I noticed something strange at work. The word had gone out that everybody should wear something purple on a particular day, for some reason. It occurred to me that that little exercise in the company was very similar to the exercises we have all been doing, only it was directed at other people (from management to employees). There are a lot of little things like that, which may serve to reinforce the habit of following orders. Schooling, of course, is almost entirely about that.

Re: It's Everywhere

[ecosophia]

Of course. The difference is that in the set of exercises I'm offering, you make your own choices instead of letting someone else make them for you.

[(Anonymous)]

...choose a habit of yours that doesn't matter to you at all. It can be anything that doesn't matter...in which you have no emotional investment.

So this isn't the time to tackle overeating by taking on a diet!

I've noticed that I always take off and put on my socks and shoes starting with my right foot. I have no idea why; I just know that the few times I happened to start with the left foot, everything felt weird. So this week I will start with the left foot, no matter how strange it seems.

One thing I've noticed about this will training: I didn't realize how much of my day I sleepwalk through. No wonder I don't always accomplish everything I plan on doing, and need to add it to the next days list, and the next, and...etc. I need some more focus in my life.

Joy Marie

[ecosophia]

Changing the order in which you put on your shoes is a great example. Dieting? Oog. Down the road a bit I'll talk specifically about that, as an example of the ways that entire industries exist to encourage you to do things that are guaranteed to fail. More on this later!

[(Anonymous)]

Funny you should mention this because a little before you stared the will exercises I decided to stop Mindless eating when I am angry or stressed out and as a result dropped a pants size. All the other “professional” diet advice never worked for more than a few months at a time and was a constant struggle. This version is easy and just requires observation of emotional states when I am near the pantry or driving past the fast food restaurant

Maybe not dieting

[(Anonymous)]

I will eventually want to use this techniques to tackle my own overweight. For the time being, given that I need to train the habit of success first, I've settled for noticing.

Notice at what times I take my meals. Notice the flavor of each piece of food. Notice what triggers my decision to take a snack. Notice what is my "goto food" when I decide it's time to eat but there's no meal fixed yet. No judgment, just noticing.

Eventually I will try to challenge my current habits towards food, and to develop healthier habits. But for the time begin, I am just trying to pay attention to what I eat.

CRPatino

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to be particularly careful to pick an easy, meaningless habit this week, because I don't think I'm up to adding another doozy like the one I picked last week!

Given the complex of spiraling injuries and imbalances I've been enjoying for the past dozen years, changing up any one of the ever-changing stretches, strengthening exercises, reflex point rubbings, etc. that I habitually use to approximate balance seemed like a run-of-the-mill practice. My body had already pointed me to the deep aspect of my lumbar mutifidus needing strengthening. Easy enough to give up a redundant peck minor exercise by replacing it with a multifidus exercise, and chock it up to an easy success, right? Oh my, no, not at all!

I have never before had my body go into twitching, trembling, breath gasping, shaking with rhythmic contractions just from trying to hold a strengthening pose for ten seconds. As soon as I come out of it, everything's normal. As soon as I go back into it, the grand mal seizure imitation resumes. Naturally, I asked my body what on earth was going on, and zeroed in on this precise muscle being the one I somehow managed to permanently turn off at age twelve when my older brother started strangling me.

Yes, one can make some pretty life-altering choices while in the throes of death, but I had never contemplated turning muscles on or off being among them. Live and learn. Forty years of postural imbalances from desperately trying to stay alive at age twelve probably seemed like a pretty good bargain when I chose it. Not so much now, though. I wonder if I could have been a better dancer and athlete had I been able to avail myself of all my muscles through the years? Or maybe I would have become an economist instead... ok, so, maybe forty years' imbalance doesn't sound like that bad of a deal anymore.

I'm absolutely tickled that I've stumbled upon this fundamental imbalance, and there's no way in h- that I'm giving up this exercise until that muscle returns to full function in stabilizing my spine. But, yikes, the baggage it's carrying! This past week I had eustachian tube blockage, wracking thoracic pain, ringing ears, calvicular instability, and vivid dreams that caused me to sob and blubber while writing them in my dream journal. Since I don't imagine this particular roller-coaster ride has delivered all its thrills yet, I think for this week I will just change where I leave my tooth brush. I'll even put a note on the mirror to make sure it's easy enough!

- Christophe

[ecosophia]

Under the circumstances, yes, the toothbrush is probably a good choice! Muscles store up emotional memories very easily, and especially do that with traumatic emotions, so that doesn't surprise me -- still, that's got to be very intense to go through.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi . I popped over from the main blog, I'm a long-time reader, occasional commenter (M, due to a google glitch long ago). This Will series is very appealing and I want to hop in. Can I play a bit of catch-up by doing a few of the exercises concurrently?

[ecosophia]

I don't recommend it -- it's best to take things a step at a time as written. You can simply pick up at the beginning and follow along a few weeks behind -- you'll be well ahead of the people who will be getting all this in book form!

[industrialchemy]

I just want to make sure I'm clear on the exercises for this week.

1. Choose a new action and attention exercise each week.

2. Continue with the same habit replacement exercise as last week?

3. Reorder the steps of a different habit for the new exercise this week.

[ecosophia]

1 and 3. 2 is optional.

[youngelephant]

So I did well with this series until this last week. I wasn't able to replace my occasional drink of alcohol habit with tea. I did 23 hour fasts each day and I couldn't shake rewarding myself with a drink. I also stopped journaling :(. I need to do it right before dinner or otherwise I don't get to it. I always tell myself I'll do it after this next thing but then end up falling asleep. I can manage when I do it before dinner.

For this week, I will change the order I take my vitamins and focus on journaling.

[ecosophia]

Okay, good. You've learned an important lesson, which is that changing a habit is a lot more difficult when there are emotions involved!

[youngelephant]

Oh and for action exercise I will hum "A hunting we will go" one time. For attention, I will focus on one body part for 1 minute.

[tunesmyth]

Last week’s replacement exercise ended in abysmal failure for me. (I wrote about attempting to replace scratching with pressing around the itchy area.)

It seems that the majority of people who have reported back so far likewise weren’t successful— though the sample size of respondents at the time I write this (22 comments passed through so far) is pretty small.

(1) I’m interested in hearing a bit more from everyone about how the habit replacement exercise went for the last week. I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who were successful. Perhaps there is a pattern to be gleaned there.

(2) JMG, do you recommend trying again with last week’s exercise again, perhaps choosing a different habit to replace (one which seems easier), rather than moving on to this week’s new exercise? Though I feel like I can do this week’s exercise with ease. Perhaps in that case I might attempt both? (I always ride my bike to work with my bag slung on the same side. I’m going to change sides.)

P.S.

This week’s action exercise: a forward stretch to touch my toes for one minute.

This week’s attention exercise: breathe in for one minute, focusing on smells, and try to identify, well, anything at all olfactory.

[ecosophia]

No, set aside the habit replacement exercise for now, unless you find it useful. It was partly a test I ran to see how much strength of will my readers had access to at this stage, and partly an opportunity to make a point already discussed with more force: changing a habit that has emotional force behind it is much, much harder than changing a habit that doesn't!

[tunesmyth]

Understood, interesting.

I may have been overconfident re: this week’s new exercise— already missed my first chance to do it right, completely blanking out for the crucial moment when habit takes over and putting the bag on the usual way! I’ll have to stay more on my guard...

So far, so good...

[zarvoc]

Hello JMG! I've been following along with this series since the beginning. For this exercise I decided to change the order in which I prepare my coffee each morning. Usually, I pour the cup, then add milk, then sugar. Instead I decided to add the sugar, then the coffee, then the milk. My brain finds it quite strange, but the end result is just as tasty. "Why are you doing this?" part of myself says to another part of myself. It's bringing the morning ritual into conscious awareness, as if to say, "THIS is the morning ritual."

Re: So far, so good...

[ecosophia]

Excellent. That's a great example.