Jennifer Louden is known as “The Comfort Queen” and featured on many globally recognised TV shows, including Oprah, with over 800,000 copies of her first book sold internationally. She is the world's leading authority on carving out the time and desire to look after your own well being and hence achieve more with less stress despite having a very busy life.
It’s 9 a.m. I’m back from dropping off my daughter at school, and it’s time to work on My Novel, the one that I’ve talked about writing for years and have actually been working on for four. I’m so committed to writing this opus, I’ve downscaled my life, shrunk my coaching practice, and stopped saying yes to many outside commitments.
But by 9:30, I’ve already checked my e-mail four times, becoming more and more distracted and less and less engaged with my characters and my story in the process. Once again, I’ve fallen into the clutches of that bugaboo of human endeavor: bad, or what I prefer to call less-than-optimal, habits, those patterns of repetitive behavior that divert us from doing something truly satisfying, that don’t support the life we wish to create or the person we want to become.
It’s a universal conundrum—why we choose to repeat behaviors that aren’t in our best interest. Eating the tenth cookie—again; passing on exercise—again; surfing the Web ad nauseum. These “shadow comforts” can drain our vitality and impede our most cherished plans. “I’m going to get the watercolors out tonight,” we say. “Just let me watch one more Seinfield rerun.”
While it’s unrealistic (and way too saintly) to think we can get rid of all our less-than-stellar habits, the good news is that we can trade in some of our more pernicious proclivities for patterns of repetitive behavior that do support the life we wish to create—good habits, if you will, or what some leaders in the human-potential field call “intentional practices.” Like a bad habit, a good habit is something you do with great consistency but—here’s the key difference—with awareness and intention, whether it’s taking a brisk walk every other day, saying five mantras before bed every night, or eating dinner without the TV on.
We must begin this process by shining the light of awareness on our less-than-optimal habits. As far as those go, it’s easy to fall into the disheartening trap of believing we are fixed entities. But if we accept that we learn through repetition and practice, then a habit is simply a learning device. With this awareness, those not-so-good habits are not immutable, insurmountable, or a sign of moral failure. They are simply how we are teaching ourselves something. Suddenly, new possibilities emerge. What am I teaching myself? What do I want to teach myself?
Shine the light a little brighter and other insights often occur. In the case of my maniacal e-mail checking, I am teaching myself the dubious art of distraction. Why would I want to learn such a thing? Well, in truth I am as committed to not writing my novel as I am to writing it. Harvard’s pioneering developmental psychologist, Robert Kegan, calls this a “competing commitment,” one that keeps our declared commitment from happening and leaves us in quandaries like “I want to write, and I’m also afraid to finish,” or “I want to lose weight, and I also want to comfort myself with cookies.”
Lurking behind every competing commitment is an exaggerated but seemingly real fear of some horrendous, disastrous thing that will come to pass if we realize our stated goal. Me, I’m afraid of finding out I actually can’t write a decent novel, that the fantasy I’ve had for years will be dashed and life will be rendered meaningless. Sounds silly, but part of me buys it completely.
Our job, then, is to examine our less-than-optimal habits with loving awareness to see what they are teaching us, why we might be committed to them, and how they shape our life. In this way, we can begin to make conscious choices and trade up: one or two less-than-optimal habits for one or two intentional practices that would help us live more in alignment with who we want to be. What if, instead of browsing news Web sites every morning, you wrote poetry or wrote in a journal and then balanced your checkbook? Instead of takeout and videos every Friday night, suppose you joined a meditation group or volunteered to teach reading to adults? Your life would change: We become what we practice.
When it comes to having an effective intentional practice, it isn’t so much what you do—10 minutes of yoga every morning or having lunch with a different colleague every week—as how you do it. I like to keep these criteria for successful intentional practices from fellow coach David Martin in mind. First, acknowledge that a practice is something you do—you don’t just think about creating community, you go to a book-club meeting at your local library; you don’t just read about spirituality, you meditate or you bring coffee to the homeless guy on the corner. And you do this again and again.
Secondly, name the motivation behind your action. If you want to lose weight, why? To feel sexier with your mate, to be able to get into a certain yoga pose? Honesty is key! Then ask this crucial question: “Is this something I’m truly committed to carrying out?” (A common pitfall is committing to something you don’t really want to do but think you should do.)
If the answer is yes, be very specific about what you are committing to do and when. When my dad was diagnosed with cancer I decided to write 30 minutes every day for six months; I want him to see this book. I check it off each day on my computer calendar or it gets carried to the next day; while writing, I listen to a piece of music that’s 30 minutes long—no fuzzy math. This precision prevents strange loops of circular thinking, like “Not writing today is okay because Dad’s tumor markers are down.” Or “Eating refined sugar today is okay because these are organic Oreos.”
Finally, cultivate an attitude of doing your practice with no expectation of an immediate outcome or change. When we can get to the place where we focus instead on the pleasure in simply experiencing it (or attempting to on the rough days) as a sweet, conscious choice to celebrate life, we step out of the huffing-and-straining achievement viewpoint (get better, get this done, I should, I have to).
Ultimately, we practice in order to learn how to embrace and give voice to life itself. When I stop before checking my e-mail and ask, “Is this teaching me what I want to learn?” suddenly I am empowered by choice. I inhabit hope. I become the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of a practiser: “a person who makes practice a way of life.”
May you practice with delight.
Exercise/tip
Power Practice
While incorporating even one intentional practice into your life is a powerful act, combining several makes them all more effective. Lifting weights will positively affect your meditation practice. Writing in a journal will enrich your volunteering.
A prime example of this synergy in action is Integral Transformative Practice (ITP), “a long-term program for realizing the potential of body, mind, heart, and soul” developed by human-potential pioneers George Leonard and Michael Murphy (of Esalen Institute fame) and informed by the work of philosopher Ken Wilber.
The idea of ITP is to combine practices that encompass those four critical areas; for instance, moving the body through yoga, expanding the mind through study, opening the emotions through a dream journal, and nurturing the spirit through prayer. Call it the ultimate in cross-training. For more information, check out the ITP Web site (itp-life.com).