Change: Habit Exercise
This blog is for anyone who has started on the Change Habit Exercise, Parts I & Part II. Now that you have started with the analysis of your habits; i.e., started with trying to do the notebook exercises and to improve upon one habit at least, you can now add another layer to your process.
It does not matter if you are still working on the one habit. The important thing is that you have started the work consciously, and taking steps to work through your process. The process does matter, however the flow of the habit exercise does not need to be complicated with a process analysis: When one is looking to really make a change, the desire to find a way makes the seeking of a process happen, with the desire to change; and to consciously work with oneself towards a positive outcome to take a deeper look at oneself and open up a view to the source.
Half the success is in trying. Desperate measures of looking for change tend to be temporary but anyone who urgently has to make changes especially where serious health and livelihood is at stake does require the implementation of a process with professional assistance and guidelines. A strong desire is a key component, in that desire has to be tempered with practicality. Imagination and dreaming of improvements does not create improvement, unless you are hoping to put a plan in place. Improvement requires directed action and movement toward helping oneself. Others can assist or be there for you but to reiterate, you are the ultimate instrument in your own change.
Most often than not, the source of certain habits stem from unconscious modes of thinking and habits as well. Let me give you a simple fictitious example. I will personalize the scenario:
ISSUE of Change: As an adult, I indulge in the all that is chocolate. PURPOSE of Change: For health purposes, one of my change of habit is to reduce my chocolate intake:
TRIAL SOLUTION: My process is to limit myself to one chocolate bar to one a month and to not eat the whole bar in a day. I try to have a few pieces a day to reduced my intake.
UNCONSCIOUS Connection: Upon reviewing my list of unconscious habits, I realize that I stock up on chocolates constantly without paying attention to my other more nutritious food items. I do this unconsciously.
Noted breakdown of the Habit Exercise:
Conscious Habit – eating too much chocolate (Reasons: not a good habit. Obvious conscious Reasons: 1 -Health is the number one reason; 2-Spend too much on chocolate).
Unconscious Habit – do not pay attention to how much chocolate I buy; automatically stock up constantly on chocolate.
On further analysis I now ask myself why? Now, I search my other reasons why I might be doing this, and I write in my notebook under possible associated areas of my life that affects this habit: I do remember being curbed from eating chocolate as a child. Chocolate was a rare treat and only enjoyed chocolate on certain occasions. I saw other kids at school enjoying their chocolate snacks but I was given limited sugar snacks. My emotional attachment stems from resenting the fact that I was rationed at home, but now I can do as I please, so my actions, in effect, is in response to a past resentment (which is a past emotional source which is an even deeper unconscious source for this habit).
By working on this habit I now have to think about overcoming this. Eventually, my personal habit retraining will hopefully lead to my understanding that this was a discipline to help me and for my good. Sometimes our unconscious or hidden emotional responses are source causes that do not serve us.
The Habit Exercise is to help bring about other levels of understanding and jotting it all down in a notebook helps one to see connections and to consciously work on it.
Part III:
Revisit the Habit Exercise list – review the habit list.
On a new page write out the habit you are consciously working through.
Look over the unconscious list and attempt to identify any unconscious habit(s) that you might think is (or are) related to the conscious habit.
If you have been carefully following the series of blogs, recall the Dec 16th blog on Catalyst Chain.
Now that you have identified the unconscious habit(s) associated with the habit you are working on, write down all your associated thoughts why and how the unconscious habit is connected with the conscious habit.
Note: When you are writing down your associated thought only associate your pattern of your present actions. You can associate it to a past memory but try not to write down names regarding people associated with the habit (not for this purpose).
You are working on your present life need for change. Focus on you and your present need for change and not on people.
The above exercise is not about writing a journal about your past, and though keeping a journal might be cathartic, this is not the purpose of these exercises. The purpose is to methodically work through something you need to change, and to do it methodically even if it is a small habit. You may think that a habit is minor but the process of working on your daily life and your actions lead to thinking about what you are doing and how; correcting or adjusting yourself. This is how conscious habits and living begins. The past cannot be fixed without the present and acting on habits is always in the now.
To better draw a reference regarding unconscious connections a writer’s process is a good example: When one is writing one’s thoughts the words are written to capture an idea(s) in a stream of interconnections. In many instances the writer sees the idea before the words are even formulated, and writes a string of words, sometimes missing minor words, and pushes through even with errors just to get to the completed idea on paper. When the writer goes back to proof the written material, the writer notices missed errors - and this happens unconsciously, but the writer knows the full thought/idea and reads over the mistakes with the correction already in mind when proofing. This is the reason why most writers have someone to review their work or have an someone or maybe an editor proof and edit their work. Sometimes the writer themselves have to read and re-read their own work several times and more to get to the finish. Just think of the process of proofing one’s own work requires that the writer must mentally detach from their work and assess it objectively. This example also speaks to the whole idea behind the Habit Exercise because it is a matter of training one’s mind to consciously connect.