Letting Go of Old Habits

Transcript

Welcome.

I’d like to talk to you about letting go of habits so of course our lord Buddha said to us “Let go of habits that do not serve you”.

It’s kind of interesting, seems like such an obvious thing of stop doing things isn’t good for you. Should be obvious and seems like it might even be easy.

Part of the reason its such a great piece of advice, it’s so simple and seems so obvious because it actually implies a couple of things, like these prerequisites for this little pieces of wisdom.

The first thing you have to know is that you need to know how to let go of something, which you know maybe for a Buddha that’s easy but for the rest of us going step by step we need to learn to do something like that.

The second part is things that don’t serve you habits that don’t serve you. It’s not always easy to know which habits actually serve us, we need to exercise discernment and build some skills to do that.

But let’s talk mainly about the first part of that, about the letting go process. I’m at a point in my life where I don’t want to go walking around looking at women.

It’s kind of a nice thing to do, it’s enjoyable. It’s not something I want to do in my life because I want to stay more focused on a certain path and be more aware of these sexual habits.

So I want to stop checking out women. Now when I’m walking down the street…now of course I live in Guadalajara some of the most beautiful women in the world here possibly, certainly the most beautiful in Mexico.

Sometimes I’ll notice a cute woman in my periphery and if I’m conscious and present, I’ll feel the momentum of my previous habit.

It’s almost visceral, I’ll feel some force pulling my head and eyes over so I will look this woman in the eye and give her a smile. A lot of the time these things will slip past us so there will be this momentum but we won’t be quick enough to catch it in the moment if we aren’t careful.

So the habit will kick in before you even realize, so the important thing here is about being present, exercising presence.

Maybe even planning in advance, if I’m going to go out and I know I’m going to see beautiful women and so I can say to myself “I know I am going to experience this so I can be present in those moments so I can better control my wandering eyes looking into those ojos tapatíos.

Eyes of women in Jalisco are very famous because they are so big and it’s easy to get lost in them. Tricky.

So I plan in advance, I say I know what’s going to happen so I can be present for those moments.

Here’s the thing, a lot of the time being present is enough to change those habits because just bringing enough things into awareness means that they have the potential to change.

When we are aware of that momentum of the habits, then we can just let them go or they just start to slip away almost as if we are to simply relax our hands and the chalk or the pen to fall to the floor.

Sometimes it’s really that simple to drop a habit, it’s not the case all the time.

So sometimes I turn to certain techniques from CBT so things like I ask: what is the underlying belief, what is the assumption?

And I would say it’s something like I should or must or am going to look at women. Or it’s enjoyably to look at beautiful women, make eye contact and smile and so I will do it.

Underlying assumptions so a lot of the time the beliefs about our actions are subconscious.

They’re not conscious, not unconscious. Not something like a heart rate, normally unconscious, a process we can’t access consciously. Something like the breath, so we can let our breath continue normally without thinking about it.

Or we can become conscious of our breath and begin to control it or at least observe it so with beliefs its similar. It’s on this boundary we can say. So by asking ourselves “what is my belief, what is my assumption around this, what is my thought pattern?”

Sometimes that can be revealing and then we can say this little technique of reality checking or of questioning our beliefs so we say what is the payout, what am I getting out of this? What is the cost?

The payoff is something like enjoying beauty, which can be quite an innocent thing. The other side of that can be looking with lust which can be intrusive. There’s also smiling at someone and enjoying a moment with them, which is lovely and again quite innocent.

But on the other side, that can also be ego gratification. Hmm, look at me, I’m Mr. Big Man Around Town these women like to smile at me! Kurt tiene pegue, Kurt has spunk.

But the cost is also distraction from my path, I want to try to be more conscious of how I use my sexual energy, how I use my attention in general. That’s the cost, I’m getting distracted. I’m not paying attention to the environment and taking everything in.

I’m also making this unnecessary discrimination in a sense because I’m looking at certain things in the environment as valuable and other things are not worth paying attention to, which I don’t need to do that.

I don’t need to look at the world in this dualistic way, even though it’s kind of a natural way for many of us to look at the world. So that’s the cost, it’s distracting me from what I actually want to do.

And so, again, just being aware of these things now I’ve become aware of the process, the underlying assumptions and I’ve also started to analyze or discern them a bit to figure out if this is actually a good idea.

Again, sometimes this is enough. Because I’ve increased the level of consciousness sometimes that will be enough to change my habits.

But as I like to say insight plus action equals transformation which is a phrase I put together after reading the Skilled Helper because he talks a lot about this dichotomy between insight and action.

Then the question is, what action can I take?

I can do something simple like journaling. Like say I go out and something happens. Maybe I look at a woman, maybe I don’t. Maybe I have experienced the momentum but I’m present and I say “No, I’m not going to turn my head and look at that woman” and later I journal it to make a note and hold myself accountable.

It doesn’t matter if I fail or succeed on any given day cause again it’s more about the consciousness, being aware of one’s own habits can begin that process of change, especially taking some action about it…writing something or starting a new habit.

For example if I go to look at a beautiful woman I could instead try to take in my entire environment and be more aware of what’s going to happen.

Change the habit, take action, act n the insight. That’s the idea, there’s many ways to do things, many ways to have success. These are a few ideas when you’re trying to let go of a habit that no longer serves you.

Thank you for listening, have a wonderful day and thank you for developing yourself in these small ways that improve your life and bring you into more focus, enjoyment and spiritual development, have a great day.