Pairing Habits

Transcript

I’d like to talk about pairing habits. I was listening to another conversation on Sam Harris’ app it’s called Waking Up, his meditation app.

And he had this conversation with the author of the book Atomic Habits, James Clear and hes talking in the book about how to build habits and how to remove negative habits. One of the key things he mentioned was pairing new habits with something you already do.

And especially if its something that you already do that you feel positive about, that’s going to help because the positive association rubs off the positive affect of this existing action will also appear in the new habit you want to do.

I thought about the most obvious example of this, like when we sit down to eat.

Most of us love food, we love the sensation of it, the variety of it, the art of making food and the satisfaction when we finally put it on our plates and sit down to eat.

I remember seeing my buddy conscious Kenny he has this habit where when he gets the food he will put his nose right up to it and smell it just to enjoy it and begin to feel grateful about it.

The natural thing when we have food is that wonderful habit of saying grace. So we have that opportunity to practice gratitude and its amazing that we have food.

Hundreds of years ago even decades ago, people went through famines and food wasn’t so easy to get.

Now we can get almost on demand in many cases. We get the opportunity to choose what kind of food we eat, prepare it ourselves or have someone else prepare it for us. These are amazing things we can do, take a moment to appreciate everything in our lives.

I wonder what other moments we can look at in out lives and try to introduce gratitude or some other kind of consciousness, meditation or heightened awareness so we can experience life more vividly.

Of course when we’re going to sleep there’s this sort of traditional time to say a prayer.

I think everyone enjoys to get into bed after a long day and feel warm and comforted and safe. That we know that we can sleep easily for the next few hours and not have any worries. In those moments, actually I’ve thought of an exercise or technique from Neville Goddard.

He talks about when you’re falling asleep, go to bed and you think about the day and you wonder what could have been even more awesome today? And you go through and rewrite your day.

Maybe you got a little frustrated with somebody, what would it have been like if you didn’t get frustrated? Like you met the situation with absolute peace and delight in your soul?

What would that have been like? And what will it be like next time?

Just like I’ve mentioned in the episode about rewriting the past, Neville Goddard recommended doing that every day. So that’s a little habit pairing that we can develop.

I also think about Echart Tolle and the Power of Now. He talks about these little things. And this is interesting, a lot of the time they are kind of neutral things.

So things like descending or ascending the stairs and in those moments you think “How can I be more present?”

Or you focus on the air in the stairway.

You focus on your feet, your shoes. Meeting each step. The hand on the railing. There’s an opportunity for presence in something we do every day, walking up and down stairs. Why not make it a little special?

Every moment is an opportunity for something special.

Maybe next time you are on the stairs it will come to you now that you’re primed in the mind or say you’re waiting in line…that’s another opportunity that Echart Tolle mentions.

Standing there you start to look around you, observe the shapes and colors. Listen to the sound of the cars on the street or the wind through the trees, whatever is happening in that moment.

It’s another opportunity. And it’s a little corny when Tolle says he gets to the front of the line and they say “Thank you for waiting, thank you for being so patient.”

And he says “That’s alright, I was simply standing here enjoying myself.” That’s the kind of patient joyful character that he is.

We can think about little things we do every day or every week especially things that are positive and we can think about “How can I be more present, grateful or happier in those moments”.

Somehow just introduce a little bit of consciousness and presence and perhaps that will make our days go much more lightly.

Thank you for listening, thank you for being present, thank you for looking for those kind wonderful little opportunities to improve your life.

I’ll talk to you soon.