Are your “habits” up-to-date?
That may seem like an odd question, but there’s considerable significance to the answer. A lot of our life is driven by habits, both beneficial and detrimental. We might call them different things in different contexts — routines, practices, preferences, or patterns. Simply speaking, most are actually different manifestations of physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual habits.
Habits can be so ingrained and pervasive that you cannot even see them as habits. Sometimes that’s useful; I don’t have to double-check that I closed the garage door because I always hit the button on the door opener as I leave the garage. A beneficial unconscious habit.
However, we have lots of other habits that are probably well past their expiry date. Like going through the kitchen cupboards looking for the can of beans from 2002, it is a HIGHLY recommended endeavor to review your habits. This is a GREAT opportunity to catalyze inner (and outer) evolution. When you shift one part of a system, everything connected to it also automatically must respond and shift as well. A relatively small movement can put a lot of energy into motion.
Motion is the opposite of stagnation. Stagnation is entirely different from Stillness. You can have motion and Stillness at the same time, both inner and outer. But, paradoxically in some sense, it is difficult to have BOTH stagnation and Stillness. Stagnation (mental, emotional, physical, soul-level) is frequently the source of perpetual dissonance and disturbance. Like the fly in the room that keeps buzzing and circling with no outlet or purpose.
Spring is a great time for physical cleaning. Summer — or any holiday — is an excellent time for “habit cleaning.” Schedules can be looser and there is more flexibility to try new approaches for any and all aspects of daily life. Also, we often travel, so it is possible to receive a different perspective on home-based habits.
None of this awareness and change happens, however, without intention and desire. To get to the “hidden habits,” which are often the oldest, most entrenched, and most unconscious, you will probably have to go looking and want to find them.
The simplest place to start is to keep asking this question: “Why do I do this?”
Then there is the parallel twin question:”Why do I think or feel this?”
Both of these inquiries will point you in the direction of greater clarity about how you create your life. Sometimes asking these questions in succession is necessary to meaningfully get to the source rather than a superficial reason for your habit. If you truly want to transform, elevate, or eliminate a pattern, you do need to find the source. Or it will recreate itself in another context. Internal programming can be very persistent until it genuinely no longer serves a purpose.
When a habit no longer serves a purpose, it is deprived of the energy that keeps it in existence. Like a balloon that deflates, or a weed without roots. All of that energy can then be redirected into new purposes and new creations — you might be surprised how much life force and effort is bound up in out-of-date habits.
It’s a great time to go looking for the expiry date on your habits. Today might be the day that they run out of (good) purpose. Imagine what tomorrow could be like without them.
