Tag: habit

The Habitual Self-Evolution

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Now it’s not that I’m not enjoying this writing challenge that I set myself and thought others might like inflicted upon them, but when I finally decided to check to see when the last day would be and discovered it not in early October or possibly even late September, instead mid November, my heart sunk a little. There was a little glimmer of hope in my mind that I had less than two months left and it turned out I have a full three. As I said it’s not that I’m not enjoying it and I know for certain I’m getting a lot from it, but I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to not have a day in which there isn’t something at the back of my mind reminding me I still have to sit down and write something. It does feel like my one daily chore and as I write that I realise how lucky I am to have only one real chore. It’s not cool to blow ones own trumpet but for such an undisciplined person it has been a remarkable show of discipline. If only it was possible to transport that into other parts of my life.

It’s also quite easy though let’s be honest. To write four times a week but on any particular day or even at any frequency within the week would probably be more of a challenge than knowing it’s a daily routine of sitting down and doing something. When something has to be done daily there is a lack of opportunity for free thought and potential excuses. If I know I don’t necessarily have to do something today as I still have tomorrow to do it creates a different kind of challenge altogether. Discipline with choice or discipline without. I know myself and it may be a struggle. They do say, whoever ‘they’ are, that if you can do something for a whole year you will create enough of a habit to be able to maintain consistency and practice. I’ll now have a real example to use of whether I believe there to be any truth in that.

My heart sunk then when I discovered I still have a quarter of a year to go. It sunk despite knowing I enjoy and appreciate the benefits of doing this. This isn’t about really refining any styles, although I hope I will have done without realising. I’ll read from the beginning one day and see if my writing evolved over the time. It is about creating the habit of doing something regularly. I know I repeat myself a lot, or assume I do, but certainly I see a huge importance in understanding, observing and changing habit where necessary. So much of our lives are defined by habit. Arguably our actions and potentially even characters are just a series of habits formed from birth. We can say we have both good and bad habits and there would be validity in such a statement but I would like to explore whether it’s possible to challenge all habits no matter how they’re viewed in my mind. Can we be habit free? If habits are character defining then the answer is probably no but it would certainly be fun trying to find out. In the meantime this is simply one more piece closer to a new and hopefully long term habit. I share this with you, and pretend sometimes it’s for you, but let’s be honest I’m just using you all in my quest for some kind of self-evolution.

The Barrier Of Conditions

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“Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.”

It’s always nice to start with some Camus. These French (-Algerian) intellectuals really knew how to get people thinking and living. So thinking we must do. What conditions have we attached to our own happiness then. A momentary chance for some introspective thought perhaps. If we are honest with ourselves we will see the conditions we either try to live by or aspire to. If we are willing to take that further we may just accept an imbalance between the desire to achieve an idea over allowing happiness to happen. How much of this then is influenced by our habitual responses to moments and life. The conditions we set on life are nothing but ideas and learned responses to moments. We are fixed. If we create these conditions, or we have these conditions created for us and we accept them as such, and either refuse or are unable to view any other version of happiness, we likely set ourselves up for failure.

If there is anything this year has taught it’s that being fixed and not being able to look beyond our narrow ideas of future and desire will only lead to our own suffering. I doubt there are many people out there currently who have managed to live the exact version of 2020 as they had foreseen and hoped for when the first of January ding donged into existence. Most people are either working from home, still furloughed, back in their workplace or redundant. Had anyone here not been able to accept this change then they would suffer. Their previous conditions of happiness would be impossible to achieve. Habits have had to change.

This can only be a good thing. One benefit of immigration as people come from different cultures they view the one they’re entering with a fresh perspective. Those who live within their own culture are more likely to view their world as normal and in that case how it should be, this is just the way it is both good and bad. People see what is missing because they bring part of what is normal for them with them. They see a hole with fresh eyes, fill it and changed the habitual structure of society. The populace embrace this but fear it too.

Will what we are experiencing do similar. The circumstances and events are different, it is unlikely to be about people entering a society as our miserable little island appears more closed off than ever before, but there will be tangible changes which may only become evident in a few years. What is the point of principles if they’re so limiting as to restrict any possibility of happiness. We are living in what appears to be increasingly evolving conditions and how we deal with that will determine how we move forward as a society and individually. Habitual flexibility and happiness may just turn out to be one and the same after all.

So Very Thirsty These Days

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I think I’m evolving into one of those people who drinks a little every evening after work. Socially acceptable middle class alcoholism or something like that. When I get in from making pizzas I really enjoy a couple of beers. I takes the edge off lets say. Thankfully I only make pizzas three days a week but I’m aware of that craving for a drink and how much of a habit it becomes to feel it and then satiate it. Saying that in the grand scheme of things I’m probably drinking less over all than if I went to the pub and had a drinking session. Admittedly these don’t really seem to happen a great deal anymore but still the point remains.

Why do I feel like it’s something I shouldn’t be doing then. Is drinking two or three beers on my own when I get in somehow socially unacceptable now. Should I be ashamed of doing this. Why do I feel I need to be sneaky about it, although I’m obviously not, there’s certainly something that makes me want to keep it hidden. Have societies pressures finally got to me. If I had a girlfriend or flat mate it would be acceptable to come back and have a couple of drinks, so being a solitary drinker of two drinks is the issue. I genuinely don’t know what makes me feel like this is something I shouldn’t be doing. I used to be wild – says every thirty-four year old ever – and now I’m experiencing these thoughts and emotions about something so normal. Strange times.

But it would be wrong to mention this desire for a drink without raising awareness of addiction. In this case sugar addiction. I’m not saying alcoholism isn’t a very real thing but having observed that feeling of desire and necessity I have noticed that sometimes I crave alcohol in times when I’m also craving something sweet. If I give up the sugar for a week lets say, I very quickly lose interest in having a drink and it is undeniable the two are related. Anyone who has ever said “Oh I really needed that” after taking that first large gulp of their pint is feeding some addiction somewhere and it would be foolish to deny the existence of sugar in beer. People know and acknowledge the issue with sugar in alcoholic drinks but rarely do they seem to relate the connection between sugar addiction and alcohol consumption. Let’s see how this evolves in these changing times.

The Woes Of Newly Morning People

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My alarm went off at 6.30am today. I did this out of choice. I had the wonderful idea about thirty hours ago that I would become a morning person. This isn’t a new thing, it has been attempted before and judging by this being a new shot the previous ones evidently didn’t go to plan. Quite often the issue lies with my inability to go to bed early enough and is coupled with my need for a good eight hours, ideally nine. If I’m to wake at six, at the height of the summer I would be going to sleep while it was still light outside. Lets be honest that’s unlikely to happen.

One reason I have struggled to sleep earlier is my inability to switch off the technology before sleep. There are various stories out in the ether about how we should switch off phones at least an hour before sleep, or we should dim the lights so we have evening sensitive light but for me the issue lies with the fact it’s too easy to just stare at the phone in a trance when tired. Were you to be reading a book you may need to think a bit more, would get tired and sleep, but the internet is made up of short simple articles and pictures, include it’s ability to hypnotise you and the spell isn’t broken without force of some kind.

Last night though I slept at about midnight, about an hour later than planned but earlier than it could have been and has been. I crawled out of bed half an hour later than the alarm but managed to do some yoga and drink a cup of tea before starting work at 8am, a whole hour early. Today has been completely non stop and while I didn’t get all the things I wanted to do done it wasn’t down to idleness and wasting time which makes it in a funny way acceptable. However I’m still awake and it’s already gone 11pm.

I have probably averaged six to seven hours of sleep per night these last two weeks and I am tired. I’ve only had one morning of being a morning person yet I’m struggling to see myself getting up as early tomorrow and the original plan was 6am the second day. It’s the late nights, and it’s not even that late but it is for an early morning person. It can be so hard to change habits at the best of times but when that change of habit gives you bags under your eyes then you are really making it hard on yourself.

I know I’m not alone in this world though. There are plenty of fellow reprobates out there who have attempted all sorts of things but have been too open to temptation and given up after a few days. Even those disgustingly well groomed, healthy and happy people surely must give in to temptation from time to time and not just the temptation to be perfect. As I say this it makes me feel so pleased to be fallible and to accept my fallibility. If I don’t manage this then so be it, I’ll try again or I’ll try something else. But I’ll try. I’ve had the determined focus of someone capable of achieving things these last two days. I wonder if he’ll be around tomorrow too. He might just need to set the alarm a little later though. A semi-morning person perhaps.

Time For A New Normal

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There does seem to be one quite noticeable benefit of this virus and that is the very evident improvement to our natural world. I am sure by now people have seen the photos of clean canals in Venice and the dolphins swimming in the clean waters of ports. They may also have seen the graphs showing before and after images over China highlighting the decrease in pollution and heat from a suspension of industry. I’m sure I have seen one for Europe too because of a lack of cars on the roads but I don’t know how they can differentiate between vehicles and industry, I suspect the mention of cars was simply for the sake of a narrative.

I mentioned previously how I am really excited to see the longer term effects of this break in polluting and the Earth’s destruction, what the scientists will be able to tell us from a few months of clean air. This is unprecedented really because not for a second did anyone think we would actually be able to see what happens when capitalism grinds to a halt. Apparently stuff gets clean. Will the ice freeze again next winter too? Will anything happen to the jet stream that heats northern Europe from this chopping and changing of carbon dioxide and pollutants in the air and water? Will we be able to see how much the Earth is capable of cleaning and replenishing itself in such a short time. There are countless more things that my brain is unaware of or will remember later, but such opportunities for study and understanding have arisen from these circumstances.

As is clear I suspect this is only temporary, I imagine normal service will resume in a few months from now. Perhaps normal service is already far more active than I realise but I don’t doubt there will be a huge drive to return to previous levels of economic success and we all know what that means. Let’s hope that the shock of these pollutants returning doesn’t then really hurt the environment, that is always a possibility. What is interesting though is how people will view all this afterwards. People are very sceptical of anything new or unknown until they have seen it in action and one issue with this environmental damage is that it continues because it is normal. This day to day existence is normal for us.

Reusing things fifty years ago was once normal and now recycling is some kind of a new gimmick. We are terrible animals of habit and if we can create new habits we may just create a new normal. People have already started walking in parks, Snowdonia had it’s busiest weekend ever, people are getting into nature. If we have shortages people will just get used to reusing things and consuming less. Perhaps they will see photos of clean canals and realise it is possible to clean up our mess, that this huge unrelatable problem has all of a sudden become something understandable and achievable. Who knows really.

If we’re going to be open to the possibility that capitalism is going to use this opportunity to tighten it’s destructive grip we need to also be open to the fact that the very opposite could happen. All is unknown at present and while the unknown can be scary it has proven in the past to result in some of our greatest achievements as a species. We haven’t survived this long to let a little virus like capitalism keep us down, let’s not allow it to win now at this most important of junctures when it’s grip may just be at it’s weakest.

Exhaustion

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They say variety is the spice of life. Well they say something is the spice of life but I’m exhausted and exactly what it is doesn’t feel overly important right now. If that is accurate I guess the assumption must be that variety makes life interesting, and keeps you coming back for more, gives you energy and enthusiasm one could say. Variety in the sense of exhaustion, as exhaustion is just another part of life is it not, would suggest that different types of exhaustion make the act or sense of exhaustion interesting and worth repeating, eliciting enthusiasm even. Does exhaustion give you energy in that case? It is said that the more you do; the more you do, and that is not accidental repetition. When people exercise for the first time they may be able to run for five minutes before suffering for a few days and forcing seven minutes out of themselves the next time. Eventually they’re running thirty minutes every day and find themselves more energised throughout the day as a whole. Arguably they’re doing more but feeling less exhaustion, and with it exercise becomes some sort of a paradox.

The point to all this is that today I have experienced some variety in my exhaustive state. I returned from Sheffield last night, slept three hours and went and delivered bread. Let’s just say I was pretty tired by the end but somehow I felt that past tired feeling in which you can’t seem to stop and won’t until you collapse. After about another three hours sleep I went to my kickboxing class and worked hard. Today I sparred with the coach as numbers were odd and while clearly he holds back, he’s still too fast for me and got me with a good uppercut at one point. I was pretty tired during the class because I was working hard and it can be an exhausting sport when you do put the effort in. When I got back to the car I felt pretty happy with myself, post exercise dopamine release or something like that, but I felt energised and could have done more.

I am looking forward to my bed but it is important not to allow exhaustion to stop us from doing things. We are far more capable of finding energy when we have to than what we convince ourselves as we flop onto the sofa and watch a film. When we listen to the idle monster, or the inner bitch as I’ve heard it said, in our mind we do less, and feel like doing less the next time. It’s a vicious spiral, the opposite to the runner improving time and regularity each day. It can be hard but once we train our minds to quit whinging, embrace the new routine and just do it, it is remarkable how quickly it can be easy to do anything which in the past you would convince yourself you were too tired for. The body and mind are incredible things, individually and together, perhaps it may be time to stop wasting them and start making the most of the remarkable things we’re capable of as a species.

Habitual Emotions

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According to BJ Fogg habits are connected to our emotions and until we understand our emotive relationship to our habitual responses we will struggle to transform our behaviour into a series of positive actions. I may have added to and slightly paraphrased what he said but the link to our emotions is all his. He also says that we should make tiny changes to our habits and give ourselves a reward as and when we achieve our aims. He uses the example of his eighty year old father wanting to do twenty push-ups a day and believing he’ll achieve this because of his desire to do so. His father according to Fogg is displaying an outdated attitude to creating change, one of believing that if he has strength of mind and willpower to make these changes in his life; that that will be enough to make the positive difference he is after. Fogg believes instead that he should make tiny changes, perhaps two push-ups against the sink each time he’s washing his hands for example. This is an achievable goal and can be used as a base to work on. The emotive aspect comes from our need for a reward. The reward can simply be feeling happy when we achieve targets and make positive habitual changes in our lives or when we struggle feeling unhappy. These emotive responses become habit themselves.

This journey into the realms of discipline you’re going on with me is, and I’ve said this many times before, interlinked with our habits and responses. Our habitual responses to situations dictate how we behave when faced with a variety of situations big and small, and have become deeper and deeper ingrained the more we repeat them as we get older. Once we see behaviour as simply as series of habits it becomes easier to both empathetically understand other peoples actions and creates a deeper understanding of ourselves and our own behaviour. These ideas of BJ Fogg then are very interesting because what he is adding is a method to how we can make these changes. While it is still about observing your habitual responses to different situations, he suggests making these small changes you want to happen. It appears to be a more direct approach than simply observing and not repeating, or trying a new approach when you recognise the old toxic one. This is made possible by not trying to create huge and unattainable targets that will hinder your achieving the positive emotive response you unconsciously desire and require. This idea of tiny habits is a new one for me so I’m not entirely sure empirically what I think about it but it seems like common sense it a way. The danger is though that just like his father; I want it all now, I want those twenty push-ups a day. To really embrace tiny steps and tiny habits requires a deal of patience that in itself needs to be fostered habitually. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy no matter how much you desire it.

Day 32

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Fuck!! Today is the big day, the first piece I publish properly. I don’t know if I’m ready for this mentally, I’m a bit nervous actually as it has been purely writing for myself until this point. It’s also probably worth mentioning that today is Day 32 and if anyone is inclined for any reason to read all the way back to Day One, I was supposed to publish for the first time on Day 31. Yes I missed my own opening party by a day.

But what the hell am I talking about I hear you say. I should explain as I doubt anyone is going to read all the way back to the first piece, and even if they did, I haven’t exactly stuck to my own rules. This is an experiment, I’m experimenting with myself, although not in a teenage boy kind of way. The idea is to learn the discipline needed, and create the required habit, of writing a piece on this blog every day for an entire year, three hundred and sixty-five days to be precise. That has already been broken, but I have published everyday so far, which was a rule change I decided upon at one point. I wrote two pieces one day, saved it in reserve and subsequently used it one day. That piece was Amor Fati and I make no excuses as events made writing that day impossible. The other rule I seem to be breaking more or less daily is that each piece was supposed to be only ten words more or less than four hundred, and there was a reason for that although I won’t go into it again. I seemingly love the sound of my own thoughts though as I am averaging about five hundred words per day.

So far then it has been an interesting experiment. I have proved I can write daily, although were I to go adventuring and my environment changed that may prove a new challenge to sustain. There have been days I haven’t been able to think of much and have just dribbled something inane onto the page, but then that is all part of it. It was interesting to realise I found it quite challenging to write and at first what came out seemed quite immature. Not really writing for the last ten years has not allowed my writing style to develop. It’s just practise. There are more observations I could share with you but I can’t remember them off the top of my head right now so they can’t be important. Ultimately though I’ve actually quite enjoyed it. Whether habit has been formed yet I’m unsure, they do say something about a month of repetition being an important milestone though. This is just a simple blog on my observations, misunderstanding and everything in between, it may be self-indulgent but then I’m kind of doing it for myself more than anyone else. Saying that, I do hope you enjoy it, and I must thank you for at least taking the time to read this far.

Born Again

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When people get into their thirties, like I am well into now, they discover new things and sometimes become mad and obsessed with them. In their twenties it doesn’t happen so much but thirties for sure I’ve seen people go crazy. The born again christians of whatever new hobby or life direction they take to fulfil that empty hole in their life. My lack of the focus and attention span required may just protect me from this. I’m currently reading a book on beekeeping and they’re incredible animals, from the nanny bees keeping the larvae at the perfect temperature, and I mean to one degree celsius, to the queen laying two thousand eggs a day to the language they use communicating about good sources of pollen like little stoners. They’re incredible and I want my own apiary, healthy nutritious raw honey, tasty alcoholic mead and the connection and bond with an actual hive of tens of thousand of bees. Will I become obsessed, well maybe we’ll see. It may just fall at the wayside like my plan to learn how to write code – I downloaded an app about a month ago – and making beer – I bought a brewing set about two months ago.

The problem with desiring doing too much is that we put so much effort into the excitement of the planning and dreaming that the actual doing becomes boring. The effort and hard work required to complete these fantasies doesn’t compare to how we have been imagining it in our excitable dreams. In the end we do nothing. Part of this then involves discipline and this seems to be the thing that has been lacking for me. Of course it suited me in my twenties having no discipline, who needs it when you’re just traveling around and having fun. This continued into my thirties but at thirty-four I think I may have to become a born again disciplinarian, or at least born again about the idea of it. If I ever have kids, poor little fuckers. This writing experiment is just that, an experiment but it is also an attempt at learning discipline and creating the habit required to not even notice the effort required to be disciplined. I have the physical discipline to write daily it appears, or at least do at the moment while my life is in one place and stable, but not always the discipline to write well or with effort. That will come, as much because it’ll be boring for myself to just dribble out inane nonsense. But what I am curious to see is whether this discipline can spread out and infect other parts of my life. The discipline to do yoga every morning, to do a little exercise, to eat well – these three things are starting to become necessary more each day as I start to feel the aches and pains of age. Maybe I’ll even make my beer and god forbid sit down long enough without procrastinating to find time to write an app.

Time is the master. While it may be infinite our moment within it certain isn’t. What has happened now in the past is done, it is over. It may have been great and full of experience but if we do not look forward we just become those grumpy old lonely travellers lost in their missed opportunities and repetitive stories. Today I drive to Cockermouth, the day after I probably come back, and the day after that, well thats anyones guess but I suspect it may be a good one.

Coffee

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The time is 17.09 and I’m drinking a coffee. I enjoy coffee, sometimes I really enjoy it and most days it’s the thing that quietens the screams, makes me feel normal again and allows me to start the day. One liberating moment in life is the one in which your ego gets kicked in the balls as you realise you are not unique, there is with certainty at least one other human being, most likely about one billion, that does, thinks or enjoys the same things as you. In the instance of my relation to coffee the one billion number seems inadequate, because – standing up in the circle – I am an addict. What is interesting with this though is that circle contains over seven billion people because I guarantee there is not one person on earth who is not addicted to something, whether that is coffee, heroin, sugar, running or self-deprecation, everyone out there has that something that makes them feel normal again.

Of course I suspect I know little about addiction in general and mean not to offend as this is understandably an emotive topic, but I have my own observations of myself and although that is only one reality, it is not always easy to go on anything else. There have been times when I have had addictions to cigarettes and considering the fact I crave them for a moment as I think about this it is perhaps the case that addictions never really leave you. Renton certainly said something along those lines about heroin. Then there have been times that I’ve just needed a beer but I wouldn’t say I’m an alcoholic. Part of that necessity was possibly the sugar in the beer or dehydration, but it could very easily have been the habit of consuming that beer be that after work or by the beach on a hot day.

A friend of mine goes to the pub most afternoons and drinks three or four pints but he very rarely drinks anywhere else. He told me once that having grown up with parents running numerous pubs it was more the environment he was going for than the alcohol. After spending a month hanging out with him, it became clear that this repetition was habitual as much as anything else. If changing environment changes habits and is recognised as a way to get over certain addictions, then there must be a link. Is addiction nothing more than habit, our habitual response to a perceived need in the moment.

Perhaps this is common knowledge and I’m just catching up. Perhaps I’m oversimplifying a complex issue. But perhaps we should start focusing more on our habitual responses and we won’t simply find a new thing to be addicted to every time we overcome the other.