How Our Habits Become Our Destiny
It is the season of the rose! This rose will not be ignored. Shimmering in morning sunlight on the side of my driveway; it stops you in your tracks. The cloud of delicate fragrance makes you forget where you were going in such a hurry.
“Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
You are being invited here to start a new habit – a habit of paying attention to moments when joy, contentment, wonder and awe show up in your everyday life. Paying attention to those moments when you feel connected rather than isolated. When you feel at peace. Moments when all seems right with the universe and you in it. You are being invited to pause in those moments and take a photo, so that the moment does not slip away from you like so many other special moments that have already faded from your memory. And to make this moment even more firmly anchored in your consciousness, you will jot down a sentence or even a single word. That’s what the habit of keeping a Joy Catcher Journal is all about. Some of you will immediately say:
You have no idea what my life is like. I’m dealing with stress and adversity. I’m running as fast as I can and still keep falling behind. I have no time and no energy to invest in new habits that will get me nowhere.
It makes sense. When you are overwhelmed, you don’t want to add another commitment. But here is the thing - if you keep doing what you are already doing, you will keep getting what you are getting. Which may be more stress, more overwhelm, more frustration. The rich do get richer, and the poor get poorer. Even during the pandemic the world’s billionaires’ fortunes grew, while the poor sunk deeper into poverty. Just check the news. In my psychotherapy practice I notice the same phenomenon: happy families got happier during the lockdown. One woman put it this way: I’m sheltering at home with all my favourite people. How bad can this be? On the other hand, couples and families who had been struggling before the pandemic, were often brought to the breaking point by the lockdown. None of this is fair! But if we understand the forces that shape our lives for better or for worse we have more choices. New possibilities open up.
One such force, we will be looking at here is neuroplasticity or brain plasticity. In a nutshell:
Brain plasticity is the ability of the brain to change itself in response to what happens to us, what we do, what we think and what we feel.
And this is where our habits come in. The often-used phrase “neurons that fire together, wire together” contains caution: our habits change our brains for better or for worse. And that means that we are likely to become wired for happiness or its opposite as a result of repeating certain actions over and over.
Habit also implies that we do things automatically without conscious awareness. This makes life easier, allowing us to glide through our everyday routines and save our mental energy for new situations. But habits can also keep us stuck. And because they often are outside of our awareness they can become invisible and pose as “the way things are” and “the way I am”. This is particularly true of our habits of thinking and habits of reacting when strong emotions get triggered.
Let’s Take a Look at Some of Your Habits
· Do you spend a lot of time worrying about what might or might not happen?
· Do you lie awake at night thinking about all the tasks that await you?
· Do you catch yourself having arguments with people who are not even there? Or re-playing in your mind a conversation where you could have said all kinds of brilliant things, but did not?
· When you are angry, do you blow up (reassuring yourself that he had it coming)?
· When hurt or disappointed, do you shut down?
· When overwhelmed, do you space out, numb out, smoke a joint or go shopping?
· When an important project calls for extra work at home do you watch Netflix instead?
· When feeling down, do you avoid contact with others?
· Are you prone to “fatal attractions” and keep falling for people who are not good for you?
· Do you keep doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result?
If you answered Yes to any of the above questions, you are probably familiar with that nagging inner voice, which is so good at pointing out all your flaws and making you feel like there’s something seriously wrong with you. And this just makes you want to watch more Netflix.
So, forget the inner critic and let’s get back to neuroscience. There is nothing wrong with the emotions that fuel your habits. Anger, fear, sadness, hurt, overwhelm are there for a good reason – they let us know that something is not working. They tell us that action needs to be taken. But how we express and act on these emotions can make a difference between finding a happy resolution or creating more heartache and chaos.
We can change our habits and wire our brains for more happiness. We can replace habits that don’t serve us well with ones that work. How? This will be a topic for another time. For now, you are being invited to ADD A NEW HABBIT and start growing those new neural pathways that will lead to joy.
Putting it into practice
Here, I encourage you to re-visit the About section of this site and go straight to How to Get Started And Keep Going.
Wishing you happy joy hunting. May you catch many special moments and may they glow in your memory bringing warmth and light to darker moments.