Pathwalking 49
Old habits are hard to break.
This is a phrase it is necessary to let go of in order to accomplish anything with Pathwalking.
As I practice Pathwalking, I have found numerous old habits ingrained within my psyche that have held me back for most of my life, in one way or another.
There are of course both good habits and bad habits. So identifying whether the habit in question is a good one or a bad one is important. Sometimes we may have the best of intentions behind a habitual way of being, but our execution of that manner of being is not going to produce the desired result. This is where the layers of complexity that make up this process reveal themselves.
Some of these are far easier to identify than others. Some of these, as such, are harder to address, and thus to deal with.
Breaking a habit is all well and good, but what I have been finding along the way is that it is insufficient. What is necessary is more than just breaking a habit. Sometimes you need to unlearn or relearn not just the habit, but the trigger or cause OF the habit in question.
We all wind up getting set in our ways. We learn, as we grow up and have different experiences throughout our lives how to be. These things we learn become our habits. Pathwalking often involves breaking from these habits in order to create something more to our liking for our lives.
Habits can take on different forms. Some habits are physical, like chewing your fingernails or smoking or eating to fill voids. Some habits are mental, like berating yourself for mistakes or over-analyzing situations or acting arrogantly to hide feelings of inadequacy. And of course, all of these habits might be utterly sub-conscious. We may not be aware of this having become a habit.
For example – I often found when I was bored, or lost in thought, didn’t matter my emotions – I would bite my fingernails. For no actual reason, I would just chew on my nails. Sometimes, I’d even find I didn’t remember starting…I’d be driving in my car, listening to something off my iPod, and I was chewing at a nail. And this is something I have been doing pretty much ALL OF MY LIFE.
Recently, as I am examining my habits, I determined that I have never, truly, made a real, determined effort to stop this. I’ve half-heartedly ignored my nails for a day or two. I’d find I hadn’t bitten down a nail or two, and try to ignore the others. But I never decided not only to stop biting my nails, but to replace the desire to do so with something else.
This is a very recent, very new concept that I have begun to work with. And I am in part a little ashamed in admitting that I got the notion to do this from listening to a Tony Robbins program. But one of the concepts he presented – replacing a habitual way of being with something else, something that you want MORE than the habitual way – resonated with me.
Tony Robbins’ methodology is very similar to other self-help gurus and spiritual masters I have been studying. A combination of thought, feeling, and visualization. Take the thought, put feeling behind it, and visualize it. But now replace the vision with a more powerful vision, and imagine and FEEL what that would be like. Then, hold onto it. Tony Robbins calls this process creating an anchor. He also recommends using a physical trigger to support that anchor.
Whatever language you use, whomever you study, these concepts are always the same. I have mentioned these time and again throughout these Pathwalking posts. And what it always boils down to is the same thing: Choice.
Pathwalking is about not letting life live you, not being the creature of habit and a victim of circumstance. Pathwalking is not about finding who is to blame or who can give you a better way of being. Pathwalking is about YOU. Pathwalking is about me.
I have chosen to walk my own path because I want to control my destiny. I have too many goals and aspirations to keep letting the same bad habits, mental or physical, stop me from going where I want to. So while old habits may be hard to break, I believe that nothing worth having is necessarily easy. There is always time to replace old habits with new and better ones. It is a matter of desire, a matter of thought, a matter of feeling, and then a matter of actions.
What habits do you have that you want to change?
This is the forty-ninth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Thank you for joining me.
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