Have you ever tried to stop a bad habit and fallen off the wagon? You know, when you decide to give up chocolate, smoking, drinking and you have almost uncontrollable cravings?!
Well, did you know that starting good habits can have a similar push-back? I’ve been doing 2 new things this month – first, the monthly practice of joy in the Fall in Love With Life group.
Now you would think that bringing more joy in your life would be easy to do, easy to keep up with, no resistance.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Nope.
I’ve ‘forgotten’ to be joyful, I’ve been actively resisting doing things that bring me joy (because there was work, chores, other things to do), and I’ve been feeling decidedly un-joyful at times.
And just like when I’ve tried to ditch a bad habit, there’s been that lovely thought “oh what’s the point, I’m just going to give up”.
(My thoughts clearly haven’t met me, I’m more stubborn and tenacious than that.)
Also, joy! Why would I give up on joy?!?!?!
The second good habit I’ve been attempting to practice is to cut down my chocolate intake. I am a little bit of a chocaholic. But I know that if I try to stop eating chocolate full stop, there’s a push-back which makes it really hard work.
And I like easy. Easy works, so why do things the hard way? So I decided to just cut down by 25%. Easy, right?
So to give an example of this – I usually have 2 chocolate biscuits after lunch. So a 25% cut is one and a half biscuits. No problem. Easy.
There was one minor problem. About a week into the new habit, I had a pack of biscuits where most of the biscuits were stuck together in 3’s! Now of course, I could have just split them up and continued with my one and a half biscuit habit.
Did I heck! I ate all 3 biscuits instead.
So for a week or so my attempt to cut down my biscuit intake by 25% actually resulted in an increase of 50%. Lol.
Because this happened at the same time as I was resisting joy, I noticed the pattern and got to thinking about it.
In the Fall in Love With Life group, we have a different daily practice every month. And every month, there is resistance, there is push-back, there are things that get in the way of doing these things that will make life better.
It’s natural. Just like when we try to give up a bad habit, we get cravings, we get resistance, we get giving up thoughts.
And in both cases, these things are good – the resistances that come up, the fears that appear, the obstacles that get in your way all come up to be cleared.
In the chocolate biscuit example, one of the things I need to counter is to deal with my slightly cavalier, “fuck it, I’ll just have 3 biscuits” attitude.
In the joy example, one of the things I need to counter is a belief that joy must come after work and chores have been done (something I do not consciously think, but there’s clearly an underlying idiotic belief hiding in there somewhere).
When you start to go towards what you want, or away from what you don’t, these things will be thrown into sharp relief – not to stop you, but to give you a chance to overcome them. Because if you can see what’s in your way, you can find a way to counter it.
Encountering this push-back when you are trying to do something good for yourself can be a bit discouraging, but as long as you remember that it’s normal, it’s natural, and if you can keep calm and deal with the obstacles that are being thrown up, your good habits have a much better chance of sticking.
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