Why lifestyles are better than habits and why the Why is so important
Hi everyone,
I wanted to write about this for some time now. I believe I have alluded to it on the forum on various occasions.
It is pretty interesting to observe how much we associate with being a certain way, both in others and in ourselves, if we have sufficient self-awareness and introspection, that is. This being a certain way certainly did not come overnight – heck it didn’t even come over a month. Our being-ness is so normal to us to such a degree where we often cannot see any other way of being. In those cases, we tend to forget how dynamic life is after all.
I’m sure you’ve heard people say “I am just no good at maths.”, “I am not an animal person.”, “I’m not good with people.”, etc, etc. You stop and think about this. While each of their statements may be 100% accurate, it is at no point final; it is not conclusive and not finished. Yet subjectively, it is so true and normal to them that it IS them. It is their beingness. Of course it is not easy to see beyond that from such a perspective.
We can normalize being a certain way through practice. Here, habits come into play. Once you repeat a certain action sufficient times, it becomes a habit. More often than not, we want to undo a negative habit and implement a good habit. In principle, this is a reasonable approach. But we are forgetting something rather important: the Why.
Let’s say you stumbled upon a youtube video titled “I meditated for a hundred days – here is what happened”, you clicked on it, and the person in the video had miraculous results in all areas of his life. Wow, great! You think, I can do that, too!
Excitedly and full of motivation, you start on day one. You even prepared a meditation journal, as that was recommended, to capture your insights in the process. You are brimming with enthusiasm and can’t wait to continue your meditation practice.
Yet on day five, something is off. You did not sleep well, and now you don’t feel like meditating. Is your motivation gone? Is it just temporary? Has it vanished forever? These thoughts cycle through your brain now. You decide to take a day off and continue tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes, and you somehow get that nagging feeling that you have relinquished your lovely streak of 4 days of consistent meditation. Hmmmm… Does not feel good again. Plus, there is so much work to do today. So you skip another day.
The next day, you start doubting the entire thing, concluding that meditation is either not for you, or it’s a scam altogether.
Your meditation journey has ended after a week. Or rather, 4 days.
I am here to tell you that your meditation journey has never even begun. Yes, from the outside, it looks like it has. And yes, of course you have done something.
But hold on for a moment, rewind, scroll back up and honestly check your initial motivation for beginning this journey.
You will quickly see that it was the youtube video that piqued your interest. Yet the underlying why has not been answered for you.
My nephew would always ask why. And once I answer, he would ask why. And once I answer that, he would ask why. And on the third, fourth and fifth iteration, he would ask why. At a point, where adults stop asking why, children keep digging deeper. Why? Why?
Your why is important…to you. You cannot live someone else’s why. In this case, you tried to live the why of the youtube guy’s why via his meditation journey. Yet this is your life, and you need to figure out your own why’s.
This kind of example is everywhere. New year’s resolutions, a 30 day pushup challenge, staying consistent with a SapienMed stack, etc, etc. What you should actually ask yourself is, what are these habits for? Specifically for you. How are they beneficial for your very own personal life?
You can read people saying they completed 30, 60, 90, 180 days of nofap. Very impressive. However, it appears that for all of these accomplishments, the entire focus was just on accumulating these days. The focus was on counting the days.
The real focus should have been on a new lifestyle.
When you decide to design a new lifestyle for yourself, you can stop being overly self-critical. For instance, you decide to learn Japanese. You wanna be able to visit Japan and have conversations with the locals. You wanna dedicate at least an hour of daily Japanese language learning, whilst listening to the Dream Seeds’ The Soul of Japan language series. Okay, sounds like an excellent plan.
Then a day comes where just nothing works in your favor, and you simply can’t bring yourself to learn Japanese for the day. Okay.
And this time, it really is okay. Because you have decided to make this a lifestyle, not a habit, not a counting of days, not a to-do list, etc. This is your lifestyle. This is your new normal. Plus, you have created a Why in advance. Your goal is to be able to speak with locals in their tongue. That is your why. The amount of vocabulary, the input hours, etc, that’s all fine. You wanna speak Japanese. Period. The goal is still there even if you miss a few days. You don’t have to beat yourself up over it.
So next time, when you decide to pursue a new habit, first ask yourself why you would want that. Really, honestly, sincerely ask why? Once you figured that out, reframe it into a lifestyle rather than counting days off of a habit checklist.
This to me is a more optimal approach in life.
