Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk and renowned peace activist, writes about habit energy, describing it as the habitual chasing after the future in our thoughts—a blockage of our ability to be in the present moment. If you have ambitions, dreams or aspire to change yourself in any way, then you may have recognized that doing, achieving and accomplishing becomes habitual. Our action-based thoughts, constantly painting themselves with broad strokes on a future canvas, can be as habitual as breathing. They are so habitual that even in our down time we feel as though we should be doing something productive.
Yet we know we need to rest. We know the importance of being present, for the opposite of this is a whirlwind in which life passes us by. We know our work will benefit from stillness. But how can we find it? How can we rest and take stock of the present moment with so much left to be done? This post serves to help us recognize our ambitious habit energy for what it is and help us find moments of true rest in what would first appear as unlikely moments.
“Habit energy pushes us to run, to always be doing something, to be lost in thoughts of the past or the future and to blame others for our suffering. And that energy does not allow us to be peaceful and happy in the present moment.
Ambitious habit energy
Have you ever spent an entire day or more at sea? If so, then you’ll recall that when you returned to dry land and climbed under the sheets to sleep that night, even many hours removed from the ocean, you could still feel the melodic rocking of the boat against the swelling waves. Your whole body felt these subtle rocking sensations even though you were lying in your stable bed. Our ambitious habit energy is like this. Long after our work is done or long before it begins, we feel the tension and struggle of getting things done. We can observe this ever-present tension in our bodies even if we are completely still.
I don’t care if you have David Goggins-like work ethic, you need to rest and you know your work will be more precise for it. Watching TV, reading a novel or sleeping are forms of rest, but not the kind of rest we’re discussing here. In all those activities, we are either ignoring or suppressing the autopilot tension of our ambitious state. To truly rest, we need to sit in silence. We need to sit with the sole intention of resting. Only with this deliberate and directed rest can we say to ourselves, ‘I’m turning off my auto-pilot of getting shit done for the day, and now I’m here to rest’. Then, we can observe the tension in our bodies and begin to let go.
The first step is admitting you have a problem habit
We’ve all heard of, known someone, or perhaps even experienced ourselves a battle with substance abuse. And anyone with the strength and support to have recovered knows that the first step toward recovery is admitting. Addictions have a lot in common with habits. They both modify the neural pathways in the brain. Thomas Oppong writes, in his article The Neuroscience of Change: How to Change Your Brain to Create Better Habits:
Habits are found in an area of your brain called the basal ganglia. The more often you perform an action or behave a certain way, the more it is physically wired into your brain. This amazing adaptive quality of your brain is known as neuroplasticity. Your brain forms neuronal connections based on what you do repeatedly in your life—both good and bad.
Habits drive our behaviour. The bad ones force our bodies into situations that the conscious mind knows is not good for us. Constantly doing, constantly focusing on outcomes is very much a habit. We first need to recognize it as such. You might be thinking, ‘but being ambitious is a good thing’. Is it a good thing when we’re trying to spend time with our family? Is it a good time when we’re trying to sleep?
Mindfulness for rest
Ardent drive can be a good habit for putting money in the bank, but I think we would all agree there is a time and place for it. The problem is that the humming of our engines resounds into our times of rest. We’ve all been at the dinner table with friends or family and let our mind scurry ahead to the following day’s task list. We should strive to be there fully, not just for them, but for ourselves as well. Life is short. Life is full of beauty. We should learn to be there completely to absorb and appreciate it all. Being there for life is just one argument for learning to fold our ‘doing mode’ neatly away; we haven’t even touched upon our physical and mental health.
“Let us train to live each moment of our daily life deeply. That is why I like to define mindfulness as the energy that helps us to be there 100 percent. It is the energy of your true presence.”
Sitting in meditation each day, even if for only five minutes, is the optimal time and place to rest. This is the moment to notice bodily tension and let go of it. This is the time to allow yourself to stop gripping and grasping. Be like a stone naturally sinking to the bottom of a riverbed, with no particular influence or agenda, and eventually resting at its final destination while the universe flows externally overhead. Meditation is the ideal time to rest, but we don’t walk around all day with our meditation cushion and incense in tow, now do we?
The power of cues
We need to train ourselves to see the multitude of ordinary moments in our daily lives that present opportunities for a moment of rest. Not only should we practice recognizing these precious moments for rest so as not to squander them, but we should also associate cues with them, so that they become more automatic—more habitual, much like our pervasive desire to get shit done.
Charles Duhigg, author of the bestselling book The Power of Habit, based much of his work on a simple and scientifically proven concept: the habit loop. The habit loop describes the behavior pattern of any habit. It starts with a cue, followed by an action or routine, followed by a reward. The first step to changing or acquiring a new habit is identifying the cue. What if we could designate cues to pull us back into the present moment?
Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of washing the dishes as an ordinary task, which if undertaken with the intent to be mindful can be quite relaxing. The thought of turning an unpleasant task into a pleasant one with just some mindful concentration struck me. I began practicing mindful dishwashing, and with time, I began to associate the dishes with slow, restful movement. Gradually, I began to expand this practice to handwashing and showering. One day I suddenly realized that water in general was beginning to serve me as a cue to be mindful. Even drinking a glass of water is now a firmly rooted reminder for me to pause, take a breath, and connect with the present.
Reversing ambitious habit energy
Hanh has also written much on the subject of mindful walking. Again, I heeded his advice and began practicing mindful walking as often as possible (this can be a hard habit to acquire because we have spent so much of our lives walking with our minds full, so be patient with yourself). Gradually, I began to associate walking with slowing down, connecting with my surroundings. It began on walks for the sake of walking, but with more practice I began to walk mindfully even on my way to a meeting or heading to the kitchen for a snack. Water and walking. These became my cues to take a few seconds to check in and to rest my monkey mind.
Now, think about how many instances throughout the day you walk or interact with water. It’s got to be in the high dozens. Now imagine if in each of these routine actions you became habituated with slowing down for a second, breathing deeply, and unclenching. That’s a whole lot more rest than just the eight hours beneath the sheets.
When we build this practice of associating ordinary and unmissable cues with mindfulness, we can enjoy more rest amid even the busiest of days. Take time to examine your own ambitious habit energy. The transition between rest and action happens countless times throughout the day, so take some time to recognize this transition so you can arrive in each moment mindfully. Use meditation or quiet reflection as the moment to notice that your engine is still running. Finally, making mindfulness a habit is a difficult thing to do and one that you’ll never perfect, so be patient with yourself and enjoy the process. There is no wasted effort in mindfulness because present awareness, no matter how ephemeral, is a precious thing.