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Bad habit weeds and good habit flowers.

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Weeds are bad habits. Flowers are good habits. If you want more flowers, you have to dig up the weeds, sure. But you then have an empty space where the weed was. To prevent a weed going back in, you have to plant more flowers. You also have to weed regularly to keep them from getting so big that they are hard to remove.

We have to be intentional about our time in order to not lapse into bad habits. The New Year is coming, and plenty of people have resolutions. Sadly, the resolutions last at most a month for many people. Who wants to start going to the gym when it is cold and dark outside?

But that is the very best time to do anything – when it is hard. It is easy to quit smoking when things are going well. It is when things are going poorly that the old habit will come back. You have to have a different thing to do to fill that mental space; otherwise that bad habit “weed” will take up residency again. It might even be worse than before.

I have a morning routine that helps me set my day on the right track. I try to do all of it, but some mornings I have less time before work than others. I do as much as I can and I don’t obsess about it. Obsessing about it is yet another bad habit. It doesn’t change anything.

I’ve talked about some of it before, but not in this context. I have added some things too. I offer this as a suggestion – take of it what you will, or none at all. I find it helpful, and I hope that some of it is helpful to you.

When I wake up I’ll say the Modeh Ani – the Jewish prayer of thanksgiving to God for letting me have another day of life. This is a new practice. If I don’t say the actual prayer, I’ll at least be mindful and conscious of the gift of life and health and another day. I think it is important not to take anything for granted. That keeps me in a state of thankfulness and mindfulness. With that mindset, everything is a blessing.

I’ll have breakfast (either oatmeal or yogurt) with grapes and a banana. During that time I’ll check the computer for my “news”. I don’t read regular news because it is so depressing. One day I’d like to see news that is balanced – good and bad, but until then I’ll find out what is going on in the world in different ways. I discovered that starting off the day with negative news made the day start off very badly. My goal is to have the mindset of new day, new chance.

I’ll read the Daily Office – a daily set of readings from the Bible. If left to my own devices I’ll read whatever I want, which will end up being nothing at all sometimes. Having a set structure helps me a lot.

I’ll finish up a blog post I’ve pre-written the day before. I’ll write during the day on my phone or Kindle and email it to myself. When I’m at my home computer I’ll pick one of the posts I’ve started and I’ll finish it up. Sometimes it is something I’ve started the day before, sometimes it is something from months ago that I just didn’t have the desire to work on then. Rarely do posts come fully formed from my head in one sitting. They never come in easy-to-manage chunks of time. I’ve learned I don’t have the time or focus to start and finish a post from scratch every morning. It is jarring to me to switch gears from being creative to having to get ready to go to work, so I create at other times. Waiting in doctor’s offices is ideal.

I pray while I’m in the shower. Every day during my shower I make an intention that that day will be dedicated to God. I try to treat every day as if it is like a retreat. I expect to see and hear from God every day. I know that God is in everything and every time, but this way I’m reminding myself of that. It isn’t that I’m calling God into the day – God is already there. I’m calling myself to be awake and alert and mindful to the presence of God.

After that I go do some yoga. I have a mat out in my craft room and I will practice yoga for about 10 to 15 minutes. During this I will focus more on being mindful and present.

Then I’ll read that day’s page from “Affirmations for the Inner Child” by Rokelle Lerner. These are simple one-page affirmations that are very healing and help me slowly heal myself. I’ve found it is easier to face the fact of my abusive upbringing in little chunks. In my head I want to not deal with it at all, but in my heart I know I need to face it to heal it.

Then, if I have yet more time, I’ll do a “Praying in Color” sketch/meditation. This is yet a further way to clear out my head and connect with God.

Jesus tells us about how dangerous it is to not have good practices in place, in Matthew 12:43-45

43 “When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it roams through waterless places looking for rest but doesn’t find any. 44 Then it says, ‘I’ll go back to my house that I came from.’ And returning, it finds the house vacant, swept, and put in order. 45 Then off it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and settle down there. As a result, that man’s last condition is worse than the first. That’s how it will also be with this evil generation.”

The bad habit, whatever it is, is like an unclean spirit. When you get rid of it, if you don’t have a good habit in the place, it will sneak back in and bring reinforcements.

Who rescues the rescuers? On addiction, passivity, and power.

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Who rescues the rescuers? When there is a natural disaster there are always people who go rescue those who are trapped by the floodwaters or under the flattened building. Who takes care of them? What kind of lives do they live so that they are able to help others? Maybe we can learn from them so we don’t need to be rescued so often.

If you keep not looking out for yourself, you’ll keep needing to be rescued. Your problems will always be someone else’s problems to fix in your mind. The mark of an adult is the ability to take care of yourself. Adulthood has nothing to do with age. There are plenty of people in their fifties and older who still need to be rescued.

For some people, life is all about reacting to problems instead of planning ahead. For some people the same bad things keep happening over and over and they just don’t seem to notice the pattern. They are always late with their bills, late getting ready in the morning, just late late late. They find they have some incurable disease because they ignored the symptom or they didn’t take care of themselves for years. They barely have enough energy to take care of themselves, much less anyone else.

What do you do if you lock yourself out of your house? Wait till your parents or roommate come home? Call a locksmith? Or do you already have a spare key stored away in a safe spot? Do you have a ritual to make sure you always have your keys with you?

Then there is the idea that “you can always go home.” Plenty of people have their parents as a backup plan in case they get laid off or they get divorced. They will move back in with their parents. But what if you can’t? What if your parents are dead? What would you do differently about your life then to make sure you are OK? Would you move in with your friends, or would you have been saving money all along? Would you have had a backup plan?

Always thinking that someone else will take care of it will mean you always need someone to take care of it.

I knew a guy who was constantly running out of gas, locking his keys in his car, and forgetting his wallet. Every week one of these things would happen, and his parents would rescue him. How much of this was his attitude, and how much of this was their rescuing him? What would he have done if they were out of town? Be more mindful? Plan ahead?

When he got addicted to prescription pain pills that he was taking recreationally, he again blamed it on others. He was passive about it. “Why do bad things keep happening to me?” he wailed. Bad things don’t keep happening. He kept letting them happen.

Nobody forced him to take drugs recreationally. That was his choice. It didn’t happen to him. He did it to himself. And he kept doing it, until his wife left him and he’d pawned everything he had to get the next fix.

When does it become too painful to keep doing the same thoughtless things? When does it become easier to plan ahead? When do we wake up and take responsibility for our lives? When do we become people who don’t need to be rescued?

Maybe it has something to do with nobody is around to rescue us anymore, and we have to fly with our own wings for a change. Just like with baby birds, it is hard at first, but then we get strong.

Intention – goals, Alice, and English roundabouts.

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At the beginning of some yoga classes the teacher will invite you to set an intention. This is a prayer, or a hope, or a goal. It is a focus point. It is a way of aiming yourself in the right direction.

I offer you this insight from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where…
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …so long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

So you need to set an intention, otherwise you’ll end up just anywhere. You’ll wander off aimlessly and end up years later wondering how you got there. You got there because you drifted along with the stream.

Sometimes it isn’t planning to fail, but failing to plan that is the problem.

This is true mentally and physically. Where do you want to go? Do you have a business plan? Do you have a career plan? Do you have a spiritual plan? This isn’t about the “name it and claim it” trend – it is about being awake and intentional about life. I don’t believe in “wish-craft”. I do believe that everything worth having in life is made up of little tiny steps. You have to have a plan, and you have to work towards that.

Neil Gaiman in his “Make Good Art” book said that when he first started out he envisioned where he wanted to be as a mountain. He’d look at whatever job was offered him and measure it up as to whether it moved him closer to the mountain or further away. This seems like a good idea. Does this little thing get me closer to where I want to be?

Life is cumulative. A college degree is made up of many classes and many tests. It didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of little steps, going towards a goal. Everything built on top of everything. If you took a class and read a book and attended a lecture on your own with no goal in mind, you might learn something but it wouldn’t add up to anything specific. You will have frittered away your time, aimlessly wandering. You’d end up nowhere, lost.

This reminds me of when I was on a trip in England with my aunt. She was driving and I was navigating. I’d give directions as to what leg of the roundabout to take and she’d sometimes pay attention. She’d take the third leg instead of the fourth and we’d be hurtling down, getting further and further away from where we wanted to be. English roundabouts aren’t like American interstates. If you get off on the wrong one you can’t turn around and right yourself anytime soon. You’ll be at least thirty minutes away down the wrong road before you get to another roundabout where you can reorient yourself. She could have stayed in the roundabout, going around again to aim at the correct leg, but she didn’t. This happened a lot.

After several days of this I relinquished my role as navigatrix. Why bother telling her where to go when she was going to ignore me anyway?

So, my point is to aim. Plan ahead. Have some idea of where you want to go, because either you’ll stay stuck where you are, or you’ll end up really far away from your goal. What do you want to be doing ten years from now? How are you going to get there? Sometimes it takes baby steps in that direction. Just keep aiming that way, keep walking.

And don’t get in a car with my aunt.