ACCEPTANCE. Yes, one needs to hold a stance of active acceptance and this is the most important aspect of habit change.
Active acceptance and not passive acceptance. Active acceptance means accepting “what is” in the here and now. Let us take someone who over thinks all the time and wants to change this habit of overthinking and enjoy some peace of mind from time to time. For this person active acceptance would be to acknowledge that they are habituated to overthinking, bring awareness to what is happening right now in their mind and note that “I am overthinking right now and am unable to stop it”. Active acceptance is accepting whatever is happening right now, because it is already happening. This empowers us to initiate action to have a different experience in the future.
On the other hand, passive acceptance would be “I am a overthinker, I always overthink, I don’t know how I will ever be able to stop this”. Passive acceptance is accepting the future. One feels doomed because in their mind they have given up, named themselves and identified themselves in a particular way and concluded that there is now way out.
Another possibility is “Non-acceptance”. People assume that holding a stance of non-acceptance is better than passive acceptance. But it is not so. Non-acceptance is equally unhelpful in effectively changing a deeply ingrained habit. It may help in temporarily changing the habit but such change is always shortlived. In our above example, non-acceptance would look like this, “I don’t want to be overthinking, I don’t accept my habit of overthinking and I am not going to let myself keep overthinking”. They would most likely end up overthinking on the topic of how to prevent them to overthink!
The following article may help to guide the reader on a pathway of habit change.
Awareness Journey · October 15, 2022
Learn to Replace unhelpful or even damaging HABITS. Your present situation is the culmination of all your past habitual tendencies. Your future is the trajectory of the path paved by the collective of all your present habits. You wish to create a new or different future for yourselves, simply work on your habits. Now this is easier said than done! Why is letting go of old habits and creating new ones difficult? The best example for me is our habit of brushing the teeth upon waking. I have first hand freshly minted experience in this because my grandson just turned seven and finally after almost five years of daily efforts, finally now he manages to brush his teeth more often than not, upon waking up. For all of us this act of brushing upon waking is so automatic that it goes unnoticed, but just ask your parents how much efforts it would have taken for them to instil this habit in us. The most important thing that is needed to inculcate a new habit is – Setting the Intention and holding the intention. In the above example, the parents set the intention and kept holding it for several years. If you look at all our habits – useful or harmful, it took someone to set an intention and hold the intention for a considerable amount of time. Habits such as drinking fruit juice, coffee, milk, alcohol, eating healthy or junk food, smoking, the intention was collectively set by people or organisations that stood to gain from it and the media and constant advertising to keep holding it for us. Here are some invitations to begin to form new habits: Setting an Intention: Now as adults, if we intend to replace a habit that has started becoming harmful for our health or wellbeing we need to set an intention for ourselves. For setting an intention, we need to first raise ourselves to the highest level within – our higher mind or Awareness mind and create the intention. While doing this, we need not consider the hurdles or our past attempts and failures. Just focus on what habit is required to be able to take us to the desired future of our vision. Focus needs to be exclusively on what needs to be done rather than how we are going to manage to do it. Since the setting of intention is the most important aspect, we can take several weeks and seek support and advice in doing it. Holding on to an intention: Once the intention is set the next is to just hold it and be for a long period of time measured in terms of years. Yes years. Who will hold it? We ourselves, we need to nominate one part of us as the higher self me and hold this intention from this space within us. Holding means just remembering the intention and maintaining complete clarity and faith in it becoming reality despite seemingly impossible hurdles. The one that holds the intention is not doing anything, not trying to do anything, no efforts, just hold and be, unwavering and steady and firm and faithful. The other one is the day to day rational, logical, self me. This is the one who will everyday try and strive and attempt repeatedly to reach up to the intention. Keep failing, keep coming back, keep feeling guilty, everything is allowed. While the other part is just holding and being, ever forgiving and just staying. It seems nothing is happening and nothing will ever happen, from the rational mind point of view and that is ok. Because it takes a year or maybe even a couple of years for the habit to get cultivated. It is like growing a tree. You just need to water it every day while seemingly nothing is happening on the day to day level. If you expect the tree to start bearing fruit in a few months you are bound to get frustrated, uproot it and walk off in a huff! We don’t do that do we? But we do exactly the same thing with ourselves! Decide to do something, struggle for a few months, give up saying I am not deserving or gifted enough to do that, and walk away, back to our repeated pattern of living and suffering. Get guidance: It helps to choose a mentor to play the role of the holder of intention. What is the best habit that you can ever gift yourself for a wholesome fulfilled life? The habit of sitting to meditate as easily and naturally as you brush in the morning. The online course helps you foster this habit for a lifetime. Since it is a longterm growth, we offer you the opportunity to join us thrice every day with gentle reminders each time. We encourage you to stay with it and allow the tree to grow and give you an abundance of fruit in the course of a few years.
If you wish to seem mentoring support in facilitating the process of cultivating healthy lifelong habits please read the following and reach out to enrol in the Awareness Journey mentoring program.http://hyderabadpsychologist.com/awareness-journey/