Habits versus goals

Create Your Own Sunshine, photo credit Kirsten Akens May 2015

Ever since chatting with Gretchen Rubin, and reading her new book Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, I've been thinking differently about habits and goals.

I'm in the second year of my Birthday Lists, and when I constructed my "41 Before 42" list, I decided to remove items that I wanted to be habits in my life, instead of one-time/first-time experiences or activities. So behaviors like "meditate/yoga every day" and "blog a certain number of times a week" are now on a habit list I'll post below in a bit.

The reason for this, as Gretchen says, is that individual goals are meant to have start and stop times. For example, last summer I wanted to climb Pikes Peak. I had a starting point. I researched. I trained. I hiked Pikes Peak. I celebrated. I stopped (aka crashed on the couch). Even though I do want to keep hiking as a regular activity in my life, I summited (ha) that particular goal.

Habits, on the other hand, are behaviors we want to follow indefinitely.

Journal.

Run.

Meditate.

(Always place my keys in the same spot so I stop an unnecessary hunting process each morning.)

Think of habits as behaviors that we want to start, and assuming they are beneficial to our lives, not ever stop.

Habits: commit and do.

Or in other, more famous, words ...

It's worth noting if your habits are not working for you (or you try to instill a new habit into your life and it doesn't take), it's a good idea to spend some time reflecting on why. A certain habit may not actually be beneficial to your life, as I found with making the bed. Or you may need to reframe the habit based on your particular tendency. Or you may need to set up strategies to help you.

Strategies like accountability — which my tendency needs and which I'm going to accomplish by posting for you all the list of new habits I'm cultivating these days. I'll report back on how I'm doing at some point in the future ... (notice I did not give you an end date).

KIRSTEN'S NEW HABIT LIST

  • Walk Lucy, daily (unless one of us is honest-to-goodness sick, or it's pouring down rain, snowing or icy).
  • Meditate, daily.
  • Review finances, daily.
  • Blog three times a week.
  • Say yes, and thank you, when someone offers help. (Thanks for the suggestion, Judith.)

Let me know in the comments what habits you're looking to add or remove from your life. And, since you're helping me, how I can help you.

Sunday sadhana

Flying Guy Mural, photo credit Kirsten Akens May 2015

To me, sadhana is a daily spiritual practice allowing time and space for an individual to turn inward.

As Yogi Bhajan (of the Kundalini yoga tradition) says, "Sadhana is self-enrichment. It is not something which is done to please somebody or to gain something. Sadhana is a personal process in which you bring out your best."

Sadhana could be taking a walk in nature, doing breath work or yoga asanas on a mat, spending time meditating or chanting, reading and reflecting on a poem, or simply watching the sun rise.

Please accept this post as a possible starting point for your own practice today.

Eagle Poem, from In Mad Love and War, by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Sunday sadhana

Sky and house, credit Kirsten Akens April 2015

To me, sadhana is a daily spiritual practice allowing time and space for an individual to turn inward.

As Yogi Bhajan (of the Kundalini yoga tradition) says, "Sadhana is self-enrichment. It is not something which is done to please somebody or to gain something. Sadhana is a personal process in which you bring out your best."

Sadhana could be taking a walk in nature, doing breath work or yoga asanas on a mat, spending time meditating or chanting, reading and reflecting on a poem, or simply watching the sun rise.

Please accept this post as a possible starting point for your own practice today.

From Chapter 11 of When Women Were Birds, by Terry Tempest Williams

I was fascinated by what I couldn't see but would die without. All About Air was the book I repeatedly checked out of the library. Four gases create air: nitrogen (78.09 percent), oxygen (20.95 percent), argon (0.93 percent), and carbon dioxide (0.039 percent). Water vapor (2 percent) is also found in the atmosphere. This gave me confidence. The unseen world was real.

 

I would lie in a sun puddle on our living-room floor, staring at dust particles dancing in the column of light streaming above me. Using my field guide to air, I tried to differentiate flakes of dried skin from specks of dirt, sand, or salt from the sea. Smoke and pollen were in this mix, and I imagined dust mites eating the microscopic flecks floating in the air, swirling around us all the time, too tiny to see. The sun became an honest broker in showing me what we breathe. But what thrilled me most was the fact that millions of meteors burn up every day as they enter our atmosphere. As a result, Earth receives ten tons of dust from outer space. Not only do we take in the world with each breath, we are inhaling the universe. We are made of stardust.