Have you noticed this phenomenon? It usually happens at this time of the year, because a lot of us want to start the new year reinventing ourselves. New year, new me. You are all fired up about something that is important to you. You go and do a course on it. You make great headway during the course. You understand the material better, you are getting better at doing it and you get some of the outcomes that you expected. Come the end of the course often within months, if not even weeks you have lost it. You no longer apply your learning, you do not continue to do what you learned and in no time flat it is all forgotten about again. It’s soooo frustrating. It can make you feel really bad. So, what is going on? Are you the problem? Is it your lack of will power? Or your inability to commit? Given that this is such a common experience for so many people, I dare risk saying: I don’t think so.
“Mindfulness isn’t difficult. We just need to remember to do it.” – Sharon Salzberg
Remembering is the hard bit, not just to practise mindfulness but anything new. This forgetfulness is based on several factors. Let’s look at a few. Most of us these days are overcommitted. You simply have too much on your plate. Even when you carve out time for a few weeks to learn something new you seldom plan in time after a course to continue. Subconsciously your mindset is: Been there, done it, got the T-shirt! Back to business as usual. In a culture that is goal orientated and achievement driven continuing something after you achieved the set goal is counter-intuitive. Because there is no clear goal to reach. What motivated and helped you to sign up for a course and see it through turns against you.
Another aspect that can get in the way of retaining momentum is that this was something you did for yourself, for your wellbeing or for fun. Doing the course was an act of you giving yourself ‘me-time’. But giving yourself me-time often goes very much against the grain of your conditioning. It might have been okay for you to spent six to eight weeks in a course, but it feels not okay to dedicate more time afterwards. This by the way does not happen consciously, but slips in sideways. You just find yourself not making time, or ‘having’ time to do it anymore. It constantly slips your mind, you forget.
Moreover we are in a culture of quick fixes and short term gratification. Many things that are worth while doing and engaging in, like learning to play an instrument, or learning how to paint, or learning how to be mindful takes a lot of time and repetition. Because, in order for your brain to grow the neuro-pathways of a skill you have to repeat the skill again and again and again. Every time you repeat something it gets another boost in the brain. There is a saying in neuroscience: What fires together wires together. So with every repetition of whatever you are doing neurons fire up in your brain and connect (wire) with each other. The more often and extended this firing is the more solid and strong the wiring will be. But a lot of us these days hold a lot of beliefs that run counter to this simple logic. One of these is particularly unhelpful:
‘I should be able to do this perfectly right from the start’.
It’s a conditioning we have that does not allow time for learning, especially embodied learning. Here is good example for this. Many people say they cannot draw. However, the thing about drawing is – quite apart from having some talent – that you have to do it a lot to get the eye-hand coordination. You need motor sensory training to have a feeling for it as well as a lot of exposure to different materials so that the embodied part of the brain learns how charcoal works in comparison to pencils for example. Many of us have forgotten, or never experienced that good learning comes from experimentation and playing around with what you learn, so that your brain gets a feel for it (i.e. more solid wiring).
On top of our cultural conditioning and our deeply held beliefs this very mechanism itself works against you. Our beautiful brain is already heavily wired up (unless you are a child reading this newsletter) with all kinds of learned habits and skills. And the stronger the wiring the deeper (as in: automatised and unconscious) the habit and skill is. Think: walking, talking and being able to read or write. There is no conscious effort involved in these (usually) because we spent decades doing and practicing this. And here is the rub. One of the biggest things that stops us from continuing with something new is that there is so much old ‘wiring’ that gets in the way. If you have a strong habit of always finishing your to-do list before you allow yourself to have me-time, anything new that is not linked to improving your ability to get through your to-do list will be overridden, ignored or blocked. The old wiring is just too solid.
So, these are just a few reasons for why it is so hard to create a new habit, or stick with a new skill: force of habit, unhelpful beliefs and cultural pressures all work against you. There are loads more and I might write more about them in the future. But for now what can you do about this, if you want to? Of course there is a way out of this and you probably know what I will say next. Yes, mindfulness! When we slow down enough and become aware enough to notice how we get hijacked, that is were we begin to have a choice. Developing awareness and curiosity is the most important first step. When you noticed that you have not done your yoga for the emptiest day, or you stopped making time for cooking nice food, or whatever it is (including mindfulness practice), PAUSE. Resist the temptation to beat yourself up or feel despair, because that will just keep you in the stuck place you are already in. Both of these are simply strategies you have developed to not engage with what is happening. Instead ask yourself: What is going on here? What are my reasons for this? What do I tell myself? What is missing that would support me doing this? And what – especially internally – is stopping me engaging with this in the way I would like.
This inquiry can reveal a lot. And it might be very uncomfortable, especially when you manage to be really honest with yourself. Many people when they start with mindfulness have the idea that when they learn to be mindful it will all be nice. They will feel better, be happier and more at peace. This is definitely true, and sometimes you get glimpses of it right from the beginning. But often to get there you first have to face the reasons for why you are not already feeling so good in the first place. And then you have to do something about that, which often involves more mindfulness, creating spacious non-judgemental awareness and loads of loving kindness and self-compassion. Only when we turn towards ourselves and what is so deeply wired within us with care and a willingness to engage, do we have the opportunity to change what is getting in the way of our efforts to implement new things in our life.
So, to come back to where I started, it is not your lack of willpower that is stopping you.
If your mindfulness skills are a bit rusty, or you have not yet learned how to do it, join me! My next Mindfulness course will start mid February.
For more information and to book go
here.
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May you thrive in life!
Britta
Author: Britta Schuessler
I am a psychotherapist, mindfulness teacher and life coach. I care deeply about the wellbeing of others. I have worked in this field since 2003. I am passionate about helping people live their lives more fully.
