There are five yellow roses and a few asters in the cane basket. Mansi has a little red bindi slightly off centre on her forehead. She places the flowers at the wooden alter in her house, lights a lamp, chants her daily prayer. The prayer is her daily habit. She knows the chants very well. So in her sing song voice, sometimes barely audible she chants to Lord Vishnu while rushing into the kitchen to prepare breakfast and pack lunch for her two kids, intermittently encouraging them to hurry or they will be late. She expertly picks up the chant where she has left it midway and deftly completes it just in time for her morning coffee.
Derek picks up the two text books and notes and strides into grade 5 with the a well rehearsed joke and the oft repeated lesson. He has been doing this for six years now. He can take these lessons in his sleep! So to say.
The yoga class is full. The instructor is an experienced lady in sound health. The members of the group are regular and meet at the club house everyday at 6 am. The tall lady provides the necessary rhythm and the members make familiar movements as they slide into thoughts of yesterday and plans of tomorrow!
The daily prayer, the wisdom of an experienced teacher and the exercise are all good for us. What is so not good about these activities? These are GOOD habits, and they are good for us. Right?
My answer is a NO.
When you do a thing every day for a certain number of days it becomes a habit. And forming good habits is good for you. That is what they have been telling us. So we make lists of actions we like to do. We decide to do these everyday for the rest of our lives. This mostly happens on the first of January! But yes, we do stumble out of bed and reach for the toothbrush, we come home and drop the car keys into the bowl on the desk in the lobby, and we check into our Smartphones for updates from our various groups.
Imagine doing the same things but with greater attention. Would that make a difference? Let’s take the task of breathing. Well no argument here. Breathing is good, keeps us alive! But wait, breathing is not a habit — it is almost involuntary. Most often we are not even aware that we are breathing.
James Nestor writes in his book BREATH
“the most efficient breathing rhythm occurred when both the length of respirations and total breaths per minute were locked in to a spooky symmetry: 5.5-second inhales followed by 5.5-second exhales, which works out almost exactly to 5.5 breaths a minute. This was the same pattern of the rosary. The results were profound, even when practiced for just five to ten minutes a day. “I have seen patients transformed by adopting regular breathing practices,” said Brown.”
This quote emphasises that even breathing, which happens mostly with neither attention nor thought, if done with care and attention brings enormous difference to the way we function.
The most obvious result we seek from any and all of our actions is joy. We wish to experience joy and therefore we do what we do. The mother who prays, the mother who cooks, the dad who picks up grocery, the dad who drops his kids to school is performing actions hoping to get some fulfilment out of them. But if actions are done with absent minded attention, then joy is an elusive factor. When we form a habit we are performing actions without thinking. Muscle memory takes over. Actions are not based on conscious attention.
Muscle Memory is the ability to reproduce a particular movement without conscious thought, acquired as a result of frequent repetition of that movement.
Actions performed without attention leave behind emptiness. There is expectation that others will supply the JOY factor with praise, gift or promotion! But then in this mad world where everybody is in a crazy race who has the time to be generous? Who has the patience to supply that JOY? We teach our kids to say sorry and thank you and welcome! These words are meaningless if they are uttered by habit!
The idea of creating a routine for ourselves is definitely beneficial. We are in control and do not ride on the random horses of whim and fancy! A routine must serve merely as the starting point of action. When we pay complete attention to the action on hand, there is a sense of completion and involvement. And this is the beginning of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains as the concept of finding FLOW in everyday life.
Happiness and joy come from within. This wonderfully invigorating experience comes from conscious action. While we all agree that smoking, stealing and interrupting others and picking your nose are bad habits. I must say that praying, cooking, exercising and combing your hair are great only if they are not thoughtless habits! So I say, there are no GOOD habits!
Would you agree?
