The real difficulty with breaking a (pacifying) habit is the (false) belief that you can't live without the habit. I had this thought while making a snack and losing a battle to a roach on top of the microwave (I sprayed her with all-purpose cleaner but she got away). I'm having what I call "granola" (oats, molasses, brown sugar, butter, walnuts) which is really more of a meal. When I swim, I tend to want two small lunches. But anyway, I've been thinking about how my eating habits have been slowly changing for about six months now because of (I think) a shift in awareness of my body. Or maybe it's just that I'm ready to truly devote energy and focus to taking care of my body--and my chores and work--without any denial about what I'm really doing (I tend to be very good at self-delusion). For example, recently I've had to do a lot of work and run a lot of errands involving my car, and I pretty much took care of it in a timely manner without much stress. This behavior is pretty much unprecedented for me. That sounds kind of silly, but it's really true.
So my question to myself is, what is different about the way you see yourself now that allows you to take better care? (Not that I look in the mirror and talk to myself in the second person. That much.) Is it true that just because I'm in better physical shape, I'm automatically performing better in other areas? Is it like firing on all cylinders vs. firing on two?
Beliefs--not necessarily the religious or political kind, but the self-labeling kind--are, of course, powerful, but I'm only recently coming to realize how much so for me. As someone who considers myself pretty a-religious, a-superstition, a-supernatural, I haven't paid much attention to my "beliefs." It sounds ridiculous, but maybe I'm going around thinking I don't have any. "Opinions," sure, but "beliefs," nah.
Apparently, though, I go around most of the time with this deep belief that I can't handle anything. Back to that childhood memory of thumbsucking: I distinctly remember being scared and resistant to breaking that "habit" (I still think thumb when I hear the word habit) because I deeply believed that I could not fall asleep without my left thumb in my mouth and my silky ponytail in my right hand. (Have I mentioned that the two tasted/felt great together, like wine and cheese?) This was a truth that I accepted: I am not able to fall asleep unless I suck my thumb and hold my hair. Sure, I am aware of the risks: my friends will think I'm a baby, my teeth will buck out, my thumb will always have these calluses. But it feels good right now, and I can't imagine a life without it, so I'll quit later. (Like a smoker.)
I vaguely remember the night I decided to quit. I'd been wanting to for years, but I never gave it a real shot. I think I was nine, I'd gotten a crunchy perm and my mom and I had had a discussion about really quitting, and I woke up the next morning and there was no thumb in my mouth (because it had happened before that I went to bed with the best intentions to quit and awoke with the thumb). I told mom that I didn't even remember falling asleep. That was the end of the habit forever--my "truth" was no longer true because it was, in fact, possible to fall asleep without my thumb. My thumb was not the thing inducing sleep. Who knew?
I guess that's what's happening for me (again). A deep belief is showing itself to be untrue. I don't want to over-dramatize one triathalon class, but the belief that I never would or could do something like this was something I carried around as a truth. And now I've woken up on the other side and I can't remember how I got here (though it lasted two months) but I know that I broke some kind of habit by making some kind of decision. I believed (and still believe half the time) that I needed a certain level of comfort--a certain amount of pacification via food, drink, physical indulgence and idleness--to exist. Or to have the life that I want. And I guess I thought intense exercise would only lead to frustration and feelings of failure, and those are not comforting things that add to the joy of my life (even though I know that comfort and joy are not that closely related). But I don't actually want an idle life, so I can't keep sitting around saying I can't have what I want. A lot of my stress in the past few years has been with myself--I've wanted a different (and very specific, actually) kind of lifestyle but I didn't really think I was the kind of person who could make those changes.
I guess I am the kind of person who needs to see something to believe it, and now that I've seen what I can do, I can no longer label myself in the way that I used to (as someone who can't exert herself).
I'm not saying I'm going to quit eating carbs, drinking, and watching shows--those three things are way too pleasurable to even label as "bad." I've just quit believing the lie that those things will pacify and distract me from life--or, really, the lie that I needed to be distracted from life in the first place. Or the lie that there aren't more joyous and powerful ways to improve the quality of one's life. Or some other idea that hasn't quite surfaced yet.
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