Habit Energy
Ever since my lap-top free Hawaiian vacation several months ago, I’ve been starting most mornings by reading Buddhist wisdom from a variety of dharma teachers before going online to engage with a frenzy of waiting emails. I love this new ritual. It slows me down, prioritizes peace, and strengthens my awareness of timeless truths.
Today, I opened a powerful little book by Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Focus, to a section called “Habit Energy” in which he discusses how habit energy is often stronger than our will, which is why our actions frequently don’t reflect our highest ideals, no matter our best intentions.
“It is very important to recognize our habit energy,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. “This energy may have been transmitted to us by many generations of ancestors, and we continue to cultivate it. It is very powerful…It is pushing us all the time. Even if you want to stop, it doesn’t allow you to stop.”
Thich Nhat Hanh explains that the energy of mindfulness can help us recognize and be present with our habit energy before we reflectively act on it. By simply greeting our habit energy with a smile and the words, “Hello my habit energy, I know you are there!” our habitual patterns will lose much of their strength.
While we may know intellectually that we should be living with more calm and mindful presence, Thich Nhat Hanh says that we’re always being pushed to rush around by our habit energy. “We’ve lost our capacity to be in the present moment. This is why practicing mindfulness and concentration is so important; talking and reading about it are not enough.”
My habit energy of rushing, both mentally and physically, is extremely strong. Not living in perpetual whirl of frenetic thoughts and charging head-long into the future is a challenging and ongoing practice for me. I’m constantly working on increasing my ability to keep my mind where my body is in present time. Having witnessed how impactful it is to consciously slow down when I am being carried along by the habit energy of rushing makes me greatly appreciate the following reminder that Yung Pueblo shares in his book, Lighter:
manage your reactions by slowing down
listen to your intuition by slowing down
restore your energy by slowing down
enter the moment by slowing down
feel your truth by slowing down
And I’d like to add one more reminder to Yung Pueblo’s list: Savor your life by slowing down—because taking time to really lean into and appreciate moments of peace, joy and pleasure is deeply nourishing and makes life so much sweeter.
If you're looking to cultivate more mindfulness in your life, please join us next Saturday for our free workshop, Wake Up to Your Life, and try this week's micro-meditation!
