If we only do healthy things when we feel terrible and life is a disaster, we’re actually making terrible feelings and disasters a prerequisite for action and doing anything useful in life. It fuels an unhelpful cycle of waiting for things to get bad, then improving them enough to escape the bad feelings, quitting the healthy practices, and then waiting until everything is terrible again before starting the cycle all over.
It’s useful to break that cycle unless you want to keep doing this again and again. So our intention today is to explore sustaining a change and practicing that action simply because it’s a thing we do. This isn’t about getting anything. It’s not about trying to fix urges or escape intrusive thoughts or avoid some bad event or emotion. This is about learning to change when you don’t feel the pressure to change. That is going to be key to sustaining any healthy change.
In the next section, we shift our focus online to doing things we value and making an impact in the lives of those around us or our communities or the world. That gives us a direction to move in and it becomes our new fuel for action. But there won’t be anybody forcing us to choose that direction. It’s all about us cultivating that energy within to take actions independently and proactively.
EXERCISE: Repeat a change you’ve already practiced.
Pick one of the changes you already explored this week and try doing it again simply because it’s a thing you do. It could be yesterday’s practice of doing nothing, or the random change you explored earlier in the week. Bring curious to the practice. What is challenging about this? What uncertainties and resistance does the brain throw up? How can you support yourself? How can you enjoy this experience?
In the next section, we shift our focus online to doing things we value and making an impact in the lives of those around us or our communities or the world. That gives us a direction to move in and it becomes our new fuel for action. But there won’t be anybody forcing us to choose that direction. It’s all about us cultivating that energy within to take actions independently and proactively.