Habits of being rather than habits of doing

 New years are always a moment for people to make resolutions, but honestly, most of those fail. Why? Because to make real change, you need to do small things but consistently. Doing things consistently really only works when they have become a habit--part of your daily routine. So how do you build new habits? The easiest is to figure out how to connect things to your existing routine. For example, I tend to check the news in the morning at breakfast--so here news is connected to breakfast. If I wanted to build in some more moments of meditation in my day, I could try to also connect it to breakfast--although that may be challenging when I am in a rush. Even a short moment is helpful. In fact, Mingyur Rinpoche always says that the best way to meditate is not one long session of multiple hours but rather many short sessions of a few minutes. Because every short session remains fresh and leaves you wanting more. Moreover, interspersing meditation sessions--or whatever other habit you'd like to work on--with everyday life is also helpful because it integrates our memory of the habit with many different cues belonging to our daily life rather than only the cue of a single moment. This means that the habit can more easily spring to mind. I found that Mingyur Rinpoche's Tergar self-study program is also built around this idea with many short sessions that you can easily sneak in somewhere. Similarly, in the field of exercise I started to really enjoy the Hard Abs fitness youtube channel which has very short workouts that you can easily squeeze somewhere into your day (also helpful when you get cold while working because the thermostat is low these days...). 

Picture from Morlaix Ballet Camp by Michel Le.
 You can see us here on pointe, a ballet example 
of a skill that you cannot develop with only sporadic
effort--it requires consistent effort.

But why is it so difficult to build a habit? This is because our habits are already well-practised, so changing them is really hard. Professor Bas Verplanken found that the best way to change habits is when we do not have strong habits, for example when we move, or when we are travelling.

While what I discussed so far is about habits for things we do, but in Buddhism, the most important habits are about how we are. So instead of building an intention to do something like a meditation practice, you can also build an intention to have an intention--can you challenge yourself to cultivate more intentions of helping others rather than getting ahead? And even such intentions are most suitably cultivated by attaching them onto existing habits, such as remembering this intention when you do the planning for your working day. I will definitely try to reinvigorate that habit! But for now: happy new year!

Happiness is often not where we look

 Today was the last day of an online winter retreat that I co-facilitated. In the contemplation that I led, we investigated how we all want to be happy, but in searching for this happiness, we are misguided. We talked about the "8 worldly preoccupations"--specific sets of hopes and fears that we run after/run away from, For example running towards praise (hello social media!) and away from criticism. The problem with this is we put our happiness in the hands of others. This misunderstanding is also the topic of slogan 52 of Lojong" "Don't misunderstand." 

However, the slogan itself talks about six types of misunderstanding. First, mistaken patience. We have patience with our work--working long hours to only get money that we then use to buy leisure to get away from our work. Yet, we do not have patience with things that don't get societal recognition, such as the invisible work of being on a spiritual path. The same is true by the way for ballet, where not many people have patience with the slow boring exercises, even if they spend many hours doing classes with fancy jumps and turns. But it is often the most boring stuff that eventually makes life better because you are cultivating helpful habits.

Second is mistaken aspirations. I think society pushes us towards aspiring to have a good career, money, relationships, and so on. But do those make us happy? In the end real happiness can only be found inside--as it is said: there's no treasure like contentment. Third is mistaken taste. We tend to go for short-term pleasure, rather than long-term benefit. There are even psychological studies of a phenomenon called "inter-temporal choice" where people are asked to make decisions between rewards in certain time frames and it is a consistent finding that people tend to prefer smaller rewards when they can get them now over larger rewards for which they have to wait weeks or months. There is nothing wrong with enjoying some sensual pleaaures, but it's important to realize that they will never last. Even delicious chocolate (which  I am quite addicted to!) will become aversive when you have too much of it.

Fourth is mistaken compassion, which seems strange: how can compassion be mistaken? Nevertheless, compassion tends to be only for the people suffering, and not for the ones that are happy, but who will inevitably suffer later. Especially those people committing crimes right now are bound to suffer later--probably much worse. Buddhism teaches us to also have compassion for those. I personally find this a helpful practice because it humanizes that person and somehow therefore makes me feel less attacked by their acrions. Next is mistaken care, in which we encourage people to go after their self-centered aims. This is a challenging one as well, because we are invited to encourage people to put their spiritual practice over their career, which is not something that tends to make sense in society. However, supporting someone to find their happiness inside is probably a good idea in this uncertain time. Finally, mistaken joy is only rejoicing when we do well, but not when others do well. This is mistaken--the green monster of jealousy does not really help you feel better either. So cultivating joy in the good fortune of others is a recipe for resilience. Wow, that was a lot for such a simple slogan!

How to be lazy while being busy

One of the most challenging things for me is the concept of "active laziness". This is the idea that you do many things to avoid doing the main thing, which usually is also the most challenging thing. I think Lojong slogan 51 is also exactly about that. It says "this time, practice the main points." In the Buddhist realm, practising the main point would refer to making sure you don't forget to practise, and when you practise, to ensure the practice is about reducing your self-importance rather than for example showing off what a good Buddhist you are.

Picture of being busy with lots of mostly 
meaningless stuff in the ballet Napoli
at Morlaix Ballet Camp. Picture by Michel Le

But of course this idea also applies to academia, where it is extremely easy to spend all your time doing things that are helpful, such as reviewing papers or reading other people's papers or improving your lectures, but do not move your career ahead and do not move your research forward. I think it is really challenging to decide what the most important contribution is that I can make in a given day to science. Because even if reviewing a paper on the short term helps science, getting my own ideas into the world also helps science.

Also in ballet it is important to think about those things, because it is really easy to just follow ballet classes and hope you will improve. Because as Julie Gill says in this episode of her podcast, it is important to analyze what are the most important things for us to work on, and then target those more specifically. Sadly those things, which include posture and foot strength, are much less exciting than twirling around a big bright studio or a stage in a tutu.

Finally, I don't think main points are always the same. The trick for improving in any area of your life is to regularly ask yourself what your main gaps are and what small goals you can set to move closer to these goals. For example, in the Buddhist context rather than abstractly going for "enlightenment" and doing an indiscriminate amount of practices, you can instead analyze your main problems, e.g., being too busy, and then focus on regular short meditation practices to calm your mind, and commit to ending interactions with other people by wishing them well. And once you have made progress in those, you can move on to another goal that addresses the main point. 

Little drops fill buckets--in work, ballet and the spiritual path alike

Have you had the experience of saying that you would totally do something, if only you weren't so busy? I am totally guilty of that (including with writing this blog: I have been busy with this #lojongchallenge for quite a few years now (I don't even remember how many...). So the next slogan, slogan 50 of Lojong is perfect for that, since it says "don't be dependent on external circumstances". Of course it refers mostly to being dependent on external circumstances for working on yourself and engaging in your spiritual practice, but it applies equally to many other things in life.

Picture by Michel Le at Morlaix Ballet camp.
For me this is an example of little things (in this
case people) making up a much larger whole.

In the domain of ballet, I figured out this past year that I can do ballet even while travelling: there is no need to be dependent on external circumstances for that. When I am on a train station or in an airport, I can do a quick barre, for example in an empty gate or a quiet spot (especially Broche Ballet's technique deep dive barres are great for that, because they mostly involve standing and scanning your body, and not really making large movements). I can also do a quick prepointe workout (also from Broche Ballet) while standing or while sitting on a chair. I have also attended many an online ballet class from the hotel gym of the various places I visited this past year!

The same is true for my job. One of the most challenging things to do when you're an academic is getting into writing mode. But in reality, you don't really need much--if you can just find 15 minutes, writing is possible. For next year, I aspire getting into the 15-minutes-a-day writing mode, because so much can be written in that time.

Now most importantly, the spiritual journey of reducing self-importance. It is so easy to think you have no time for meditation and therefore no time for the spiritual path. But literally every moment is an opportunity. Even in the midst of a busy day (maybe especially in a busy day) you can pay attention to how you react, and check whether you react from self-importance or from a broader perspective that takes others into account as well. And even a few seconds waiting for a traffic light, you can practise meditation. I think nowadays this is so much more difficult because we have our entertainment of our phones with information to be processed always in our pockets. This means that making the choice to simply observing the moment is more challenging. However, the benefits of simply being present should not be underestimated--for one thing because it may allow you to be reminded of things you otherwise forgot. I had that experience many a time while I was practising the three-minute breathing space (from the MBCT intervention) at the beginning of my lecture, and this was so helpful (note: this Fall I started to begin my lectures with the three-minute breathing space, and so far I am liking it). So here we go: 2023, the year of being less dependent on external circumstances and not forgetting to turn my mind inwards as much as I can! 

Reminder to self: don't duck away!

If you are anything like me, you like to engage yourself mostly with things you like, and avoid those things you do not like. This is a bit of a problem because first of all, there is no way you can avoid what life throws at you, and secondly, it is often from the challenges that you learn most. This is what slogan 49 from Lojong is about: "Always meditate on whatever is most challenging." In our Buddhist study group we are now looking at turning suffering and happiness into enlightenment. It is a beautiful teaching showing that whatever we experience can be used on the path to enlightenment, and even on a more mundane level, everything is workable.

Picture by Michel Le from Morlaix Ballet Camp.
Clearly a bit of a challenge here!

Meditating on what is challenging can come in different versions. For me, one of the easier versions is in my learning of ballet, where it is always challenging to see the parts of my technique that are not pretty. Yet, it is exactly working on the non-pretty parts and the scary steps where you progress. And nothing beats the feeling of doing that. This is why during the pandemic I started videoing myself and posting (admittedly the prettiest) parts of it on instagram. In my work I have been focusing this past year on building the habit of regularly reflecting on what I am doing with my time. For some reason I find it always really difficult to make the time to review at the end of the day and the end of the week. This past year I managed to get into the habit of weekly reviews with my "Eenvoudig Leven agenda" (Simple Living agenda) which has weekly worksheets for reviewing the past week (and always reminds you to love yourself). That helps a lot, and for the coming year I am working on developing more detailed long-term goals with a gantt chart. Progress happens slowly but surely! The most challenging difficult thing is to face negative emotions of myself and others--for example being afraid for when they get angry. This is one I am still working on. This slogan is a good reminder to stop fearing the moment of facing the difficulties. Because as I tell my students: it is worse to let those things stay in the dark and know that they are there than to actually face them. So, remembering this slogan is definitely on my list of good intentions for the new year, so I am less tempted to duck away for difficult things, and instead just face the
m.

A key to resilience - learning to dance with whatever life throws at you

The next slogan in the #LojongChallenge is number 48: "Practice impartiality toward everything. Deep and comprehensive mastery overall is essential." I think this is such a good reminder. Probably for me the thing that most certainly makes me unhappy is to want things to be different from what they are. I got a lot of time to practise with this in the past 6 months in which I had the great good fortune to travel again. Traveling is especially one of these circumstances where you don't get to choose your circumstances. Sometimes things are pleasant, and sometimes they are annoying. For a Western European for example, it always takes some adaptation to go to countries where time is not so strictly adhered to, so things don't necessarily start at the assigned time. One possibility is to get annoyed about it, but a more adaptive option (albeit not always easy in practice) is to just go with the flow. When I was lucky enough to attend the Mind and Life meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala earlier this year. This was an amazing meeting, but also required quite a bit of flexibility. I particularly remember one moment when we were in the car on the way back from an excursion to the Norbulingka institute outside Dharamsala and suddenly the car stopped for a traffic jam up the hill. After waiting for a bit, we decided to get off the car and actually walk up the hill leaving the taxi behind so we could make it somewhat in time for the next excursion. In the end, we were still late, but the schedule changed and all was good. For a person living in a stable country like the Netherlands, it is easy to forget that things are not always predictable, and they naturally change, even if we don't like that. A similar experience occurred later during my India trip when I was staying in a hotel in Allahabad, where the staff seemed to have their own mind about when things such as breakfast would happen. My first reaction was to get very frustrated, but that does not really change things, especially when you are only staying in a hotel for a few days so staff won't change their habits. After a few days my more adaptive response was just to plan around it and to dance with whatever life was throwing at me.

Image of dancing from Morlaix Ballet Camp by Michel Le 

I think actually impartiality is an overlooked outcome measure of contemplative practices such as mindfulness, as was already suggested in an early paper by Gaelle Desbordes. In one of the papers we wrote in my lab this past year we started to look at people's impartiality more empirically by comparing how people's thinking would change after being exposed to either a social stressor or a positive mood induction. We found that after a stressor, people were more distracted and had more negative thoughts than after a positive mood induction. In an on-going study (we are still looking for Dutch-speaking participants!) we are looking at how a mindfulness and a positive fantasizing intervention for a longer period can affect these same thought parameters. Hopefully this will eventually allow us to figure out how we can train people to dance with whatever life is throwing at them, like in the picture accompanying this blog (from the Morlaix Ballet Camp).

Reflections on mindfulness

Picture by Michel Le Photographe from Morlaix Ballet Camp - when dancing together in the corps de ballet, you also need continued mindfulness of the body to ensure you move together as one team.

 It is the end of the year, and naturally a time to reflect, so I decided to take up blogging again, also to process how much happened this past year. Meanwhile, I still have a few slogans to go with the #lojongchallege, so let's see how far I will get. I certainly won't finish before the end of the year, but maybe I can make some headway in the first week, when things are still a bit more slow.

The next slogan on the list is slogan 47, which says "keep the three inseparable". With "the three", the slogan refers to body, speech, and mind, which are the three components of a person with which they can act in the world. According to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in his book Intelligent Heart, the idea is that we should keep these three--body, speech and mind--inseparable from mindfulness. It is an invitation to remain mindful of whatever actions we commit with our body, speech and mind. I think in the West, a kind of simplistic notion of mindfulness has emerged which is only about paying attention. In that notion very often mindfulness is also equated with doing things very slowly. Surely slowing down is good, especially for a busy person like me, but sometimes this is not practical. Here, instead, mindfulness refers to the ethical dimension: remain vigilant of the effects of your body, speech and mind. This sense of mindfulness is therefore not so much self-focused, and instead focuses on awareness of the impact of your actions on others. Funnily enough, I think this often can be quite liberating, because if you only focus on yourself, it can lead to so much hope and fear.

As I was running today, I was thinking about what I accomplished in the past year, and whether that was what I set out to do. I honestly could not really remember specific goals I set myself at the beginning of the year, short of possibly achieving promotion so associate professor. I sadly failed at that one. Nevertheless, I am actually quite happy at things I achieved, but mostly those things involve making an impact on those around me. I was happy with having been nominated for teacher of the year in our AI programme because of my concern for mental health of the students. I was happy that some of my students' papers were published, PhDs were finished, or almost-finished, students got jobs, and I was able to share my knowledge in a series of workshops for students in India. I think for me those mean more than titles or prestige, because they are the things that someone in the end may remember. Of course I still do my best to get grants, and to publish and all those things, but this is not the most important. The most important to me is being aware of the impact of all small actions of my body, speech and mind on others. For related ideas, see the preprint my colleagues and I recently put out in which we call for more kindness in academia: preprint