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!