Keeping The Gate Closed
Habits are great – except when they are not.
I’ve been looking after an older dog this week. I’ve known her since she was tiny. She’s loving attentive, a big lump (she’s a Labrador), and could not be more wonderful to hang out with for a week. She’s 14. She’s greying. Her limbs are a little creaky, and she’s slower on a walk than she’s ever been. She loves company and will follow you wherever you are headed in the house, just to be able to ‘be with’. It’s wonderful.
They’ve installed a gate at the bottom of the stairs to protect her from herself. In her desire to be with, she will make her way up the stairs, despite the toll on her legs. Even if you pop up for a thing you’ve forgotten, she’ll follow. The gate at the bottom protects her from herself. It’s an imposed habit that helps. It’s something consciously installed. It works beautifully.
Habits are what get us through life. Doing things on ‘automatic’ is very useful because it’s what allows us to experience newness. Not having to pay attention consciously means we have more room or ‘ram’ in our heads for things that actively do need our attention.
But whilst habits are sometimes useful, sometimes they are not. Not for where we want to go next, not for putting something new in that serves us better. That’s when it gets tricky. We have to become aware of what’s going on, come out of automatic, and work out what will work better for us, in order to go where we want to go.
Much of the time, that actively means acknowledging that something is no longer working for us, and putting in preventative measures, as much as adding in the healthier, nicer, or more desired result we want. Either way, we have to then ‘just do’ that thing enough times to make it go in, and indeed replace what we did before until we stop thinking about it. Until it becomes a (new) habit.
This week, I invite you to work out what’s working for you. What needs ‘gating’ for you, that means you do something more effectively, efficiently or enjoyably? I’d love to hear what it is and what you put in ‘instead’ to make it first conscious, and then, stuck in as the new way to do something.