Tag: habits

Manual transmission

~ meximinnesotana ~ Leave a comment

On Tuesday night I had to move my husband’s truck from the driveway to a side street. The townhome complex will be seal-coating our driveway, and they told us they would tow away vehicles still there at 6:30a.m.

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A photo from our camping trip in 2018. 

Hubby is heading home from Wyoming via his fixed motorcycle today, and hopefully will be home by Thursday. So it was good that I persuaded him to leave his keys at home in case the vehicles needed to be moved.

After a 6-meeting day, an exhausted brain rebelled against writing. I pulled up some You-Tube videos to remind myself how to drive manual transmission. It has been a couple of years since I got some lessons from hubby in his old truck. He reassured on the phone on Sunday when I expressed my concern that I wasn’t sure I would remember how to drive stick.

Of course I put off the chore until dusk because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of the neighbors in broad daylight. But I did it! I backed it up and slowly drove it around to the side street, stalling only twice. 😉

It made me realize that what is different about automatic versus manual is that you must pay attention at a more subtle level to the clutch pedal. So it is about mindfully moving through the gears while paying attention to the sounds of the car, and the “catch” of the pedal beneath your foot.

The metaphor struck me: we live so much of our lives on auto-pilot. Without thinking. Without noticing subtlety. When we have to pay attention, it takes a little effort, especially if driving manual is not habitual for us. So the truck was my teacher tonight: it will go just fine if you take it slowly and pay attention.

Victory.

cristy@meximinnesotana.com

 

 

 

On the freedom of breaking streaks

~ meximinnesotana ~ 2 Comments

Much of the literature on happiness and habits refers to building routines that work for us and support us every day toward achieving our goals. I like to have a daily routine, especially in the morning.

The grounding and centering I achieve through regular routines of meditation and journal writing in the morning seems to have a lasting effect on my mood and overall happiness. My weekly “writing days” when I will post to WordPress have built up trust in my ability to create pieces on a consistent basis.

Every Sunday since October 2017 I have posted a haiku. This past weekend, I was at a 3-day yoga teacher training weekend Friday through Sunday. For 9-10 hours a day, we did yoga practices, learned new things, and explored many facets of yoga. It was amazing, and it was also physically and emotionally taxing.

Yogi tea IG photo
Another favorite routine is my late morning or post-lunch tea break.

On Saturday evening, I was pretty wiped out. The longest of the 3 days, it began at 8 and ended at 6. With 20 other students, a lot of dyad work, and a couple of teachers working with us, it was a LOT of people interaction. It pushed my capacity to the limit, and rather than writing haiku when I came home, I was wrung out to the point of exhaustion.

After I got home for the day, a tiny part of me said: “You still have not written your Sunday haiku yet; you can’t go to bed yet.” But the wiser higher mind said: “Turning on the computer and risking your quality of sleep is not a good idea. Get some rest.”

And thus, a streak which had continued for ~75 weeks was broken. While I felt a little sad about it, I also felt freed by it at the same time. It was a habit I had built up that gave me joy and practice at the art of haiku. It served me well for that time period. And now I am moving to a new phase of my life that requires a focus on different things, at least through my certification in September.

While I actually did think of a haiku on Sunday morning, during my savasana meditation at the end of yoga practice, I had no access to a computer. So it lived only in my mind. I was grateful to generate it for myself, even if it was not shared that time around.

Long live your streaks! And when they no longer serve you, let them go gracefully and with compassion for any inner compulsion you may have. This is freedom.

cristy@meximinnesotana.com

 

What are your habits?

~ meximinnesotana ~ Leave a comment

Hi Friends,

This morning I awoke after going to bed early and getting a nice, juicy 10 hours of sleep. I had dream fragments on my mind, so wrote them down in my journal before I forgot them. Whenever I sleep more than 8 hours, I seem to dream so vividly. Clearly my subconscious is doing some important work, and I am allowing plenty of space for that to happen.

I woke up with a sense of possibility, now that my sabbatical is officially over, and October has begun. While part of me hoped to have my venture more defined and certain by now, an equal part of me knew I needed to have plenty of spaciousness and time for incubation in my life.

After a year of writing nearly daily, I realize that I can create any habit which I really care to develop. That gives me a lot of confidence for the habits I need to adopt as a self-employed person. Aristotle said that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act, but a habit.”

As I sit to work on my plan for the next 3 months, it occurs to me to ask myself and also you:

What are your habits? Which habits serve you? 

Which habits to you intend to keep?

Which new habits to you want to begin?

Which old habits are you ready to release?

happy october

600 days

~ meximinnesotana ~ 6 Comments

Hi Friends,

This post will be short and sweet. I just want to acknowledge and celebrate my 600th consecutive day of meditation and/or yoga according to my Insight Timer app. Yay! I guess I can count that habit as a consistent one, the practice of being mindful of thoughts, emotions, my body and sometimes the space around me as well.

There is probably a Buddhist admonition not to take pride in one’s meditation. Something about ego and all of that. But I am proud of establishing the habit and I am not Buddhist. So I am going to own it and celebrate! Cheers!

What daily or weekly habits serve you best in your life? 

cristy@meximinnesota.com

600 days