Healthy Habits Suck

by Dayna Lee-Baggley

  You’re not trying to wash away your thoughts. Sometimes thoughts will get stuck in a little whirlpool. That’s okay.

  Perhaps you notice thoughts like How long do I need to do this? or What am I supposed to get out of this? or What am I going to make for dinner? Just place those thoughts on a leaf and watch them float down the stream.

  Over and over again your mind will wander. Your job is just to notice that it has wandered and to gently bring yourself back to standing by the side of the stream, observing the water and leaves.

  Take a moment to reflect on the experience you had while doing this exercise. What did you notice? Could you imagine yourself by the stream? Could you notice when your mind had wandered? Could you bring it back? Did you notice your mind judging your performance or commenting on the exercise? Whatever your experience was, it’s okay. You’re not trying to be perfect or to get it “right.” You’re just trying to increase your ability to notice when your mind has wandered and to bring it back.

  Be the Weather Forecaster

  Have you ever watched a weather report about a hurricane? Usually there’s a reporter on the ground being pushed around by the wind, being pelted with rain, and yelling descriptions into the microphone like “strong winds” and “heavy rain.” Then the broadcast returns to the weather forecaster in the studio who’s standing in front of a satellite image of the hurricane. You can see the standard white swirl of the hurricane over blue water. The person calmly describes the direction of the wind and where the storm is headed. Both people are describing the same event, but their experiences are much different because their perspectives are different. The reporter on the ground is caught up in the storm, whereas the forecaster in the studio is watching or observing the storm.

  This ability to achieve an observer perspective with our thoughts is a helpful way to become more mindful. We can get caught up in our thoughts (debating, analyzing, thinking) or we can observe them (like watching leaves on a stream or a hurricane from a studio).

  There are a lot of different images you can employ to practice using this observer perspective. Thoughts naturally move, so any image involving you watching or observing your thoughts in motion is good. Common ones include clouds in the sky, a freight car going by, or packages on a conveyor belt. If we just get out of the way, a thought will naturally move along and be replaced by new thoughts, like the headlines passing along the banner of a CNN broadcast. If you miss a thought, don’t worry! Your mind will remind you of it again. You can use the mindfulness exercise we just tried to find the observer perspective, replacing the leaves on a stream with imagery of your choice.

  Another way to get into the observer perspective is to simply add “I notice I’m having the thought that…” to the front of a thought (Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson 1999). A few weeks ago, I kept thinking I’m exhausted, and this thought affected my behavior, leading me to lie on the couch and watch random TV shows. This did not help me feel more energetic. The thought didn’t lead me to eat better or go to bed earlier. In fact, I did the opposite: I ordered food in because I was “too exhausted” to cook, and I stayed up later, which made me want to sleep in each morning. I found myself getting further behind in my work and feeling more and more overwhelmed. Finally I realized that the thought wasn’t helping me move toward my values, and I needed to do something about it.

  I began by noticing the thought. Every time it came up, I said to myself, I notice I’m having the thought that I’m exhausted. How interesting, I thought. There it is again. As the week progressed and I kept noticing my thoughts, I got off the couch, I started getting to bed on time, and I made more homemade meals. Notice that I didn’t change the thought or convince myself I wasn’t exhausted. I just practiced noticing the thought so that I could stick with my healthy habits. Now if that thought had helped me take better care of myself, go to bed on time, or eat healthier, then I would have kept following it. But it didn’t. It moved me away from my values. My job was to notice and observe it so I could do the things that mattered to me in the moment.

  Present-Moment Awareness

  Minds are awesome at being in the past (for example, that container of ice cream that you ate last night that you’re now regretting) and being in the future (for example, worrying about how to get through Thanksgiving dinner with your family). While this is an amazing human ability, it can get us into trouble when we’re trying to stick with healthy habits. Instead of being in the present we’re caught up trying to solve past “mistakes” or plan for future outcomes. This can be frustrating, because you can’t change the past or predict the future. Here’s an example of how the mind can take us away from the present moment and create distress.

  I was working with a client who had end-stage liver disease that required him to engage in a number of healthy habits (for example, a low-sodium high-protein diet, no processed foods, regular blood work, regular activity to reduce swelling, and so on). He had worked very hard to stick to these healthy habits so that he’d be eligible for a transplant. One day he came to session with great news: his doctors had decided to approve and list him for transplant. I asked him how he felt about this; he had been waiting a long time to get listed and had worked very hard for it. He said, “Well, I’m really worried about what happens when the transplant fails. What am I going to do then?” What?! I thought. He hadn’t even gotten the transplant and his mind was already worried about what would happen if it failed!

  So rather than enjoying this moment he had worked so hard to achieve, his mind was already many years in the future problem solving something that hadn’t yet happened (and might never happen). And as a result, he felt overwhelmed and discouraged, despite getting good news. Moreover, this thinking actually decreased his ability to stick to his healthy habits. We then spent a lot of time working on mindfulness, practicing having him come back to the present moment so he could experience whatever was going on right now. Usually in the “right now” the things he needed to do felt doable. Let’s try another exercise to practice being more mindful, which involves staying in the present moment.

  Notice Your Five Senses

  If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the past or the future, you can focus on your five senses or your breath to bring yourself back to the present moment (Harris 2009). This skill can help you focus on your healthy habit and what you need to do right now. Our five senses and breath are always grounded right here in this moment. What do I mean? You can’t smell something from five years ago. You can remember what it smelled like, but you can’t resmell it. You can’t taste something two years in the future. You can imagine what it will taste like, but you can’t taste it. You can’t rebreathe the breath you just inhaled. And so on. Whenever we notice our five senses or our breath, we can anchor ourselves to this moment—that is, we can be mindful. It’s a straightforward exercise, even if it’s not “easy.”

  Notice two things you can see. (For example, “I can see the gray floor.” “I can see my black pants.”)

  Notice two things you can feel. (For example, “I can feel my legs touching the chair.” “I can feel my toes in my shoes.”)

  Notice two things you can hear. (For example, “I can hear the cars outside.” “I can hear the hum of the building.”)

  Whenever you are noticing these senses you are here in this moment. But just wait, your mind will pull you away again. This is normal. When it does, see if you can bring yourself back to this moment by noticing your senses:

  I can feel my chest rising and falling.

  I can feel my fingers touching each other.

  And your mind will pull you away again…What am I going to make for dinner? Again, this is totally normal. Try to bring yourself back to this moment:

  I can hear the cars outside.

  I can smell someone’s cologne.

  A key part of being mindful is to be nonjudgmental about what you are sensing in the present moment. Try not to j
udge whether the cars are too noisy or whether you like the color of the carpet. Judgments are actually just more thoughts that can pull you away from the present moment. Try to simply observe the things you can sense.

  What was that like to bring yourself back to the present moment with your five senses or your breath? Did you notice your mind pulling you away? Bringing yourself back to the here and now is a valuable skill for being more mindful and sticking with what you need to do to be healthy right here, right now, rather than focusing on the past or the future.

  Mindfulness Takes Practice

  There are many ways to be more mindful, such as by observing your thoughts or by noticing your five senses. These skills are simple concepts but they aren’t necessarily easy. Many of us are used to getting caught up in our thoughts all day long in order to live our lives. We think about getting up and going to work. We think about our tasks at work and use our thoughts to get our work done. In fact, it’s often the very successful, high-functioning, and well-educated people who have the most difficult time adopting this observer perspective. Why? I think it’s because their thoughts are so useful to their work that they don’t have a lot of practice just noticing them. So if you’re struggling with being mindful, with the observer perspective, and with being in the present moment, be kind to yourself. It’s likely because your thoughts have been very useful to you. But the more you practice these skills, the better you’ll get.

  You might be thinking, Great, I’m totally going to be mindful the next time I feel anxious. If that’s your plan, it definitely won’t work. You don’t plan your fire escape route during a fire. If you want mindfulness to work in a “hot,” difficult situation, you need to practice a lot beforehand. You need to know your escape route long before the rooms are filling with smoke.

  There are lots of ways you can practice mindfulness. You can informally practice any of the skills we went over. For example, try noticing your five senses during an activity that you usually do on automatic pilot. Morning routines provide great opportunities because many of us do a lot of activities (like putting on socks) while on automatic pilot. When was the last time you noticed the smell of your shampoo or the taste of your toothpaste? Being mindful isn’t meant to make things take more time. In fact, it might reduce the amount of time it takes you to do things. For example, if you’re mindful while you wash your hair instead of doing it on autopilot, you won’t end up washing it twice if you forget whether or not you already washed it! Mindfulness is a skill you can improve by being more present more often.

  And, of course, if you want to do formal mindfulness activities, like the leaves on a stream exercise, there’s an app for that. In fact, there are many, many well-designed mindfulness apps. If you look for an app, I recommend picking one that starts with short (say, three minutes) mindfulness activities, so you can start developing your skills from a manageable place (remember our 90 percent rule).

  Practicing mindfulness activities can help you learn how to notice your thoughts and not get caught up in them (or as psychotherapists say, “unhook” from your thoughts) when it’s not helpful or they’re moving you away from your values. When your thoughts move you toward your values it can be helpful to get caught up in them (for example, I should get up and go to work.) The goal is not to have fewer thoughts. The goal is to improve your ability to unhook from unhelpful ones. Remember the football metaphor from earlier in the chapter? You can either run with the football (your thoughts) or drop it. Some thoughts are harder to drop than others, because some thoughts are just stickier. The thought I don’t have time for that is much stickier for me than What will I make for dinner? I had to practice unhooking from it because it was constantly causing me to deviate from my route. Over time thoughts can become less sticky, but they will never go away. Having mindfulness as a skill won’t allow you to get rid of your passengers, but it will help you stick to your healthy habits route more often.

  How Passengers Will Help Keep You Stuck

  Your passengers probably won’t be interested in you practicing mindfulness. Passengers are awesome at convincing us not to try new skills, even if these new skills might be helpful. What buttons do you think your passenger will try to press to convince you not to practice mindfulness? Let’s look at a few common ways they might try to get to you.

  But It’s True

  Passengers are very good at trying to convince us that our thoughts are true and therefore we must follow them. For example, if you’re like me, you regularly have the thought I don’t have time for that. When I try to be mindful and observe that thought, my passengers immediately offer “But it’s true!” Do I really not have time, or are my passengers just wanting me to avoid trying something new that might move me toward my values?

  A problem with using “the truth” as a guide for our decisions is that it’s often impossible to tell whether a thought is “true” or not. Are you really too tired to go to the gym? Do you really not have time to make a lunch? The answers to these questions are subjective. There’s no official test to find out if they’re true or not. Minds can justify anything! Our passengers are great at taking over the bus and convincing us that a particular thought is “true,” and therefore we must follow it.

  But let’s say that somehow you could prove a thought was true. Then does that mean you should follow the thought? Let’s try a thought experiment (inspired by Harris 2009). Consider the thought Someday I will die. Most of us agree that this is a true thought, but getting caught up in it might not help you. Perhaps you’ll end up thinking about how dangerous life is, and in order to avoid dangerous things you won’t want to leave the house. Or perhaps you’ll reason that since you’re going to die anyway, you might as well live life to the fullest and drink and smoke and eat whatever you want. Either response is not likely to move you toward your values.

  So rather than debating with yourself about whether the thought you’re having is true or not, ask if the thought will move you toward or away from your values. If it will move you toward them, then great. Follow it! If it will move you away from them, then thank those passengers very much for sharing and move toward your values anyway.

  I Forgot

  Another very effective way that passengers will keep you from trying something new is to help you forget. Over and over again, when clients and I set the goal for them to practice mindfulness (or some other new skill), they come to session the following week and say, “I forgot to do it.”

  Setting a reminder is an obvious way to not forget to do something, but it doesn’t always work. Clients often ask me, “Can I get an app to remind myself to be mindful?” Of course you can! There are many mindfulness apps that will send you little reminders throughout the day to notice your toes or to take a deep breath. In fact, I have several of them on my smartphone. And what do you think happens when that mindfulness reminder on my phone pops up? I dismiss it. I don’t stop to be mindful. And this is, in part, because my passengers have helped me code this reminder as “not important.”

  What do you think I do when the phone number for my son’s school shows up on my phone? That’s right: I answer the phone! It doesn’t matter if I’m driving or I’m in a meeting or I’m with a client, I don’t dismiss it. This number has been coded as “important,” as something I need to attend to in order to be a “good parent.” This behavior is probably related to my cave person brain that’s on alert for danger. However, being mindful may be just as important to being a “good parent” as answering the phone is when the school calls. If I practice being more mindful, then I’m more present with my son when we’re together.

  So, to stick to our route, we need to find a way to actively recode the things our passengers deem “unimportant” (such as practicing mindfulness) as “important.” A way to do this is to remind yourself of the value that a particular behavior is helping you express. For example, practicing mindfulness can be an expression of my value of being an engaged pa
rent. Here’s another example.

  One of my clients with diabetes had many, many reminders to engage in healthy habits. And just like me he tended to ignore or dismiss them. For example, he wanted to get better at cleaning the house with regularity. Because of his diabetes he was unable to work, so his wife earned the income for their family. Cleaning the house was one way that he could support his wife. When we talked about what got in the way of cleaning, he said, “I think about it in the morning. But then I get to doing other things and I completely forget.” Well done, passengers!

  First, I had him delete all the reminders on his phone (he wasn’t paying attention to them anyway), and then we established only one daily reminder on his phone: “Be a good husband: clean the house.” We deliberately coded this reminder as “important” by including the value that was associated with the behavior. By our next session he was proud to report that he’d spent time cleaning the house every day, and that his wife was also very pleased.

  Mindfulness in Action

  So here is the task, if you’re willing. Set yourself the goal of practicing mindfulness regularly (remember the 90 percent rule when deciding how much mindfulness you should practice; as an ultimate goal, fifteen minutes per day might be reasonable), and do one of the following: either spend time doing one of the mindfulness exercises from this chapter, or notice what got in the way of you practicing mindfulness. That is, what did the passengers have to say or do to stop you from trying something new? Did they help you forget? Did they tell you that you don’t have time for such things? Did they tell you that mindfulness wasn’t going to work or that you wouldn’t stick with it, so why bother? Noticing what gets in the way or actually practicing mindfulness is going to help you be more in charge of your bus. And when you’re in charge of your bus, you’re more likely to engage in health behaviors. You can use the “Practicing Mindfulness” worksheet, available for download at this book’s website (http://www.newharbinger.com/43317), to record your experiences.