Agency: Cleaning out Your Habit Closet

Do you watch or read the news? What comes to mind when you think of the news? For many, images of suffering come to mind: wild fires, storms, armed conflict, illness…. With each story we read or watch, we may feel ourselves becoming depleted, and there may be a pervading sense of hopelessness.

We can use 3 meditation practices to support our resilience when it comes to staying informed. Conveniently, they can be thought of as “The A, B, C’s of Staying Informed”: Agency, Balance and Compassion.

This post highlights our own Agency. Stay tuned for offerings on Balance and Compassion.

Mindfulness - paying attention in the present moment with curiosity and kindness - reveals to us what is going on moment to moment in our lives. The more we practice tuning in to our present moment, the more we become aware of how much of our day is spent on autopilot, and we can begin to see the decisions that we take out of habit. Some of those decisions may be born of lessons learned in the past and serve us well (taking a left on Main St. really is the quickest route to the supermarket on the way home from work). Others, though, may simply have crept into our routines over time.

Mindfulness enables us clean out our “habit closet” - holding up each habit, trying it on, and seeing if it still “sparks joy”, to borrow a phrase from organizational expert Marie Kondo. We probably have a few habits related to keeping up with current events: maybe they relate to parts of the day (watching the news as we eat breakfast), or sources of information (checking 3 online publications each day), or the number of times or amount of time we spend checking in (keeping the news on in the background or in the car throughout the day). If we step back and think about what needs we are trying to fill by staying informed, we can create a strategy for engaging with the news intentionally. We can become aware of when we’ve veered from our chosen path because we reverted to autopilot and habit kicked in. Part of crafting our intentional strategy can be informed by another mindfulness benefit - being aware of what is going on in our body. Clenched jaw, shallow breath, heavy heart, sour stomach - these can be indications that our news strategy is causing us harm, rather than meeting our needs.

The sense of agency that comes from reconnecting with the all of the chances for deliberate decisions in our lives (how we sit, what hand we use to pick up our coffee, whether we swap another half hour in front of the laptop for an evening walk with a loved one) can boost our sense of empowerment and health.

Plus, switching things up a bit can unleash our Beginner’s Mind: we may see things in a new light, or reconnect with a sense of delight around something in our life that we’ve let lie fallow.

We invite you to cast open the door to your “habit closet” and begin sorting out which items serve you, and which can be cleaned out to make room for new habits that enable you to flourish.

There are many ways to engage with CMP this week: in any of our live meditation sessions, by listening to guided meditations and discussions on the CMP website, or by emailing us with your questions, comments or suggestions at welcome@communitymind.org. Click here to see our full schedule.

May all beings have a deep sense of their own agency,
Your CMP family