Yet I remain stuck in them.

Even while knowing they are wrong and ineffective, I keep doing them. Repeating them. Again and again. And each time the pain and suffering comes back. And I say to myself, “Okay, that’s the last time. Fuck that. Never again. I’ve learned my lesson now.”

But, for some odd reason, I do it again. And again. I act as if I enjoy the pain, even though I know I really don’t. I act impulsively. Automatically. Like a programmed robot with no sense of choice.

These patterns in my life seem to be really sticky. They are deeply rooted. I’ve thought of countless ways I can try to correct them, but my efforts have so far remained fruitless. It is almost as if there is another part of me that I can’t change. And perhaps there is.

But that’s not going to stop me from trying. Not yet at least. Maybe I need to dig deeper. Maybe I need to ask myself better questions. Maybe I need a new perspective. Maybe I just need to be more patient. Maybe I just need more experience. Maybe I need to “just do it” and habituate myself to failure until it means nothing anymore.

If there is a solution, then I know that it’s going to take some time, effort, and dedication. I’m well aware of the myth of overnight success, and as a 22 year old I don’t expect to have everything work out my way all of a sudden.

Upon reflection, I’ve noticed that there are some things I need to consider about these “old ways” (ways that seem so persistent throughout my life), and how these relate to personal development more broadly.

I can only focus on one major change at a time.

Not only can I not change everything overnight, but I also can’t change multiple things all at the same time. Making a conscious change in your life takes up physical and mental resources. The more resources you allocate to one conscious endeavor, the less you can allocate to another.

Trying to change everything all at once is only going to spread your resources too thin – and then nothing will get accomplished. Therefore, it is important to focus on only major change at a time.

We are multi-faceted beings. Therefore, simple solutions (while desirable) aren’t always the correct ones. Occam’s razor says, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

It’s good not to over-complicate our problems, but at the same time we can’t ignore the details of our plights if we truly want to get to the root of them. If we think too simply, then we won’t develop the proper focus to overcome our bad habits.

The truth is our life can be broken down into many different components:

• Health
• Relationships
• Career
• Finances
• Education
• Psychology
• Religion/spirituality

Sure, they are all intertwined and interrelated. For example, working on your health may increase your confidence and self-esteem, and that can then spill over into your relationships and career. But it is important that you don’t try to conquer the whole world all at once.

If you are the kind of person who has never went to the gym on a regular basis, then you should really just focus on that for your first 2-5 weeks until it becomes a more common habit. Once that becomes more second-nature and automatic, then you can shift your consciousness to other aspects of your life that you want to adjust. This basic rule applies to any kind of habit change.

The point is that you go step-by-step, building yourself bolt-by-bolt, and not trying to transform yourself in one desperate swoop.

Again, these things take time, effort, and dedication. Personal development is an ongoing process with no clear beginning or end. Often you just have to take life one step at a time, because any other way will just get you flustered and frustrated.

LESSON: Some aspects of my life have been relatively “stagnant,” because I’ve been busy focusing on other aspects of my growth.

This is one reason I am still stuck in some old ways.

However, I can try to better overcome these old ways by focusing on them on a 1 to 1 basis. It’s OK to put some goals on the back-burner while I work on others, because working on them all at once would spread my physical and mental resources too thin.

I’m addicted to certainty and familiarity.

Certainty and familiarity are powerful forces. And even when I’m focused and I have a clear idea on what the right thing to do is, I often still snap back to old habits because they are already built so strongly into my brain’s wiring.

Familiarity gives us a sense of security. I repeat the same old patterns because I know ahead of time what will happen. The same can’t be said for new patterns, where the results I get may be more unpredictable.

The problem is that these old patterns become “just good enough” – and trying something different (even if it may be better) can have short-term costs and growth pains that we aren’t willing to pay for.

But if I want to change something, I have to be willing to pay those short-term costs. That means embracing uncertainty and the occasional pain and failure. I can’t expect to dive into something new and hit a home-run right away. Rarely do things work that way.

Facing uncertainty and fear is required for any kind of personal change. It is precisely when we face these fears that we learn something about ourselves that we hadn’t known before. And it is only after we get that new-found knowledge about ourselves that we are able to make the appropriate changes to our life. We experiment, we push boundaries, and we end up with a more expanded view of ourselves then one we had previously. But to discover these new boundaries we need to be willing to step outside of our “comfort zone” of security and familiarity.

LESSON: Any type of personal change is going to be met with resistance. But instead of allowing this resistance to inhibit my growth, I will embrace fear and uncertainty as a sign that I am expanding and testing my boundaries.

A deep part of me identifies with those old patterns.

Sometimes I look back on these old habits and think this is just who I am. Then I remember that I am always changing whether I take conscious control over this change or not.

When I say “this is just who I am,” I’m really just reinforcing old habits by deciding to identify with them, and therefore I continue doing them. In many ways, I am giving myself permission to repeat the same mistakes.

But, looking more closely, who I was 10 years ago was a remarkably different person than who I am today. And who I am today will be remarkably different than who I will become 10 years into the future. When I learn to embrace this dynamic and changing self I find it easier to drop older habits and adopt newer ones. Change is natural, and self-change becomes a constantly unfolding process.

Some people however choose to cling to these old patterns not just because they fear something different, but because they think these old patterns are their “authentic self.”

I believe that to accept our “authentic selves” is to accept our nature as beings who are in a constant state of flux. The belief in a static self is illusory. But it has consequences. When we cling to these old ways, we suffer. When we can’t let go of our past selves, we never learn or adapt. And when we fight the changes that we really want to make, we unintentionally inhibit ourselves from happiness.

Letting go of past beliefs and habits is tough. There’s no denying that. It requires that we begin to see ourselves in a different light. However, many of us become too stubborn to let go of our old identities. For some odd reason, we want to change the world so that it fits our view, but we don’t want to change ourselves in the process.

It doesn’t work that way.

LESSON:We need to let go of old beliefs and habits that no longer serve our interests. It doesn’t have to mean that we are being inauthentic or changing our “core self,” it means we are taking conscious control over who we really are and how we live our lives.

Questions

1) Have you ever tried to make a change but you were met with unbearable resistance? If so, what do you think was the biggest contributor to this resistance?

Please use the comment section and share your answers and thoughts!

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When I was younger, I have to admit I used to disregard a lot of empathy and compassion as meaningless and superficial. I recall watching news stories that seemed designed to tug at my emotions and manipulate me to feel a certain way. It seemed that if I didn’t sympathize or want to help others, I should feel guilty and ashamed of myself. In reality, I just wanted to take care of myself and discover my values on my own.

Over time, I learned to minimize my empathy and compassion for others. They were values that felt forced down my throat, and as a reaction I decided that I wouldn’t practice them. I wasn’t a moral nihilist, I just wanted to discover my own values for myself, like most people want to. I think everyone’s morality needs to be discovered for themselves, and blindly following other people’s values is always a recipe for disaster.

Then as I got older, and perhaps a bit more selfish, I noticed I couldn’t find happiness living this way. I used to harbor really negative feelings towards others. I found many people to be manipulators, liars, idiots, guilt-trippers, haters, and just plain evil. By this point I was already starting to get into personal development and trying to find happiness on my own.

Then things began to change. I had learned a lot of useful personal development techniques already (how to think more effectively, set goals, and so on), but there felt like something at my core was missing. I felt more rational than ever, but emotionally lost. I couldn’t make any sense of it.

Then, upon someone’s recommendation, I picked up Eckhart Tolle’s books Power of Now and New Earth. From that moment I began meditating and getting more attuned to who I was as a person or “self.” I gradually began to read more resources on Buddhism, Taoism, and Sufism, and I felt a wave of wisdom and clarity slowly crashing onto me.

I found that I was not as independent of a self as I thought I was. I was, in fact, quite interconnected to the people around me. I found that when I harbored negative feelings toward others, it was actually a reflection of my own insecurities and personality flaws. I didn’t like other people mainly because I thought they could never like me. The changed the way I treated others, which changed the way they treated me, and it turned into a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy.

The more I understood and experienced the metaphysical notion of “interconnectedness,” the more I realized how important empathy and compassion were. Because when people did things that caused me pain, I knew that was actually a reflection of their own suffering as well. I knew it, because I had been there myself.

With this understanding, I practiced becoming more empathetic and compassionate toward others. Not because someone on the news, or at church, told me that this is what I had to do (or I was evil). I did it because I could see clearly why I should value and contribute to the happiness of others.

In Robert Thurman’s book Infinite Life he describes a great metta meditation designed to expand our circle of compassion. We first start by sending positive intentions to those who are closest to us: friends, families or coworkers. Then we expand those positive intentions to the friends of our friends, families, or coworkers. From there we move on to showing compassion toward random strangers. Then, sometimes the most difficult step, is extending that compassion even to those who we dislike or consider to be enemies. Thurman describes a similar meditation in his TED video below.

Expanding Your Circle of Compassion

The Hitler Test

In light of this expanding circle of compassion, I wonder how many individuals can honestly say they have compassion for notoriously evil figures throughout our history, like Hitler or Osama Bin Laden.

It’s a question that I have pondered about for awhile (long before writing this post). I’ve asked people on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media if they could ever see themselves showing compassion to someone like Hitler and it has led to some really controversial debates.

I think this question is a good test for those who are trying to cultivate universal compassion. It helps to pay particular attention to our enemies, since those are the people who we often find most difficult to direct compassion towards.

To direct compassion toward someone like Hitler means that you sympathize with their suffering. Clearly, it takes a really sick man to do the atrocious things he had done. If only he had found true happiness and love in his own life, I doubt he would have acted so immorally. Perhaps if we can learn to better understand how to love our enemies, we can help reverse the cycle of suffering in this world.

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I believe there is a strong psychological power in using words like “God” and “prayer,” and I often use this kind of language to facilitate my own personal development.

I consider prayer a form of self-hypnosis. It’s a way to connect with our inner agent of change – our “God” (if you so wish to call it that), and in return we can use these powerful words and symbols to motivate ourselves to be better people.

About a year ago I was going through some spiritual and emotional turmoil. By this time I had already been practicing self-hypnosis for a couple years, and I was contemplating ways to make my practice more effective.

Before we begin, I should probably explain what hypnosis is to me. Hypnosis is primarily about language and the meaning behind language. Specifically, it deals with how we communicate ideas and suggestions to both ourselves and others.

For example, when someone is “highly suggestible,” a hypnotist can give a direct order and the person will probably act them out. They may suggest you “cluck like a chicken” and if you are suggestible enough you will follow through and pretend you are a chicken. Highly suggestible people make for great entertainment during staged shows.

However, hypnosis can also do something much deeper than just get people imagining weird scenarios and acting them out for fun. It can be an agent of real and powerful change that can greatly improve our lives.

A daily prayer is like a daily affirmation.

One of the most popular techniques in personal development literature is the use of affirmations. An affirmation is a suggestion you say to yourself on a frequent basis in hopes of creating a positive change in your life. Similar to a prayer.

For example, someone who has a short temper may want to use the affirmation: “I will be more calm and understanding when dealing with others.”

If they say this on a daily basis, with a clear focus and strong intent, they may find themselves acting more calmly and understanding to others. That is how affirmations work in a nutshell.

One of the books that first popularized the use of affirmations was Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” which was first published in 1937 (if you have ever read a personal development book ever, than you have certainly heard of this book).

However, the real origins of affirmations can probably be traced back to 19th century psychiatrist Émile Coué, discoverer of the placebo effect. (Coué noticed that he could improve the effectiveness of a drug by praising its effectiveness to his patients – another form of hypnosis or suggestion, but I’ll have to get more into this in later posts).

Coué’s famous affirmation was known as The Coué Method, which stated: “Everyday, in every way, I am getting better and better.” This was arguably one of the first affirmations, and it marked the beginning of personal development as we know it today.

Prayers are affirmation on steroids.

There is a lot of crap today about how to do affirmations. Some say as long as you read it 100 times a day and drill it in your head that they will work. I disagree. A meaningless affirmation repeated over and over won’t get you anywhere.

In order for any kind of suggestion to work, it must mean something and you must believe in its effectiveness.

If you go to Google searching for “daily affirmations,” you can find plenty that can help. However, the best affirmations are the one’s that come from your own creation, because they are the ones that are most meaningful to you – and that’s what really counts.

Similarly, in Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Energy of Prayer, he emphasizes that a prayer is most effective when we don’t see its power as separate from ourselves, but a power that comes from within.

This is why I recommend you write your own prayers, which is really nothing more than a series of affirmations that best suit you and your goals.

An example of a prayer I wrote.

I’m going to write something on the spot, right now, to give you an idea of how your prayer might look when you are finished.

Let’s pretend I’m writing a prayer to help me improve my health.

Dear God,

Please give me the awareness and strength to make healthier decisions.

Before a meal, give me the awareness to know what I should and shouldn’t eat.

Throughout the day, give me the strength to exercise and stay fit.

Never let me forget that my body and mind are one,

And I must take care of both.

Thank you.

Okay, so I literally wrote this up in a minute, but the effect won’t occur unless I take this prayer seriously and read it on a daily basis.

The advice is simple and commonsense, but a quick reminder like this can help me cultivate healthier habits and take better care of myself throughout the day.

Here are some tips for making your daily prayer more effective:

• Use language that is meaningful to you.

Words like “awareness” and “strength” are important to me when trying to act healthier, so I made sure to include both in the prayer.

• Make your intentions clear.

You don’t want to send yourself mixed signals. Make sure you know exactly what you are aiming to achieve.

• Be focused when you recite your prayer.

Don’t just rush through your prayer. Minimize distractions and recite it with a clear and focused mind.

• Make it a long prayer or repeat certain lines.

My prayer was short, but I could have myself repeat it 3-5 times to amplify the effect. In the past, I have written much longer prayers, and this helps me to convey an even clearer message about what I want to change.

• Repeat it on a frequent basis.

Optimally, once or twice a day is best. But even just a weekly reminder can help reinstate your motive going into the next week.

Internal change vs. External demands

Some of you reading this may find this advice similar to Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. However, I think there is an important distinction that needs to be made when talking about intentions and intention-manifesting.

Like I said earlier, the power of prayer is not something outside of ourselves. When we pray, we are not demanding something from the universe, but stimulating a change in ourselves to make things happen.

Sitting in a room all day praying cannot make you more healthy or wealthy all by itself. The idea is to change your mind first, and then your actions will follow.

You will know when your prayers are effective based on the results you get through your speech and behavior. If your prayer isn’t changing the way you act, then you need to change the way you pray.

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If you appreciated reading this, I invite you to join my newsletter to stay updated on new content. I also want to conduct some workshops in the near future on mental health and achieving your goals, and those on my newsletter will be the first to hear of the news (and get some discounts on top of that).

As always, thanks for your time.

For the sake of simplicity, here is a small list of the three that always pop to mind:

• Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “Guided Mindfulness Meditation.”
• Bhante Henepola Gunaratana’s “Mindfulness in Plain English.”
• Shinzen Young’s “The Science of Enlightenment.”

In this post, I want to elaborate specifically on Shinzen Young’s contribution in helping me learn meditation. I’ll tell you a little bit about Young’s credentials, his philosophy, and what “The Science of Enlightenment” offers to practitioners of meditation, as well as those who are just starting out.

The Science of Enlightenment

The Science of Enlightenment is a 14-CD set that spans over 16 hours of lectures and guided meditations. It covers a broad range of topics, starting with the theory and history of meditation practice, its emergence in Western culture, its relationship with science, and practical instruction for applying mindfulness and other mental skills to our everyday life.

Shinzen Young defines enlightenment as “a state of happiness independent of external conditions.” The goal of this program is to teach listeners about how this state of being can be achieved.

About Shinzen Young
Shinzen Young is a meditation teacher and an ordained monk in the Shingon Buddhist tradition. He has also practiced extensively in Zen and shamanism, and he is remarkably well-versed in all of today’s major religions including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam. He frequently integrates these different philosophies into his curriculum.