falling back into old ways
As you get more clear on what your authentic life looks like and begin to realign your behaviors and habits with your authentic life, you might find your Self easily falling back into the old ways you are trying to move on from.
I don’t know this to be factual, but I think that’s normal and does not mean you won’t reach your authentic life—assuming you recognize you’re back to your old ways and refocus your attention on the new.
The important part is to recognize that you’ve reverted to the old ways. But, recognizing isn’t enough—after all, you have to step back out of the comfort of the old ways and move back into the discomfort of the new if you are serious about moving toward your authentic life. In addition to recognizing, you have to accept and own that you’ve fallen out of alignment with your authentic life, and then you have to do something about it—take action to get back in alignment.
If you find your Self constantly reverting to your old ways, it might be worth examining the execution of your new habit or behavior.
For example, I used to be a super early riser so I could get a morning workout, meditation, breath work, and write my Daily Note before Silas got up at 6:30. As our evening schedule has gotten more chaotic with practices, games, and other activities for the boys, our evenings have found themselves with late dinners and bedtimes, which extends my bedtime and makes the early wake up not an option if I am going to continue to prioritize sleep.
Instead of beating my Self up because I kept sleeping until 6:00 instead of 5:00 in the morning, I realized that our current lifestyle did not support my 5:00 wake-up, so I needed to shift when and how I accomplished the important habits in my life. I still get my meditation, breath work, and writing done in the morning—some before Silas wakes up and some after he hops on the bus, and my workout in the afternoon before our busy evening of practices begins.
This new way of accomplishing all of my daily habits is temporary because, once summer hits, I’ll be able to do everything in the order I prefer because there will no longer be a 7:10 bus pick-up for Silas. I used to think the order of the habits was important, and maybe there is a little truth to it—I do feel more energized throughout the day when I get a quick workout in to start the day, but what I realized was it was more important to complete the habits during the day.
I had a choice to make once I realized and owned that I wasn’t doing the things I needed to to stay aligned with my authentic life:
I could have used any number of excuses and fell back into my old way of doing things.
Or, I could identify what was the cause of the slippage and take action to get back to the alignment I had found that was interrupted by busy evenings that prevented early wake-ups.
Note: The way I solved my falling back into old ways is only one of infinite possibilities; it’s not as if there was only one right answer for me that I had to find. I can think of multiple other options, but they don’t align with my authentic life right now as much as the path I chose.
It’s natural to fall back into habits and behaviors you’ve held for so long; it’s hard to reverse a habit you’ve had for years overnight and without any retracement back to that old habit. You just need to remember you don’t have to stay in that habit if you fall back into it. You have the freedom to go back to the habits that align with your authentic life—maybe just with some adjustments to how you were trying to execute your change.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
