Ask any child about learning tables or practicing piano. It takes a bit of hard work. It's not the most exciting thing to do. What's more you have to keep on doing it if you want it to become easier.
We keep on doing what is difficult and new until it becomes much easier. Remember learning how to tie your own laces, or learning how to drive?
This is neuroplasticity in action, in a very felt sense. It applies to almost everything we make a decision to do and focus upon. It applies to practical tasks like remembering passwords and learning any new skill. It also applies to changing our moods, emotional responses, attitudes and behaviour.
It enables us to make changes we desire. It enables us to have some control over the direction of travel in our lives. We push ourselves around in directions we wish to go rather than get pushed around blindly by external things and reactive habits.
BUT WE HAVE TO GET IT STARTED AND THEN CONTINUE WITH IT FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES.
This will very often mean doing what we don't feel like doing. Getting out of our comfort zone, rearranging the furniture in our head!
However difficult it is to start, it gets easier as we persist and the rewards are liberating. To start needs focus, awareness, intention and a sense of achievable purpose. It will need a sense of patient kindness to the self and a resilience that will strengthen if the desire to change is genuine.
The practice of insight meditation which is at the heart of mindfulness practice, is a proven way to harness this energy bringing mind and body together, working right down to the cellular level, bringing purpose, direction and a feeling of control to practical daily living.
You may not feel like starting but that's often the whole point! To turn a juggernaut around is not easy but it may be the only way to get to your desired destination.
Comments