Escape the trap of conformity
Create the life you want in the first hour of your day
“The opposite to courage is not cowardice…. To say a person is a coward has no more meaning than to say he is lazy: it simply tells us that some vital potentiality is unrealized or blocked. The opposite to courage, as one endeavors to understand the problem in our particular age, is automaton conformity.” —Rollo May
Now that the wave of New Year’s resolutions has crested and subsided, this is a great moment to consider what really changes our lives for the better.
Despite the myriad successes I’ve enjoyed over the years, I’ve never gotten the hang of setting and achieving goals—at least not in the conventional sense of regimenting the steps I would take toward some arbitrary target where a new, improved me awaited at the finish line.
My relationship to achievement is much more of a co-creative dance where I take the inspired first steps, and the Universe does the rest.
In 1997, the year I had to raise a daunting amount of tuition to attend culinary school in New York City, I began each day with a visualization:
My classmates and me, all in our chef whites, beaming with joy as we held our certificates of completion.
I juiced up that image with so much conviction that money began flowing in from astonishing sources, the most spectacular of which was an acquaintance in my spiritual community gifting me $5,000 with no demand of payback.
Just a request that I help others with the skills I would learn.
When I started school, I thought that meant becoming a private chef to New York’s rich and famous out in the Hamptons.
Instead, it meant traipsing around all of NYC’s so-called “bad” neighborhoods with a Tupperware bin full of cookware, teaching culinary arts to those just starting to climb the economic ladder.
My manifestation prowess notwithstanding, the whole topic of goals frankly bums me out.
Makes me feel a little less than.
I was just about to skulk into self-pity at the thought of a new goal-setting year when I perchance manifested this missive of redemption, from one of my favorite hot springs in the American West, in my email inbox.
I have to print it in toto because I can’t say it any better:
“Goals might be catalyzing. Habits can be cementing.
Lifetime course corrections tend to take root through small, incremental, and wildly inconsistent habits that stick around.
Maybe not every day, but reliably most days.
Like compounding interest, habits add up over time.
So consider moving beyond goals and settling in to habits.
Instead of setting a goal of losing 10 pounds, consider walking to work most days.
Throw out reading two books a month and pick up reading before you fall asleep.
Habits, rituals, traditions, and routines with lots of space in the middle for stops, starts, and all-out forgets create room for progress without all the arbitrary baggage.
In the end, habits will outpace any completed goal well after 2024 passes.
I’ve often told my students, for example, that while I don’t meditate every day, I’ve been meditating for nearly 40 years.
Make sense?
After spiraling into a squall of depression over the holidays I knew that, as someone who grew up watching my mother slowly die from doctors and hospitals, a pharmaceutical solution for my malaise was not an option.
Instead, I began examining my habits.
And I saw that a subtle cowardice had snuck into my morning routine.
I tout my spirituality to myself and others as my top priority in life.
Yet what was the first thing I did upon awakening? You got it:
Shortly after that revelation, I manifested this quote by Brandon Burchard in a documentary I was watching:
“I can tell if someone is trapped in conformity by looking at their first 60 minutes in the morning.
If you wake up, and you do what 86 percent of smart-phone owners do, you grab your phone, you look at it, you go into your social media, you go into your e-mail, you go into your texts, you go into your voice messages, you go to your games....
You’re starting your day in reaction.
Your mind is not directing the day.
You’re not planning. You’re not asking what you want.
Instead, the world is directing your attention and your day.”
I have since adopted the habit of meditating before checking my phone.
Buh-bye winter blues. Good morning fresh start.
What it all boils down to … how we start our day is how we live our life.
So if you're hoping, for example, to lose weight and keep it off ... to get a handle once and for all on your late-night bingeing ... to make friends with the wrinkly woman you see in the mirror ...
The quickest, easiest, and most efficient way there is to rebuke the juggernaut of automaton conformity and courageously commit the first hour of your day to you.
And if you're groaning about how hard that's gonna be, take heart.
I was going to sequester the content below behind a paywall but instead chose to share it freely.
If you watch it, find it helpful, and would like to buy me a matcha latte once a month, consider becoming a paid subscriber to cheer me on in my work.
On the second Saturday of each month I host The Un-Dieters’ Club, a free online gathering where I share tips, tools, and teachings to help you midlife gals reclaim your vitality and love your body without ever dieting again.
Here’s the recording from our January meeting, where we had a lot of fun tackling this topic of building new habits to honor the start of your day.
So if you’re ready to give more than lip service to the fulfillment of your desires, then make yourself a pot of herb tea, settle in with your journal, and let’s work on this together:
Join me for the next Un-Dieters’ Club on Saturday, February 10, where we’ll talk about “Becoming Ageless As We Age.”
You are worth the select portion.
In the Buddhist tradition that I've been part of since 1987, we have a practice of feasting to celebrate our connection with our teachers, the teachings they've shared with us, and the company of our fellow practitioners.
When we're served a plate of food, the first thing we do is set aside a select portion as an offering of gratitude.
We bless the food, and then we symbolically offer that select portion to the "guests" who are present at the feast.
The select portion practice reminds me of that first hour of the day.
It's a precious time, when you think about it.
It's a fleeting interval when we get to create ourselves anew, free from the weight of our own ponderous self-projections.
Which is exactly what we want, right?
So why does it feel so hard to give that select portion of time to ourselves?
Because most of us, when we live unconsciously, wake up with a heavy emotional burden of some perceived guilt or shame that makes it challenging to engage in self-care activities or positive morning rituals.
Or perhaps the seemingly urgent demands of the day propel us to neglect ourselves and "get busy," especially when the first thing we do in the morning is look at our phone.
Whatever it is, I'm here to tell you ...
You deserve the select portion of the day.
Think of one new habit you’d like to introduce into your morning routine and do it for seven days.
Or just do it for three.
Do it until you start to feel better.
Give yourself permission to feel better about feeling better.
And then let the heliotropic impact of those new behaviors turn your life like a sunflower toward the sun of personal dignity and freedom.
Yes!! The way I start my morning sets the tone for my whole day. I’ve been writing about routines lately and will be publishing a piece about it next week 😉