Changing our minds . . .

In order to start changing our habits of mind, and our minds, we must remove ourselves from some of the “gross and violent stimulants” (Wordsworth, "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads) that surround us. Begin with a retreat. Set aside a long weekend for the work. And then turn off the Internet, the TV, and the iPods. Start the day by watching the sun rise. Plan activities that are family-oriented if your family is willing. Clear the slate so your mind is not full of everything that “must be done.” Play cards. Read. And write down the things that you enjoy most in your life. Reflect on those things. What is it that makes them enjoyable? How can you make other activities in your life similarly enjoyable?

The principle of substitution. Like people who are quitting smoking, an old habit cannot simply be dropped. New habits must take the place of old ones. So think about ways of changing your practices. What will be the gum you chew? Or the toothpicks you chew? Or the favorite foods you eat? Find something that will give you a different pleasure, and use it as a starting point for new habits. Best to choose several alternatives so that you don’t get too fixated on one. Otherwise you will find yourself with yet another hard habit to break.

First, consider the issue of habit. Habit is important. It enables us to think less and to get more done. Without it, we would have to start over from scratch every time we did anything. Imagine a world in which you had to re-learn the alphabet every day. Or learn how to walk again every day. Impossible. Learning is partly about moving new skills and ideas from the novel to the habitual. Once we have accepted a practice as good, or satisfying, it has a tendency to become habitual very quickly. The more pleasurable the practice, the deeper the “groove” of the habit produced. Thus we are rightly concerned as a culture about sexuality, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol. These things produce intense pleasure at levels that are very persuasive. Sometimes they are very hard to manage for that reason.

We love these things, and we fear them, because of their power to alter our perception of time and engagement with the world. When we are sexually aroused, we become totally focused on the moment of pleasure at hand. When we are drinking, we feel relaxed, untroubled by the busy and frantic worlds of work and family responsibility within which we usually find ourselves. When we smoke, we feel alert, empowered, more intensely in the moment. All of these pleasures involve a sense of immersion and connection that we often lose in the repetitive and form-filled world of work. Boredom is our greatest enemy; but boredom is a choice, not a necessity.
We need to substitute other forms of immersion for the immersion of drugs, alcohol, and sex—or to increase our immersion time. Being completely involved in ANYTHING is satisfying. We have all felt the power of reading a great book, or watching a great movie, or watching a game, or playing a sport, or . . . We are most happy, according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, when we are completely involved in an activity that challenges us but also rewards our skills. So it makes sense that we should work at creating immersion opportunities. E.F. Schumacher said that we should focus on creating Good Work, rather than focusing on “productivity” or “growth.” And he was so right.

As a culture, however, we have trained ourselves into believing that immersion activities are separate from work, separate from family life, and separate from “productivity” on the whole. Hmmm. We have generated a model in which we work only 30-35 hours a week and dedicate the rest of our time to a highly troubled “leisure” that remains completely unsatisfying to most of us. “Leisure” is not really “leisure” when it is full of second jobs, running errands, raising children, and so on. It is, in fact, more work. But the fact is, work can be satisfying when we participate fully and do it well. QUALITY is the key. Most people find mediocrity completely unsatisfying, yet they live with it and even become it in order to “save time” and to have more leisure. Mediocrity is the result of non-immersion practice. When you are thinking about one thing and doing another, you are committing mediocrity. When you are doing something in a hurry in order to “get finished,” you are committing mediocrity. When you are doing a job you hate in the name of making money only, you are committing mediocrity. So most of us find ourselves committing mediocrity on a daily basis. And it doesn’t feel good, does it?

Eventually we start to believe that mediocrity, and non-immersive experience, is the primary mode of life. We are hungry for immersion and at-one-ness with our work, with our friends, and with our spouses. But we feel that it cannot be found in everyday activities which reek of mediocrity. So we begin to try other routes—New Age junk, drugs, alcohol, vacations, various “escapes” from mediocrity. But since they are not authentic immersion experiences that cultivate our learning, our skills, and our sense of who we are, they are simply distractions from the ongoing problem of being detached from the world that we live in. This is what we call “escapism,” and it is rampant in today’s world. If the world of work and the world of social values are so unsatisfying, why do we tolerate them? Because we must? Or because we don’t know any better? These are questions worth asking.

Csikszentmihalyi offers several stories of factory workers, office workers, and “line workers” who found what he calls “flow” in their work. I would say that “flow” begins with openness and a willingness to try things—to learn. It is sustained by patience and a patient commitment to getting better at anything we do. It ends with mastery and control. Once a job is routine, and there is nothing new to be learned in that job for a person, that person will rapidly lose the sense of “flow” or complete immersion in the task at hand. And that is the beginning of alienation. But any job can produce flow for a time, and many jobs can produce flow indefinitely (people-oriented jobs are often this way—new people, new situations every day). So the conditions under which we labor, while they are often not ideal for flow and immersion, do not make flow and immersion impossible. What makes it impossible is the state of our own minds as we face the conditions of our lives.