As much as bad habits are created, so are good habits. I love doing yoga. I love walking. And I love meditating. They’re very strong habits inside me. I probably will do them until the day I die.
We can all develop good habits. and once in place, they can be difficult to break. So let’s change the bad habit into something that we want, but let’s do it kindly. Be patient. Each time we do mess up, we can see what we can learn from it. If what we are doing isn’t working, then we can try something else that will work and be better for us.
We work on things and can too easily get frustrated and then give up. We hear that self-criticism, and it can be harsh. But if we repeatedly use kindness, it works. We also have to be patient. In time, the good habits will become stronger. So if we work towards changing bad habits, we will be happier.
Let’s recap.
First, we have to be aware of what we are doing. We watch our thoughts to see what’s going on in our heads all day long.
Second, we need to be kind to ourselves as we work to change. Remember, we can be our harshest critics. We must realize habits come with conditioning, and we need to be kind towards changing that conditioning. When we mess up, we can say, “What can I learn from this?” Kindness works so we have to be kind no matter how long it takes.
Third, we have to change our habits. If we keep doing the same thing and expect different results, we’re going to be sorely disappointed. We have to change our habits by trying to do different things until we find something that works. Once we do that over and over, that will become the new habit. But it will be good for us.
Fourth, we need patience. If we have had a habit for ten years, it might take a few years to change it.
We need a positive coach to help us, and the coach we have all day long is the one in our minds. So be kind to yourself and think kind thoughts instead of resorting to damaging self-criticism.
Chapter Thirteen
Three Things to Do When Bad Things Happen
When we start feeling happier, we might get the idea that we are shielded from any more bad things. Unfortunately, bad things can still happen. Tragedies strike, no matter how great a place we reach in our lives.
This is true even of the most enlightened ones. Buddha lived many years after he had his first enlightenment. Although he lived into his eighties, he didn’t remain healthy and fit his whole life; everything didn’t only go well for him. People that he loved died, as he got older his body wore out, and he succumbed to illnesses.
Just because we get to that point of happiness, everything is not necessarily going to go smoothly for the rest of our lives. Think of Jesus. His life was cut short. Many people despised him, and in the end, he was very much alone and died a horrible death. A more recent example would be the Dalai Lama. He seems like a very happy and peaceful human being. But he has gone through difficult times. Many of the people he loved have been killed or tortured.
So, it isn’t as if everything is going to run easily once we reach a point of living a happy life. That isn’t how it works. How can we deal with disaster or heartbreak that enters our lives? That is what matters most. Even when tragedy strikes, we want to deal with it so our lives still proceed beautifully,.
If we live long enough, we will encounter tragedy of some sort. We may lose loved ones, most likely our parents. We may suffer accidents. Some people die quickly but most of us are going to get illnesses and die over an extended period. Very few of us are going to have thirty to forty years of a steady job, after which we retire with the financial means to live well for the rest of our lives. Most of us have ups and downs along the way; we get things, we lose things, things go well, and things don’t go so well. This is life.
So how do we deal with tragedy so we can maintain our happiness? Three steps will help. First, we recognize misfortune is part of life. Second, we do what we can to improve the situation. And three, knowing we’ve done what we can, we carry on. That all might seem easier to say than do, so let’s look at these three in more detail.
First, we have to accept that, no matter what we’re given, no matter how well things are going, sooner or later tragedy will hit. Thinking that we can reach a place where we avoid tragedy is a mistake. It is going to happen. That’s the main thing: accepting that life is sometimes not going the way we want it to.
Acknowledging that misfortune is going to happen is important. Saying it’s unfair or shouldn’t be happening is just going to make us suffer needlessly. When we live, we do suffer; it’s part of life. Accept this.
It’s not necessarily that we’re doing something wrong. Life includes things that can’t always be prevented; others can make unwise decisions that affect us. But there might be things we need to learn and change. We all make mistakes, and they usually have consequences that hurt.
For example, when people drink and drive, they are usually not trying to hurt someone else. But sometimes they do—their drinking causes them to lose control of their car, get into an accident, and hurt someone. Yes, they made a mistake, but it isn’t going to do them any good to say, ‘This shouldn’t have happened.” And if their accident involves another person who was, unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time, that person also won’t be helped by saying, “This shouldn’t have happened.”
But it did. “Shouldn’t have” deals with the past. It’s done, over, can’t be changed. Our happiness depends upon now, the present. We need to recognize bad sometimes happens so we can move to the next step. After we’ve acknowledged we’re not exempt from tragedy, we can stop fighting it. It is happening, and so we need to work with it.
Second, we see what we can do to make the situation better. What do we have in our power to rectify it right now?
For example, if we got into a car wreck with a drunk driver and it wasn’t our fault and now we’re in the hospital, we need to get well and become physically fit. So, we go to physical therapy, do the exercises, go to our doctor’s appointments, do our treatment, and focus on getting our bodies better. If we need to go to court for the situation, we will. We won’t be focusing on what went wrong; that’s in the past and will only keep us stuck. Instead, we concentrate on making the present better by healing ourselves.
Let’s flip the scenario. If we were the one driving while drunk who caused injury to another, then we must recognize our part, see how we can prevent that happening again, and take appropriate action. We look at our behavior and see what caused us to drink and drive. The number one way to preclude us from being stuck and repeating the same behavior is not beating ourselves up. Part of learning from the situation might be getting involved with therapy or maybe meditating. It’s going to be proactively doing things to change our behavior so we don’t do it again. We may have to make financial reparations for the damage we’ve done; we may have to apologize to the people that we’ve hurt and their families. But we don’t beat ourselves up. We just do what we must to make things better as much as we can. We have to differentiate between what we can fix and what we can’t. Then we let go of what we can’t.
In either case, after we do what needs to be done to get healthy again, then we enjoy life as much as possible. In the hospital, we could talk with the people that are visiting us, read good books, watch movies that make us laugh. Later, we also get outdoors in nature if we can. Mostly what we’re spending our time doing is just living life and not even thinking about the tragedy. Even if we’re in a wheelchair, no matter how bad that tragedy is, we can do things to make it better.
Think