I will be honest with you. I don’t like discipline. I went to a Montessori school where I learned to be self reliant and learn on my own. I treasure that background beyond measure. But I didn’t learn discipline very well. Perhaps, I am smart and I don’t have to work that hard sometimes to achieve school results others sweated on.

And the force habits, likewise, wasn’t always obvious to me. Nevertheless, I have come to recognize that I live by habits even when they are not habits I want or need. And thus I try to change them. Do I need to start up my computer first thing in the morning, or can I practice standing meditation? It took me some time to switch to the latter.

I want to share a story that I heard on the radio, which brought home for me the force of habits. An airtravel safety person explained that when planes crash and are on fire, most passengers often have time to leave the plane. But they have found people burned nevertheless with their seatbelts securely fastened across their laps. I wondered why

I have traveled many times and I don’t listen to the security announcements any longer. I know them by hard. “To secure the seatbelt, insert the metal fitting into the buckle. To loosen, lift the buckle.” Lift the buckle. It is the simplest of instructions, but it is the one time in my life that I lift to loosen the belt. All other times, and this can happen several times a day, I push a button to loosen my seatbelt. In the car, that is right.

So, in a time of crisis, we resort to our habits. The military knows this. In times of crisis, soldiers resort to their training, a particular way of instilling habits. That is the force of habits. The fact that we push a button to get out of our car has killed people who needed to get out of a burning airplane. They couldn’t do it. The habit was too strong.

Ad when it comes to standing meditation, I will never have peace like this.

Technorati Tags: habit, meditation, crisis, self help

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