Mis en place well-being

Something else I’ve been trying to observe in myself, or i’ve seen. In coming home, the impulse to engage in hedonistic numbing is strong. The gravity of the environment is incredibly powerful. Trying to be gentle and observe the judgement as it arises. It’s clear out of my comfortability. The options are more varied here -- food, drink, media stimuli is exponentially increased. Such a big reminder as to how much environment plays in the psychology of well being. Or setting your self up for being well.

The piece I was reading today about writing was talking about setting yourself up to do the cursory writing tasks before you actually write.

Mis en place for wellbeing. A way to form good habits or break bad habits is setting yourself up for success. Pack your gym bag the night before. Don’t stock the pantry with junk food. Surround yourself with people that don’t drink. These things are intuitive, but incredibly difficult to actually practice.

We are our environment. That is a phrase that is tossed around. And while I believe in the ability to enforce ‘will power.’ It only goes so far. Coming home has illuminated this great juxtaposition for me. At home in Bend, we don’t have a TV, we don’t have pantries full of food that doesn’t make you feel great. We don’t have alcohol at the house typically. We go to bed early. We wake up early. We exercise most days. We keep it tidy — clothes aren’t on the ground. The dishes get washed, we make the bed. There’s space to be. Brian’s motivation to do the things that make him feel good affects me.

Contrast that with this environment at home, where its fundamentally different. Lots of TV’s, noise, stimulus on. People stay up later — nervous systems on overdrive. Always alcohol at your fingertips. It’s there, the option is there. Same with junk food — the option is always there to eat junk food. Whatever your heart could desire, cinammon toast crunch or bacon or mike and ikes. More people means more relational dynamics. All of these things contribute to lessening your decision power. It’s mental noise that drains your tanks faster. The complication, the presences of having to make a decision is there.

Whatever is in my contextual environment, stimulating me, sets me up to engage with it. Engage could mean not imbibing or making a choice for your wellbeing, but that’s choice energy that gets spent. It’s beyond willpower. I don’t care how good your willpower is. It’s about the environmental energy. And sure, you can muscle your way into not eating all the Cheez-its. But regardless of how much mental muscle youre willing to exercise in that choice. It’s extra decision making power, extra guilt, extra shame. That tires your brain out. That sets you up for being more likely to engage with the easy-outs instead of being able to mindfully engage with actions. If you spend all day trying to muscle your way into not eating Cheez-its, by the end of the day you may really want that quick release of a glass of wine.

I definitely have a permeable emotional wall. I absorb things in my environment. I’m not the self-control person. If its there, I will engage. I love life, I love a glass of wine. I love binge watching movies. I love salt and vinegar lays chips. But I can’t do those things every day cause I feel like shit. My body hurts, I feel sluggish, the depression sets in. It makes me slow down and feel not great.

In Buddhism they talk about ingesting poisons. If an action contributes to suffering or impacts your ability to be mindful, that is considered poisonous.

How do you set yourself up for success in environments when you have less control? I think I need to be more gentle. Acknowledge that there’s more mental noise here, and I may crave the poisons more in this environment. I’m full of stimuli and thats reflected in the environment. The cabinets are full to the brim and that energy has created a ‘fullness’ in me.

The extent to which our environments are cluttered, full, stocked with poisons, reflects the inner state within us. There’s a reason the army teaches you to make your bed in the morning. There’s some truth to the Kondo method where everything has a place and your surroundings cultivate a sense of joy and peace.

Our society conditions us to fill fill fill up, our spaces, our bodies, our minds — with junk. And then we wonder why we still feel unsatisfied. It’s an interesting contradiction to think that in order to feel ‘full’, you must empty your life and your surroundings. In reducing the visual, mental, physical, digestive noise, we are able to make room to notice. Without the ability to notice, we will miss the sweetness of the moment. The buds opening on a cherry tree. The muffled groans your puppy makes in the morning. These little popsicles of joy that punctuate the day.

Creating space in our life allows us to feel the ability to make conscious choices, about what we eat, what we read, how we spend our free time, how we will move our bodies. When you lessen the stimuli, you create an environment in which lessens autonomous reaction. Making the switch from reaction to mindful action is the key to cultivating a sense of well-being and content. But we have to set ourselves up for that. We have to put everything into places.

We have to help ourselves help ourselves. That means not bringing home the food that makes us feel sluggish. That means leaving the bottle of wine on the shelf. That means clearing our actual junk drawers and letting go of the items that we don’t use or just take up space. Manifesting these actions externally set us up to inhabit this approach internally. Cause guess what, we gotta do the same shit in our minds. And that’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.

How can you expect to step back from the ripples of your mind, to a point where you can have perspective and observe the thought seeds you sow, choose whether to water or fertilize them. You have to first identify what is a weed and what is a flower. What greedily soaks up all the good nutrients and spreads poison to the other plants? Simply identifying what causes you suffering is the first step.

Do this in your environment as well as your mind. It may be difficult to realize that certain substances, or items, or habits cause you pain. Just notice it first, don’t try to change it all right away. The more you notice the suffering, or the negative consequences of your actions, the easier it will be to naturally adjust those habits. Because the motivation won’t be pure gritty willpower, but an intrinsic yearning for cultivating content and wellbeing.

And in the process of noticing your relationships with people, items, substances, food — be gentle. It’s easy to judge our habit energies. Once we notice that something brings us discontent, we may mentally slap our wrists when we engage in that habit again. Change is not so easily ignited. Think of your mind and your habits like sedimentary rock. Layer by layer they can be shaped by invisible forces. Your mind is like the wind and the water. The stimuli you ingest power these natural forces.

Let it happen slowly, like waves shifting a beach. Move with the tide. Some days you will be deep in the muck. And you see yourself there. Then a big wave will come in and sweep you back out to the clear ocean. Expecting the currents to stop is the greatest fallacy. The waves of consciousness are infinite. Shifting to a more mindful existence means signing up to watch the surf, ad finitum.