Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Habits: Good and Bad

Good habits are hard; bad habits are easy. I know this is not news to anyone, nor even a new revelation to myself. It's just more evident when you are trying to not only keep good habits yourself, but instill good habits in your children.

Here's a revelation (not new, but still...) I'm lazy. Adopting habits to make me NOT lazy is my primary goal right now.

Eric teaches a course called Intro to Religion. He's pretty excited about a new idea he has for his Fall class in which he will have his students either choose to visit a place of worship that is not their own tradition (this isn't new) OR choose a religious experience. He has 6 total religious experiences and he will offer 4 for each student to choose from.

One of them is meditating a certain number of times a day (2 maybe) for 7 days. Anyway on Saturday he was presented the idea from another professor. And Sunday, after church, he decided that the family would try meditating for 10 minutes.

So we all sat on the floor "cris-cross applesauce" and he set the timer for 10 minutes and we sat with our backs straight and stared at a spot on the floor right in front of us and said, together "frozen peas makes me sneeze." (It was originally "frozen peas make weak knees" but Jordan decided that was too hard.)

Jordan dropped out after about 3 minutes and laid down, but Aron, Eric and I kept it up.

I won't say that it was a life changing event or anything, but it was kind of nice to not think about anything for 10 minutes (which is the point).

Anyway, Eric mentioned shortly afterward that we should do that every day.

We also did a 10 minute challenge of folding and putting away laundry. And I made a turkey breast w/ fixin's for dinner. It was a pretty good Sunday, all in all.

Yesterday I got a lot done and since Eric was making dinner (enchiladas) I decided I would wake up at 6 this morning and meditate for 10 minutes and then make pancakes for breakfast.

Then I decided the whole FAMILY would get up at 6 and meditate for 10 minutes.

I should explain (back to the lazy) that my alarm goes off at 6 every morning, but I hit snooze until 7.

This morning my alarm went off at 6. And I hit snooze.

But at 6:09 I got up. Jordan was up (but only for about 5 minutes or so). I woke up Aron who was actually quite ready to get up. Eric didn't want to get up, but he did.

So at 6:15 we were sitting on the floor waiting for Eric to start the timer. Jordan, again, dropped out after about 3 1/2 minutes, but then she started again with 2 minutes to go. Aron, Eric and I lasted the 10 minutes.

Again, not life changing, but if we can all sit still for 10 minutes that's a good habit, I think.

Then I made pancakes with Jordan's help.

It was kind of nice to all be up in the morning with plenty of time to do what needed doing.

I think we'll try again tomorrow for right at 6... cuz Eric has to leave early on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for class.

I think the habit of all getting out of bed at 6 is a great one to focus on. And really, you can only adopt one (good) new habit at a time, I think.

No comments: