day 27 | route of returning

but returning isn't an option. back, yes. return, no. life is nonreturnable, nonrefundable. there are simply zero redos. the route only moves in the now with a constant drifting forward no matter whether one's mind fixes at various points in the past or the future. the preference would be for mentality stabalizing 80% in the now, i'll save 10% for reflection so as to learn and not repeat and 10% projecting into the later so i can at least sketch out a rough pencil version of the future to move toward.

i've currently been reading Duhigg's The Power of Habit, Tharpe's Creative Habit and listening to Stuts and Michel's text, The Tools. They are highly interrelated yet come from entirely different paradigms. Duhigg's is a synthesis, an amalgamation, of research studies (with references) about habit, memory, etc, in conjunction with change, Tharpe's is her dance and coregraphical path and the role of habit/behavioral and mind patterns to bring her work to fruitition, and finally the tools are a therapeutic model for change now without the need to cull from and get stuck in histories. In many ways all three are saying the same things. Undergirding each process which mimic one another just labeled with a distinct language system is a processing and future setting via a practice of behavioral exercising and writing. Duhigg's text actually references studies that indicate a direct increased rate of recovery (change) for those who wrote daily--working through the mundane patterns, addressing work arounds or through of pain. the writing seems to entail not only a to do listing (agggghh small bites sized goals) but as in Stuts/Michael's text includes unpacking and almost essentially documenting ones self studies, experiments. all require work, but result in greater sense of energy. all three texts are extremely practical. everything i've read on creativity supports this same role for the written (handwritten) language. admittedly though Tharpe's procedures, her anal rigidity, work well for her practice, it is clearly aligns with her personal disposition. I concur with her procedures but will have to adapt them to my disposition which is not highly controlling or calculating in style and definitely not in terms of habit.

perhaps today's take away, which i think i would like to embrace for this year, is one William James latched onto for a one year experiment. i am a watcher and at a very base level as i watch others i long ago came to believe that change is not actually possible, that the free will we believe rarely emerges from the forces of systemic histories that propel us into our own futures. i find this core undergirding belief unproductive, true or not. it inhibits me. no, in fact, it paralyzes me into an Eeyore mind set--"oh bother." This translates into WHY BOTHER?

'"All our life," William Janes told us in the prologue, "so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits--practical, emotional, and intellectual--systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the later may be...

...James mad a decision...he would conduct a yearlong experiment. he would spend twelve months believing that he had control over himself and his destiny, that he could become better, that he had the free will to change. There was no proof that it was true. But he would free himself to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that change was possible. "i think that yesterday was a criss in my life," he wrote in his diary. Regarding his ability to change, "I will assume for the present--until next year--that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."  Over the next year, he practiced everyday. In his diary, he wrote as if his control over himself and his choices was never in question...Later he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change. And that one of the most important methods for creating that belief was habits. Habits are what allow us to "do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally with sufficient practice, do it semi-mchanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all." Once we choose who we want to be, people grow "to the way in which that have been exercised, ..If you believe you can change--if you make it a habit--the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. Once that choice occur--and becomes automatic--it is not only real, it starts to seem inevitable (ha so much for free will), the thing, as James wrote, that bears "us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be."

it may not be that simple, i wouldn't really even call it an attitude adjustment, but a test that i will run for one year, an experiment--acting on the belief (whether or not i believe) that i can change, direct my course, have free will, alter habits of mind and action. this does not negate the belief in a higher power, but falls under the concept that the best part of me that dreams, will do so in alignment with the way in which i was built. Anyhow, i will use writing to get there, to navigate, put into practice--work through the mundane unthinking daily rituals and invisible decisions of mind and body by unpacking them in real space [exercises] and through the space of the mind evidenced in writing, testing  habit cue/ritual/reward loops, believing i can alter them, making it so and writing as though i am in control of all this, that i am asserting my will into creating a specific destiny. as an experiment i will function with belief that i have purpose, that what i do matters.

pragmatically this means reviewing the three texts [studying] and putting into practice the tests, the data collection [documenting], the future casting based on what is.