The other day I went to meditate at a friend’s home. Everything was unfamiliar: the small space, the lighting, the scent of incense, even the sound of her timing bell. During the hour I experienced a depth and strength to my meditation that I hadn’t felt for quite some time. It had something to do with the place, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
The following day I heard a report on NPR about research on drug addiction during the Vietnam war. It explained that for a long time, scientists (and folks like you and I) assumed that if you wanted to change behavior, the key was to change goals and intentions … and behavior change would follow. Just think of attempts to lose weight, exercise more, drink less, quit smoking, get a hobby, get out of a toxic relationship, leave unsatisfactory employment … all the things that show up when making a New Year’s Resolutions.
But if we’ve done something often enough, behavior doesn’t follow intentions. This has to do, researchers tell us, with the way our physical environments shape our behavior. We sit on the couch, for instance, eating too much ice cream despite our intentions and resolutions. I reach for assorted chocolates, in spite of my plan to cut down on sugar.
One answer to changing unwholesome behaviors, it appears, is to disrupt the environment in some way. Even small change can help — like eating the ice cream with your non-dominant hand. What this does is alter the action sequence and disrupts the learned body sequence that’s driving the behavior. It allows our conscious mind to come back online and reassert control: “Is this really what I want to do?”
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