When I was a teacher, I had an hour-long commute each day. Eventually, I ended this by moving closer to the school.
When I drove to school in the morning, it was an entirely new route which was pretty easy to memorize.
But driving home was another matter, I had to take much of the same route that I had been taking before the move but at a certain intersection, I had to make a different turn to get to my new home.
Of course, you can probably guess what sometimes happened
I’d miss the turn.
Then I’d have to make a U-turn up ahead to get back on track.
Why did I make this mistake?
Because I had to drive enough of the same route that my mind would not really aware by the time the turn came up.
To change this habit, so I didn’t have to make the U-turn every day, required that I turn my awareness on when it came time to make that turn.
And this is true of any habit we want to change.
We must turn on our awareness at the moment when habit would have taken over
One way to do this is with a practice I call the Five-Step Towards and Away.
I call it that because I break it down into five steps.
But in case you are not familiar with the concept, I’ll explain what towards and away means before I explain the five steps.
Noticing towards and away is noticing the direction of behavior
It is noticing whether your behavior is moving away from unwanted thoughts and feelings such as fear or anger … or moving towards who or what is important to you such as people you care about or ideas you value such as fitness or personal growth.
When a feeling or urge shows up that has led to an unwanted behavior in the past such as procrastinating or yelling, noticing whether you are moving towards or away is like putting a stop sign ahead of the turn so that you can become aware and notice what you are doing.
How does this reduce unwanted behavior?
Noticing towards and away reduces unwanted behavior by getting you in touch with the thoughts and feelings that you avoid in the moment.
When you follow the five steps, it slows you down so that you can notice avoidance in the moment. You notice your thoughts and your feelings … and you notice if you are moving away from them or towards something important.
In that act of noticing, you are reducing the avoidance
Often when an unwanted behavior has become a habit, we so quickly avoid or move under its control, that we have very little awareness of what is happening.
Noticing towards and away is a great first step in reversing this lack of awareness and replacing it with greater mindfulness. This often leads to a reduction in the habit without using a lot of willpower.
What are the five steps?
1. Ask “What am I doing?”
2. Ask “Is this a toward or away move?”
3a. If away, ask “What thoughts and feelings am I moving away from?” (skip to 4)
3b. If towards, ask “Who and what am I moving towards that are important to me?” (skip to 5)
4. Ask “Where in the body are you noticing those feelings?” Point to them.
5. Ask “How does it feel to notice which direction you are moving in?” “Where are those feelings in the body?” Point to them.
For example, one client, I’ll call Aaron, was struggling with a porn addiction. He often used it as a way to deal with many feelings such as anger, anxiousness and even boredom.
He’d tried various therapies to better deal with his issues with little success but was willing to try again after I showed him the Matrix diagram.
When I taught him the Five-Step Towards and Away, I had him write it down a few times so he could share with me how he did it.
Here’s what he wrote during one of his moments of temptation:
- What am I doing? I’m browsing a porn website.
- Is this a toward or away move? It’s an away move.
- What am I moving away from? I’m exhausted and just want to feel good.
- Where in the body are you noticing those feelings? Pointed to my head.
- How does it feel to notice that? Not good.
The day he first learned it, he noticed he had several moments of temptation. He would be just about to type in the URL of a porn site and then he would practice noticing towards and away.
Then he’d close the browser window and do something else. At the end of the day, he did finally look at one site but for much less time than usual.
After several days, he said he noticed he was feeling happier than usual. He thought this might have happened because he had spent more time on fulfilling activities such as walking and reading.
He credited much of these changes to spending time using the five-steps of noticing towards and away which he had started to do regularly.
Why did Aaron experience such rapid results?
One clue is something Aaron had told me. He often said that he could open his browser without actually intending to look at porn but would just end up typing something porn related into his browser window and off he would go.
Looking back he realized that often he was avoiding something uncomfortable.
He was usually unaware of these feelings and even when he was aware he didn’t know how to respond to them more effectively.
He also said that by noticing his feelings in this way, he could see that he didn’t need to run away from them. He had started to accept them.
So these questions reversed some of the issues causing him to look at porn
Question 3 (What thoughts and feelings are you moving away from?) helped him get in touch with his feelings.
Question 4 (Where in the body are you noticing those feelings?) helped him notice the feelings were in a location in the body which made them easier to accept.
However, he thought that question 2 (Is this a toward or away move?) was extremely valuable because when he kept noticing that looking at porn was an away move, he realized it was taking the place of a toward move he could be taking.
He said this helped him start losing interest in looking at porn.
Of course, this is just one person.
But will this kind of approach work with others who are struggling with bad habits or addictive behavior?
Research from Judson Brewer, the director of the Therapeutic Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Medical School may provide an answer.
In one study Brewer conducted, he tested a mindfulness process with cigarette smokers and compared that to the “gold standard” approach to treating cigarette addiction called “Freedom From Smoking.”
Here’s a quote from Brewer about the study found in his book The Craving Mind:
When the data came back from our statisticians, the participants in the mindfulness training group had quit at twice the rate of the Freedom From Smoking group. Better yet, nearly all mindfulness participants who quit had not started smoking again, while many of those in the other group had lost ground, yielding a fivefold difference between the two!
So the mindfulness approach beat the standard approach by 500%
That’s a pretty startling result.
In this study, the participants were using a different set of steps than I use with my clients but what they have in common are noticing and accepting feelings.
You can find out more about Brewer’s research by reading his book “The Craving Mind.”
Although remembering a new route home is quite trivial compared to dealing with addictive behaviors such as watching porn or smoking cigarettes, keep in mind that the solution to reducing any bad habit or addictive behavior, is in the power of noticing what direction you are going in and what you are moving towards or away from … and doing so at the moment the behavior is happening.
The same principle applies to changing unwanted eating habits or spending too much time on Facebook.
Noticing towards and away is what allows you to see the turn up ahead and make the choice that takes you where you want to go.
The Five-Step Toward and Away is one powerful way to accomplish this.
To sum up:
Much of our unwanted behavior persists because we are not fully aware while we are pursuing the behavior.
By increasing our awareness we are reducing avoidance which is a big reason for addictive behaviors and bad habits.
One effective way of reducing unwanted behavior is the Five Step Towards and Away which is a mindfulness-based approach to changing behavior.
Brewer’s research on cigarette smokers shows that a mindfulness-based approach is five times more effective than the gold standard approach to reducing overcoming cigarette addiction.
Next step:
Identify a behavior you’ve been wanting to stop and try practicing the Five Step Towards and Away on that behavior.
Notice if you feel less drawn to the behavior after you’ve practiced this process a few times.
After trying this several times yourself, you may want to share this process with others, especially if you are a coach or therapist.
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Announcement:
I’m still hard at work on my e-book “How to finish a project” and will be able to release more information about it in the next few weeks.
Thanks so much for your support and encouragement as I write the book.
