Reflect upon your life and all of the activities you frequently engage in, sensing where habit is most strongly present.
You might see habit being the governing force in some of the simple actions you undertake — how you wash your dishes, cook a meal, drive your car or walk to work.
You might see that it is within the repetitive activities that are part of all of our lives that we are most prone to becoming habitual and mechanical.
Take just one or two activities and commit yourself to undertaking them as it for the first time.
As you wash your dishes, sense all of the sensations and movements involved — the touch of the water on your skin, your hand touching a glass, the movement of your arm. Have the intention of bringing a genuine depth of sensitivity to that moment.
If there is a familiar path you walk many times in your life — up a flight of stairs, to your bus stop or into your workplace — experiment with walking that path with a fullness of sensitivity and a commitment to being present in each step.
Sense if there are people in your life who have in some way been dismissed from your heart because of an image or assumption you hold about them. They may be the people you find yourself avoiding, the person in your neighborhood store who is hardly seen through lack of interest, or someone who has in some way offended you. Make a commitment to meeting that person, seeing and listening to them with a fullness of sensitivity and attention, as if they were your dearest friend or as if this was both the first and last time you would ever have the opportunity to know that person. Sense what happens when you are willing to be probe beneath your images and conclusions.
Each day make a simple commitment to bring a fullness of sensitivity and interest to just one area of your life that you sense is governed by habit.
Sense how the commitment to awareness has the power to dissolve habit in a moment, allowing a new depth and sensitivity to emerge.
— Christina Feldman in Heart of Wisdom, Mind of Calm