When it comes to habits, focusing on your habitual state is just as important, if not more so, than focusing on habits of doing.

The why lies in this distinction:

Doing-habits mostly get the best from your current inner engineering and works like an automated maintenance. For example a morning run that enhances your mood and performance. You do a primarily external activity to get a familiar payoff.

Nurturing a new routine of doings can create the conditions for self-transformation, especially when you’re starting them from a relatively low state — but these are not as effective as directed inner work in the long run for those who want to continually expand their contributive output and potential.

In habits of being, you are working directly with your inner engineering which has the effect of dissolving energies, complexes, self-limiting beliefs and more. These act as constraints to the energy, creativity and the scope and flexibility of perspective that we can access and express.

Some aspects of our inner engineering, such as your potential and life’s purpose, are intrinsic, and in these cases habits of being help you to uncover them through the still and spacious processes of mindfulness and self-enquiry.

Habits of doing become familiar actions to create more of the desired familiar (wellbeing, wealth, targets); it amasses and reinforces outcomes as its function, providing consistency, more space to focus, and efficiency.

Uncovering via self-work is delving into the unfamiliar in you, to discover new qualities and potentials that were lost or unknown; it identifies and transforms as its function, revealing new qualities and ways of producing outcomes to play with, including via new potential habits of doing.

The two interact, you can habituate your inner work and optimise those methods, and likewise discovering more potentials in you gives you more to create and learn too!

Instead of mainly doing things to optimise your life according to your current engineering, which is what most people do, you can change the engineering itself to optimise your life and those of others more deeply!

Here are some inner engineering activities you can easily do today:

⭐ ️Journaling — explore the thoughts, feelings and insights you’ve had in the day in a free and safe space for self-exploration.

⭐ ️Meditation: Bring your attention away from your thoughts to get in touch with your body, environment, or a specific object of focus. No need to worry if your thoughts drift, this is to be expected; guide them back to whatever you are being still and present with.

⭐ Practicing mindfulness/presence: like meditation, taking attention away from the thoughts and fantasies we are easily caught up in, and instead being present with our senses, environment, as we go about daily activities, such as cooking, cleaning, or walking somewhere. We can always ‘tune in’.

⭐ Self enquiry/introspection: Get yourself into a calm and relaxed state and position, breathing deeply and through your belly. You will notice more ‘space’ for stiller, deeper and more compassionate thinking; a great context for exploring situations, life, and your inner world.

Give yourself a month to see the powerful changes that habits of being can bring. It is understandable that inner-work is not like the gym, where the progress is explicitly measurable in reps and weights. And in the mind, its hard to number or measure anything exactly, which gives cause for doubt.

But you will feel these powerful changes in yourself, and notice their effects on virtually every area of your life too. You will at least know for sure that you feel more clear-headed, calmer, and enjoy more wellbeing and appreciation for life, perhaps more than ever before!

When it comes to habits, focusing on your habitual state is just as important, if not more so, than focusing on habits of doing.

The why lies in this distinction:

Doing-habits mostly get the best from your current inner engineering and works like an automated maintenance. For example a morning run that enhances your mood and performance. You do a primarily external activity to get a familiar payoff.

Nurturing a new routine of doings can create the conditions for self-transformation, especially when you’re starting them from a relatively low state — but these are not as effective as directed inner work in the long run for those who want to continually expand their contributive output and potential.

In habits of being, you are working directly with your inner engineering which has the effect of dissolving energies, complexes, self-limiting beliefs and more. These act as constraints to the energy, creativity and the scope and flexibility of perspective that we can access and express.

Some aspects of our inner engineering, such as your potential and life’s purpose, are intrinsic, and in these cases habits of being help you to uncover them through the still and spacious processes of mindfulness and self-enquiry.

Habits of doing become familiar actions to create more of the desired familiar (wellbeing, wealth, targets); it amasses and reinforces outcomes as its function, providing consistency, more space to focus, and efficiency.

Uncovering via self-work is delving into the unfamiliar in you, to discover new qualities and potentials that were lost or unknown; it identifies and transforms as its function, revealing new qualities and ways of producing outcomes to play with, including via new potential habits of doing.

The two interact, you can habituate your inner work and optimise those methods, and likewise discovering more potentials in you gives you more to create and learn too!

Instead of mainly doing things to optimise your life according to your current engineering, which is what most people do, you can change the engineering itself to optimise your life and those of others more deeply!

Here are some inner engineering activities you can easily do today:

⭐ ️Journaling — explore the thoughts, feelings and insights you’ve had in the day in a free and safe space for self-exploration.

⭐ ️Meditation: Bring your attention away from your thoughts to get in touch with your body, environment, or a specific object of focus. No need to worry if your thoughts drift, this is to be expected; guide them back to whatever you are being still and present with.

⭐ Practicing mindfulness/presence: like meditation, taking attention away from the thoughts and fantasies we are easily caught up in, and instead being present with our senses, environment, as we go about daily activities, such as cooking, cleaning, or walking somewhere. We can always ‘tune in’.

⭐ Self enquiry/introspection: Get yourself into a calm and relaxed state and position, breathing deeply and through your belly. You will notice more ‘space’ for stiller, deeper and more compassionate thinking; a great context for exploring situations, life, and your inner world.

Give yourself a month to see the powerful changes that habits of being can bring. It is understandable that inner-work is not like the gym, where the progress is explicitly measurable in reps and weights. And in the mind, its hard to number or measure anything exactly, which gives cause for doubt.

But you will feel these powerful changes in yourself, and notice their effects on virtually every area of your life too. You will at least know for sure that you feel more clear-headed, calmer, and enjoy more wellbeing and appreciation for life, perhaps more than ever before!