One of my favourite sentences from a buddhist monk is “Do not become enlightened. Be enlightened.” All my life I have accumulated knowledge. I love to learn for the sake of learning. Recently I realised though that with some skills knowing and understanding are not enough. I want to master them and what true mastery means is embodying.
Knowing
I am not knocking knowledge. Knowing random facts, accumulating a variety of skills and dabbling in new hobbies is fun! It’s essential for us Scanners because we get bored so easily. So knowing stuff and understanding how things work is great just for their own sake. With some things, though, it’s not enough.
I have always been a teacher and an uplifter. No one was safe from my fun facts, explanations and encouragement, whether they asked or not. I enjoy sharing my knowledge but up until recently I struggled because I could not understand that people seemed to understand and even agree with what I taught them but hardly ever encorporated it into their lives. Knowledge by itself inspired very few people to change.
Embodying
People are mirrors and we notice others’ quirks much more easily than our own. Whenever I notice other people’s behaviour and try to understand it, I look at myself too. Lo and behold, with some subjects I was the same. I know what to do, but I don’t act on my knowledge.
Why is knowing not enough when you truly want to change your life? Because knowledge is theory but we are creatures of action. What does “be enlightened” mean? Act like an enlightened person, think like an enlightened person. Walk, talk, sit, sleep, even eat like an enlightened person.
And it goes even further than that because the “like” in these sentences still implies a distance between two versions. When you truly embody a skill or a characteristic or even a habit, you become one with it. You no longer question or even think about it. It’s simply part of your identity. Once you embody something, it’s your new normal. What do we do with normal things in our lives? We barely even notice them.
How to be
Great! Now how do you get there? This is the biggest epiphany of my life (so far) and I’m going to share it with you here. The key lies in the word “embody”. We are raised to take our thoughts seriously even though most of them are the exact same thoughts we had yesterday, or are triggered by the same situations, the same people and so on. But because we are taught that thinking matters most, we try to approach change through thoughts.
This is possible. You can deliberately choose and practise new thoughts. I’ve done that. Mindset training, brain training, mantras, affirmations, they work. For some. Sometimes. They work for me as long as I don’t have to interact with other people. And even then I tend to slip back into old thought habits and patterns. Why? Because it’s easy to walk the same path every day.
So what’s the alternative? The answer comes from my Buddhist monk: “You cannot think your way out of this.” Buddhists practise meditation as a way to calm the mind because they understand that we need a break from our thoughts. When we try to fix the way we think, we’re paddling upstream. By all means, keep practising happy thoughts when you are already happy.
But when you really want to create change, embody it first. The new thoughts follow automatically. What does new you do? Forget the thinking. Focus on the body. I’m writing this post sitting bold upright. It’s late but I’m still working. Not because I feel pressured but because I like to write. What are my thoughts doing? They are telling me that it’s late and I should take a break, blablabla. But my body tells me that I’m actually fine. This is fun. So new me allows myself to keep going.
We are not our thoughts
A key skill we practise during meditation is detachment. It’s the constant reminder that you are not your thoughts or your emotions. Most of the thoughts running rampant in our heads are not even ours. The next time you think a negative thought pause and ask yourself if it’s even true. It’s time we stop believing everything we think. Our thoughts are often liars.
They are echoes from the past, other people’s limiting beliefs, society trying to shame and guilt you into conformity. They have nothing to do with who you are and what you are here to do. Now if this sounds familiar or rings true, it’s because deep down you already know it.
Time to embody it. How? Act more, think less. Practise meditation to detach yourself from your thoughts. Find ways to calm the monkey mind. That’s what Buddhists call it when our thoughts go all over the place. My new favourite technique for this is shaking. You might prefer dancing or running, or Yoga. Whatever works.
All day every day
And repeat, repeat, repeat. A third lesson I learned from Buddhism is that leading a good life is not something you practise once a day. It is who you are every minute of every day. When your mind runs back to its old track because of your surroundings and the people in it, remember that you are not the same anymore.
Embody your new you. Act differently. Don’t bother with your thoughts and emotions for now. It’s hard to change their directions once they get going. Instead, remind yourself that they are not you and they will pass. Breathe deeply and watch your thoughts and emotions. Be the witness. Let them go.
Then act differently. Pause and make a different decision and take new action. See what happens next. Maybe it works out, maybe you need to tweak more. It does not matter. What truly matters is that you just got off the track and are heading into a new direction. Be this new you consciously until it becomes normal. When your thoughts and emotions catch up and automatically match the change, that’s when you truly are your new skill, your new habit, your new identity. Don’t become you. Embody you right here, right now.