Thought and Behaviour Patterns: First Understand, Then See, Then Change.

Reading time: 11 minutes

Change.

“You can only see it when you get it,” is a famous saying from de Dutch football guru Johan Cruijff.

What he meant was that once we recognize an ingrained (and no longer serving) thought or behaviour pattern, doesn't mean we're immediately rid of it. On the contrary, we'll actually see ourselves repeating it much more often from that moment on. We don't like that at all, because when a thought or behaviour pattern no longer serves us, it usually gets us in trouble.

The other side of the coin, however, is that once we begin to recognize our patterns, the resulting problematic situations actually point to our growth process. After all, we usually only start to recognize automatically learned patterns when they cause problems, so becoming aware of them means we become open to change.

One of my familiar patterns is fear of making mistakes. This often manifests as a paralyzing indecisiveness which reared its ugly head earlier this year when I wasn't sure where I wanted to go after my stay in Chiang Mai. I consider this indecisiveness ‘bad’ because, as the belief goes, “at my age, I should know what I want to do by now.” My self-judgment is therefore extremely negative, and it manifests in all sorts of physical sensations, each of which can be categorized as ‘uncomfortable.’

Tai Chi training with my training buddy from China on the island Vis, Croatia.

Another pattern is that in such moments, I actually want to make a decision as quickly as possible. However, in those moments, I don't make a well-considered decision, but one primarily aimed at removing the uncomfortable feeling. Once the decision has been made, the uncomfortable feeling is indeed gone. What's overlooked, however, is that the consequences of that decision can be much more uncomfortable than expected or hoped for. This is also the case here...

One of my fellow tai chi students introduced me to the possibility of house-sitting in Malaysian Borneo. I'd never been there before, and I thought it would be fun to look after someone’s house, dog, and turtle, so I decided to take the plunge. What I only realized later was that I was actually quite happy with this opportunity, because it relieved me of the responsibility of figuring out my next step myself. In other words, I allowed irrational fear to guide my actions, instead of sitting through the indecisiveness until the universe gave me a sign and direction (which it always does). Put another way: instead of listening to my body, I let my intellect take the driver's seat, which, as we all know, is a very good servant, but a profoundly inept master.

A couple of days before my departure to Kota Kinabalu on Borneo, I caught a cold, which lasted for about ten days in total. That should have already been a warning signal that my intention for this adventure was not particularly sincere and intrinsic, and the result was that I began to treat many situations as undesired and unwanted – which is a sure recipe for suffering.

My hosts were a couple and the couple’s wife’s sister. They were moving house, which should have been completed by February 14th, as that was the end date of their lease. After the move, they would all be returning to Jakarta to care for their sick parents—or so I was told—and it would be my job to look after the animals and the new house until early April.

Kechapa the turtle had a nack of putting herself in rather impossible situations.

Long story short: the animals and I finally moved on March 10th. The sister had already left for Jakarta, but the couple stayed – all throughout my stay, as it later turned out, which I hadn't anticipated at all.

Moreover, they had unwillingly entered into what can be called a ‘moving hell,’ meaning that they not only had their own stuff to move, but also the complete household goods from the sisters’ parents’ house. In other words, two households worth of stuff had to be stored in one house, which resulted in the equivalent of your average warehouse: virtually every room was boxed up from floor to ceiling. For someone with a bit of an autistic desire for tidiness, and not being in a calm and equanimous state of mind to begin with, the situation was quite challenging.

The only clutter-free room in the new house was the guest bedroom, which was nice in itself. It had a desk, air conditioning, and a private shower and toilet, so you'd think I could at least do my laptop work there without too many obstacles. But I prefer to work in a room with direct outdoor light, and that's precisely what was missing. Of the two windows in the room, one faced a blank wall a meter away, and the second was an interior window built into a wall between the guest room and the utility room.

Add to that the incessant barking of the neighbours six dogs, preferably in the middle of the night, to which our dog happily joined – along with a continuous outside temperature and humidity resembling those of a pressure cooker, and we have plenty of situations here ready and willing to push my buttons. And me, of course, being completely unprotected against it, due to an unbalanced mind. Thanks to my decision in January with the aim of eliminating the uncomfortable feelings that resulted from my indecisiveness at that time, I found myself in circumstances that ultimately resulted in much more uncomfortable feelings.

However, the above does raise an interesting question: What made the initial indecisiveness, and later the varying circumstances and situations on Borneo, considered a problem and undesirable? Had I already forgotten the lesson from the snorematory in the Buddhist monastery in Thailand (see A New Challenge 17)? No, but since we're dealing with emotionally learned patterns here, it immediately becomes clear that these won't be dispelled after one single successful experience.

Because as soon as it became clear that the circumstances in Borneo were completely different from what I’d expected, relentless self-blame followed. That pushed my buttons so hard that it was impossible to retain equanimity, resulting in the ability for all those different ‘problem situations’ to also push them. Only about two weeks before my departure, when it finally became clear that the couple wouldn't be leaving before I left, did acceptance of the entire situation happen and was I able to start looking at it with humor. It was then that the lesson from the snorematory suddenly became a valuable tool, meaning neither the dogs’ barking nor the climate were perceived as problems anymore. And that also provided space and equanimity me to make plans for the period after my departure from Borneo.

The situation described so far is, of course, rather one-sided. As funny and cathartic as it can sometimes be to read about our discomforts, there were also unexpectedly beautiful, enjoyable, and special moments and situations.

The new house was located in a Muslim neighbourhood. We arrived there in the middle of Ramadan, and every morning around 5 a.m., a whole slew of kids in their white djellabas walked past my training area toward the mosque. They were quite impressed with my tai chi moves, especially the staff moves. It became even more amusing when I addressed them with “Salaam Alaikum,” which they certainly hadn't expected from this white heathen. So, suddenly, I had an audience every morning, and their admiration definitely boosted my ego.

Moreover, my hosts all worked in holistic therapy. They had a variety of drums they used for drum circles. I had so much fun trying them all out, and I even experienced a drum circle with them for the first time in my life. What a beautiful and intense experience! At one point, I fell into a kind of trance and felt like I was being taken over by an old Native American Indian with a single large feather. It was incredibly difficult to stop, and once I did, I felt electrified. The others then gathered around me and tapped on my body to channel the energy and ground me. It was a truly captivating experience, and it was heart-warming to receive so much love from them.

Another highlight, quite literally, was our stay at the summit of Mount Kinabalu, one of the highest mountains in Southeast Asia. We had a beautiful corner apartment with the largest terrace I’ve ever seen in a hotel, offering a stunning view of the summit of this majestic mountain (which we only saw in all its glory the next morning because we arrived in thick rain clouds). That evening we had a wonderful drum jam session on the terrace, and the next morning we were out of bed well before sunrise, so we could admire the mountain, now completely clear of clouds, in all its glory.

Moreover, this day had another surprise in store for me, as I unexpectedly found myself giving my very first tai chi/qigong lesson to my hosts. It was wonderful to see where it seemed to come almost naturally and where I started to stutter.

So you see, there’s no situation that’s only bad or good, pleasant or unpleasant; it’s always a bit of both. Our tendency toward one-sidedness constantly causes us to stumble and fall, and that's why equilibrium makes us jolly!

The next step led me to Kuantan, Malaysia. I knew there was a Vipassana meditation center there, and since a ten-day Vipassana silent retreat had been on my wish list for a while, I seized the opportunity to attend this training in April. This article describes in detail what I learned there, and it became an important step in my process of self-development and self-discovery, not least because I suddenly gained clarity about the concept of reactivity.

If you really pay attention, it’s unbelievable; from the moment we wake up, we go into full-on reaction mode, whether it's reacting to our phone, housemates, traffic, the weather, the news, colleagues, the workplace, or whatever. We're completely conditioned to react constantly and to everything in the outside world, and preferably as quickly as possible.

During the retreat, you meditate for ten and a half hours a day, and one of the most important exercises is learning not to react the moment you sit down. However, as soon as you sit down, aches and pains start to appear after about five minutes, due to a range of beliefs and opinions that are unaccustomed to this way of doing things and, for example, label it as lazy—and therefore bad.

Once I realized that constantly reacting to everything and everyone causes a lot of fatigue and stress, the decision to set aside a few hours a day to simply sit, without reacting to anything, became an easy one. The Vipassana article explains the effects this can have, and if you're interested in a potentially life-changing experience and technique, I highly recommend such a retreat.

After the retreat, I received an email from a young man from Uganda. I once created a profile on the Worldpackers platform because I thought it would be fun to start doing volunteer work, but I never got past creating a profile.

A group of kids at the Kagaali Foundation Uganda. Image by Geofrey Owuma

The young man, named Geofrey, runs a foundation that provides shelter for street children and elderly people, and apparently he was delighted with my profile because he asked if I’d be interested in volunteering with him and his foundation for a while. That turned out to be perfect timing because after the retreat, I was very open to the possibility of doing something selfless for my fellow man. Long story short, in September I’ll be leaving for Bugiri, Uganda, for three months to help Geofrey and his team as a volunteer. And just as I did with the Villa Pardoes Winter Run charity, I'll be making another series of videos to share this adventure. Moreover, the first step has already been made with this reaction video (which is a result of a new hobby):

I had planned a week on the Croatian island of Vis for the start of summer. The same training partner who had introduced me to the Borneo connection was volunteering at a cat shelter on Vis. It was situated on a hilltop in a truly magical location, and since visiting the White Desert in Egypt in 2008, I’d never seen such a beautiful starry sky as I did on Vis.

After that, I was supposed to spend the rest of the summer in the ski resort of Bansko in Bulgaria. However, things didn't go as planned because I’d unconsciously fallen into a well-known, malicious thought and behavioural pattern, which made staying there much longer uncomfortable. I spent the rest of May there, and then traveled on to Thessaloniki, Greece. But there's a little more to this story...

May in Bansko turned out to be a very cold month! After two days of pleasant weather, the temperature dropped to an average of between 8 and 12 degrees Celsius for the rest of the month, with occasional night frost. Fortunately, I still had plenty of warm clothes, but the tai chi practice, in particular, required a sudden adjustment. However, upon leaving Bansko in early June, the temperature there began to rise to a comfortable 23-25 degrees Celsius. But I went to Thessaloniki, where upon my arrival it had already reached a pleasant 35 degrees Celsius, and it hasn't dropped below 30 Celsius since (with peaks of 39).

So one thing is clear: heat is apparently a topic that holds lessons for me. As soon as I figure out what they are, I’ll be happy to share it again.

For now, I wish you a wonderful and, above all, jolly summer,
Erik

A New Challenge (19)

The Jolly Equilibrium website is still in development.