​Where did I even learn the term set point? I looked it up for this writing and this is what I found (from Merriam-Webster): the level or point at which a variable physiological state (such as body temperature or weight) tends to stabilize.

So that’s the level or point where things will naturally head back to when something interrupts homeostasis. Of course—you already know this—I’m interested in the psychological or personality application.

Storytime (and what got me thinking about set points)
I’m on crutches right now, so basic navigation—moving from point A to point B—has changed. This has called forth other changes to make daily life work, including rearranging of physical space. The layout of my mom’s home, where I’m currently staying, includes quite a large single-room space that contains living room, dining room, and kitchen.

At the end of a table that takes up most of the designated eating area, there’s a place where my mom habitually sits to do stuff, on and off all day, for many hours of the day. Behind that spot is the kitchen area—you know, food, water, appliances.

Her place isn’t large, but I’m thin and usually agile, so walking around her chair into the kitchen area was never a problem before.

But now I’m on crutches. Not only do I take up more space, but now the word agile wouldn’t remotely apply to how I move my body. To make this whole current reality work, we angled the table differently, putting Mom’s usual chair over closer to wall and fridge—still at the same end of the table (no DRASTIC difference), but oriented differently. Her chair (therefore, she) sits in a different spot on her floor, but still at the same end of the table. Got the picture?

This very simply makes a larger opening beside her, where I can easily get through on crutches as I go back and forth. That’s the new thing we established that we both like better given current reality.

That is, I get through easily WHEN SHE STAYS OVER THERE. In that new space we created, just a few inches over, where it actually now works better for all involved.

But the habitual set point seeks to reassert itself. Constantly. She’s sat in that chair doing stuff FOR YEARS. At a certain specific place. So while she’s 100% willing to have the table pointing differently and have her chair over a bit … she keeps scooching back unconsciously to where she’s always sat.

It’s like a force field that sucks her back over, an incredible magnet charged with the power of HABIT.

So I just point it out when I can’t get through again, and she scoots back over, and all is well.

Until she gets sucked over to the habitual place again—to the set point. Which is fine. One of us notices again, and she scoots back over.

It seems to be happening less often.

Okay, personal-growth wonders, do you even need me to draw out this metaphor for you?

My fondest wish (okay, just one of them) would be that, everybody, stop getting upset and horrified and aghast and baffled and [fill in your favorite reactive adjective] when you find yourself doing that old thing you said you weren’t going to do: maybe you’ve talked about it in therapy, you’ve got crystal-clear self-awareness around it (or it’s getting ever clearer), you really really don’t want to do it the old way (it feels AWFUL when you do). … So why the fuck do you keep doing it?

Why I’d love for you not to get upset (yes, I do want you to find where YOU do that to YOURself), is because that’s just actually how it works. It happens. It’s okay. That’s really the way of it. There’s some set point you’ve habituated to, and it WILL pull you back to the place you know so well, even if you hate it. Even if you thought you’d done so much work on it that you could never get sucked over there again.

Sometimes people claim that they’re comfortable in some awful feeling or behavior or way of being they disapprove of, and I challenge them. They usually end up agreeing with me that it’s actually not comfortable—it’s habitual. It acts as a set point that’s so well-reinforced, it just sucks you back to its established place.

So, to offer 9 examples, perhaps you recognize some set point in yourself around:

1. doing way too much and missing the journey as you rush from goal to goal, checking off all the boxes along the way
2. anxious hyper-preparing or looking back to question choices already made & things already done
3. hyper-managing or -controlling and finding everything problematic and just wrong
4. doing way too much because there’s so much cool stuff to do and losing track of completions as you say yes to one more thing without having dropped in to the here and now
5. spiraling into shame or going for self-attack or the most negative interpretation of events
6. over-asserting your agenda and getting frustrated or PISSED OFF if it’s interrupted or thwarted
7. responding knee-jerk-style to take care of or rescue anyone in your vicinity who seems to need or want something from you
8. going numb or motionless or checking out without even leaving the room
9. think-think-think-ing to figure it out & fix it when the heart and body need attention

Hey, if (and only if) you want to play an Enneagram game, I’ll put a key below, at the end of this writing, for you to check whether you correlated these tendencies to the right core type. Reminder that more than one may apply to you, as more than one type neatly describes the whole of how any of us operates (though we all have a core type that is our core type for life). …

Do any of those 9 examples seem comfortable? They’re not. They’re totally habitual (some or predominantly one of them for each of you). They act as a set point. They will reassert themselves.

How do you undo it?
It’s all already written in the above, but I’ll lay it out simply below.

• Don’t judge it. In fact, expect it to show up again, because it will
• Now you can just NOTICE when it reasserts itself. Oh, this thing.
• Move back to or toward the place you’d prefer to be.
• Hang out there as consciously as you can.
• Notice again when you’re not there anymore—no problem—you just got sucked back to set point!
• Move back toward …

That’s right. Keep cycling through. Don’t make it a problem (it’s not). Accuse yourself of nothing. THIS IS HOW IT WORKS, so just follow the directions with no dismay or self-castigation.

If you’d like to consider or watch for some other set points you may want to unwire and rewire, here are some ideas:

• how fast you walk, talk, eat, do anything
• how much force you use to do things (often more than required!—ever notice how you and/or others shut car doors?)
• what you do or how you feel when you first get up, go to bed, at any given point in a day that calls up habitual ways of being
• where you go mentally when you’re out of presence
• what you tell yourself when things go wrong [when you’ve had a so-called failure, when someone is mad at you or disappointed, when you weren’t productive or didn’t finish it, etc.]

We really can and do create new set points. You might consider some old ones you’ve extinguished (or considerably softened) and new ones already established. You can do this till you die. I plan to, and I know a number of good souls who live that way—so you’ll be in good company.

Love & blessings, Jaya
​

ENNEAGRAM KEY FOR 9 TENDENCIES ABOVE

1. THREE (the Achiever or the Performer)
2. SIX (the Loyalist or the Questioner)
3. ONE (the Reformer or the Judge)
4. SEVEN (the Enthusiast or the Adventurer)
5. FOUR (the Individualist or the Romantic)
6. EIGHT (the Challenger or the Boss)
7. TWO (the Helper or the Nurturer)
8. NINE (the Peacemaker or the Avoider)
9. FIVE (the Investigator or the Thinker)

​The following story has one purpose. To illustrate something for you so that you can find where this is operative in your life and being. So that you can feel inspired & empowered to change a story that keeps you down. Please be big and get out of your own way. You’re beautiful.

I used to struggle with insomnia. At age 25, it kicked in as a THING, as a debilitating oppressive miserable thing for me to reckon with. It came and went for years. So it was still a part of my reality after I went to the School for The Work of Byron Katie a couple of decades ago.

Except that next time insomnia struck, everything had changed in my perceptions. Everything had changed in how I met what life brought me. Byron Katie had taught me to question every story that didn’t make me feel good & peaceful & empowered & loving.

AND I was assiduously APPLYING what Katie had taught me, because at that point I’d gotten to some rock-bottom of (Enneagram Four-ish) suffering that I could no longer allow myself to hang out in.

I had so much story about insomnia. Here were some of the beliefs I was operating out of, WHETHER I ACTUALLY STATED THEM OR NOT, and some I stated A LOT:

• If I have even one bad night’s sleep, I will get stuck in a 2-4-week cycle of sleeplessness
• I am not okay if I’m lying awake
• It’s horrible if anyone wakes me up, and they are cruel and careless and don’t get it
• It’s horrible if any random event wakes me up, and it’s evidence of a cruel and careless Universe
• It’s an appropriate response to feel angry and miserable when I’m lying awake—who wouldn’t?
• I am not okay if I don’t get X hours of sleep per night
• I function very badly if I don’t sleep well
• I cannot get my needs met when I’m not sleeping well
• I am not fully responsible for how I behave when I’m sleep-deprived
• If I behave badly with other human beings when I’m exhausted & sleep-deprived, I’m a victim of insomnia and it’s not fair that my relationship with any other is being determined by this wretched condition
• Insomnia is a terrible affliction and I am terribly afflicted
• Insomnia makes people (me) crazy
• I will never get ahead in any realm of life and will forever be a loser because of the impact of insomnia on me
• Nothing works to fix this, and I’ve tried EVERYTHING (within my budget, which is limited, so I’m also a victim of that)
• I am not okay and life is decidedly against me

Let’s be clear. Some of the above statements may be true, or may be seen as true looking through certain lenses. This is why the second question of Byron Katie’s inquiry process is, Can you ABSOLUTELY know that it’s true? When we go to the absolute, we find that there are so many possible lenses to look through; we can no longer fully believe the one lens we’re looking through. That one lens may UNMISTAKABLY show us certain facts—but it also leaves out a whole bunch of other facts, some of which might point us to different conclusions. Or to fresh possibilities and curiosity. To something kinder and more empowering.

I did not question all of the above thoughts in formal inquiry. I did question some of them. I did notice the thoughts I was operating out of and I noticed that they weren’t telling me the whole absolute truth.

More important, this is what I did do. I decided that lying awake was something I could not control. If I could, I’d sleep well every single night. Since I couldn’t control it (or, since it wasn’t in my realm of agency), then it wasn’t my business. I got very curious, then, about what my business WAS while lying awake. What I discovered changed me profoundly. Changed my life. And cleared up my years-long history of insomnia.

If I were currently marketing a sleep program, I’d tell you a bunch of other things, like the rules for Lying Awake I developed. If you’re curious and think these could be relevant to you, check them out by following that link. You may find them super supportive.

Since I’m not giving a sleep program anytime soon as far as I know, what I most want to point you to here and now is the fact that I got into a different relationship with sleep because I STOPPED TELLING THE OLD STORY. It was a grand experiment. I stopped believing it and I stopped reviewing it and I stopped telling it.

The old story was demoralizing, defeating, deflating. It undid me. It kept me stuck. It kept me entrenched in victim mentality. Within the confines of that story, I saw no place to go to get any real relief or to create something different.

The new story was no story at all. I simply took in and accepted that until I was unconscious (asleep), then I was conscious. So perhaps all I needed to do in those moments was meet consciousness. That is, meet myself. Be with myself. Stay close to myself in this present moment. That’s it. That was my business. So, when lying awake …

• I stopped thinking about my problems and trying to fix them. (In fact, that was forbidden. I’d never gotten to good solutions that way anyway.)
• I stopped evaluating myself, my character, my worth, my growth trajectory—anything about myself or my life. (Strictly forbidden.)
• I stopped thinking (worrying) about tomorrow and how badly I’d function then and what I would or wouldn’t be able to do and what I’d fuck up or which more deserving sentient beings I might harm in my negative state. (Verboten! Let tomorrow take care of itself.)
• I stopped thinking I should be asleep. I got that from Byron Katie too. If I’m awake, I’m awake, so let me align with that reality. But not in order to do any of the things above (figure things out or fix them, evaluate, predict). And not to resist sleeplessness (I’m awake, and that’s that). Just to meet myself as consciousness here & now, because I’m conscious here & now.

In the absence of story, and with the idea of simply meeting myself as consciousness because I was conscious, I learned what is often referred to as mindfulness. Or, I taught myself how to meditate lying down, sometimes for hours. I just kept coming back to sensations in the body, fully dropping into the body (feeling the mattress and giving it my full weight), connecting to my five senses, and connecting especially to the sensation of breath, the felt sense of the breath. I hung out inside my own body, not in my head. If I felt emotions, I felt them in my body, and I did not analyze them or have thoughts about them or try to make them go away. I met them by sensing, with awareness, with breath.

I also dropped all story about what a sleep-deprived day needed to mean. This allowed me to come into an unprecedented level of self-care and of showing up just for this moment to learn (not predict, not fear, not worry about, not rail again, not resist in any way) what I was and wasn’t doing or achieving that day. This was the point in my journey when I started to come close to my guidance system, and follow all the flashes to call So-and-So, try this, ask for that, go ahead and do this, don’t do that, slow down, let go, do this at a lower standard than the default level, etc, etc. All of that came in IN THE MOMENT and required presence. Kind self-awareness.

You’re welcome to check out my guidelines for a sleep-deprived day right here.

Both during the night and during the day, I was practicing living in the power of now. I was discovering what not sleeping now meant NOW, instead of reaching for a heavy, tired, self-sabotaging story of horrors and then being stuck with how that story made me feel (and behave).

I was discovering what tired meant NOW. I found that I didn’t even need to call it tired. I could just show up, responsive to my body and how it felt right now. I could notice and respond to the ideas, or guidance, coming in about what to do or not do.

THIS WAS JUST ME LIVING MY LIFE IN THIS MOMENT—not me having insomnia. Not me stuck in another insomnia loop. It was just my current dance with consciousness, and right now (just right now), this is how I felt in the dance, and this is what I wanted to do. That is what I want to move toward. That other thing is what I want to move away from. A dance with consciousness constantly in the making, moment by moment, which required no hours of sleep, no certain sensations in or out of the picture, no figuring and evaluating and accomplishing and prediction. Nothing. Nothing except presence.

I had a few remarkable experiences of being bone tired and in pain one moment, and some minutes later, having not focused on that or made it into a problem or getting caught up in worry or fear or faulting myself—I was fine. No symptoms. No signs of sleep deprivation.

What did it cost me to change my story? It required:

• letting go of the old story—all things previously decided
• letting go of the identity that went with that story
• practicing presence now & now & now & now & now & now
• relentlessly interrupting the old story & coming back to presence

That’s pretty much it.

I invite you to it. In what realm of life would you like to drop ALL STORY? Where do you think it would be (or has been) hardest for you to do so? Do it there!

Or not. Do it somewhere easier. But since it doesn’t matter where you practice it, do it where you most want something different. Get out of story, get into presence (body, breath, and the 5 senses, which will only ever report THIS MOMENT to you—not your past experience or story; not what the future will bring; not your thoughts & beliefs about things).

In my current reality, I sometimes sleep badly. I don’t mind. I meet myself during the night. I meet myself however I feel the next day, now & now & now (which means, how I feel keeps shifting—it’s not fixed). I do not have insomnia. I do not fear insomnia. I have changed this aspect of my life that I felt entirely powerless over. I invite you to the same, because this is available to all of us.

We all have access to INTERRUPTING OUR STORIES and COMING INTO PRESENCE. Do it relentlessly. Do it as if you mattered to yourself, as if your well-being mattered to you. As if you were not longer willing to abandon yourself in the old story while stubbornly calling it truth or just the way things are. Please.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Do you ever react to something that looks like it’s gone wrong and then instantly react to your reaction? You feel bad about not having some zen response or about not being unflappable?

No, please, flap away.

You will anyway, so you may as well have your own permission up front to do so. You will react again. You will be reactive sometimes. Something will throw you off faster than you can take a breath and be master of your response. (That’s being triggered. BAM, reaction got set off before you knew what was happening.)

So can that be okay? Because it is. It’s part of life. It’s part of our healing & evolution.

Repeat: It’s part of our healing & evolution. It is NOT evidence we’re off our path or not getting it fast enough or doing well enough.

It’s also part of life that things go wrong. They do! The dog lunges and the leash slips out of your hand, the child runs toward the road, the thing drops and breaks—maybe right when you thought it was the last possible moment to go out the door to get somewhere on time. You missed the stupid rule and got in trouble; you thought you hit SEND but you didn’t; the thing that went wrong got fixed wrong and it’s still not working despite the money & time you spent.

And this: Another human being, in their pain and confusion, says just the thing that pushes a button so old you don’t have even one second to stop your inner 5-year-old from screaming (or heading for the hills, or going still & speechless, or getting all cute and sweet) in response. (Yes, fight, flight, freeze, fawn—4 typical trauma responses.) You react, perhaps in some way you disapprove of.

Please let it be okay. Release the disapproval.

Please get real and get okay with the whole picture: Things will go wrong, and you will sometimes react. If you don’t accept this, you’ll suffer more. You’ll be, as Byron Katie says, in an argument with reality. And when you argue with reality (she loves to add), you lose—but only 100 percent of the time.

But shouldn’t things be going right now since [I’ve healed so much, I’ve grown so much, I’m doing so well, I’ve stopped blah blah blah]?

I noticed long ago that I had an interesting belief about when or under what circumstances things were supposed to go right. Sometimes my clients say things that show me they’re thinking that way too—and thus creating needless suffering. (We’re taught that life works in certain ways and, um, NO, IT DOES NOT.)

Here’s how that interesting belief went: If I was doing well or feeling present or having a cool insight or working with a tool or experiment that I felt great about—or even that I had some lovely sense of discovery or epiphany about (ESPECIALLY then)--then that meant things should go well.

Kind of like a cosmic reward system. Or evidence that yep, you’re on track. See? EVERYTHING is going swimmingly, that’s how you know you’re on track. NOTHING is going to go wrong now.

Great idea. Except it’s not real. It’s a great example of magical thinking.

So in that old belief, when things didn’t go well, I also believed there was a PROBLEM. Something had gone very wrong. Or I had done something wrong. Or I was a FOOL to believe that it was possible to feel good and to have deepening understanding and come into new ways of being. OBVIOUSLY, now that this thing had gone wrong (that shouldn’t have), things would just forevermore keep going wrong and the idea of actually healing or evolving was a pipe dream. Or something was terribly wrong with me and I was unfixable. Or probably all of the above, fuckety-fuck-fuck.

What if you took OUT of the equation all requirements for things going well, smoothly, or in your way (according to your preference) (not costing you anything, not creating discomfort, not triggering some reactivity or taking you out of your zen state)?

What if you simply accepted that, on planet Earth, shit happens. Not a measure of how you’re doing. And when shit happens, you might react.

There was an era when I was seeking to get this new concept wired in. So anytime I got frustrated or distressed or had a flash of a reaction, I would instantly say to myself, Oh, Jaya, you're thinking there's a problem! What if there's no problem?

I did this very kindly. I did it constantly. I rinsed and repeated until it just got worked into my being.

Playing with this, I didn’t have time to judge my reactivity. Or if I was already judging it, the judgment got soothed right along with the soothing of reminding myself that

1. I was simply believing there was a problem, and
2. there really was no problem

Instead of getting caught up in my reaction (and then needing to judge it or defend it or hyperfocus on the conditions that called it forth), I used my reaction as temple bell, or a call to notice that I’m believing something has gone wrong and that, in fact, nothing has gone wrong.

This was more deeply healing than I understood it to be at the time I was playing with this and rewiring my psyche. I was healing old family trauma in which everything imperfect was jumped on, reacted to, punished. In our family system, everything that went wrong gave my parents permission to yell, curse, hit, make their kids wrong. They were wounded human beings who didn’t, at the time, see that they had access to any other way. We are all wounded. And we have access to so many other ways—easier access now than ever.

It’s a good equation to play with. Reaction = Call to notice you’re believing there’s a problem, and to remind yourself there's actually no problem.

I like the way Abraham-Hicks uses the language of contrasting experiences. This unwanted thing is a contrasting experience. And there will always be contrast. Nothing's going wrong when it comes. YOU ARE NOT OFF YOUR PATH WHEN THE CONTRAST COMES. You simply get to meet yourself here and now, and be reminded of what you like better, and consciously SOOTHE YOURSELF, then head that way—toward what you like better.

Let’s all get real with reality and create less pointless suffering. It’s all right. You’re doing all right. This is planet Earth, so … Shit happens.

Love & blessings, Jaya