KNOW YOUR HABITUAL SET POINTS

Photo of person having their temperature taken from Mufid Majnun on Unsplash

​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
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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)