Why Do I Keep Making the Same Mistake?

There's a mistake you make. You know the one. It might be saying yes to a project you don't have time for, or staying silent when you should speak, or picking a fight over something small at the end of a long day.

You've made it before. You promised yourself, with some feeling, that you wouldn't again. And then, a few weeks later, there it was, same shape, same regret.

I have one of these. Most people I know have one. The odd thing is that we treat it as a mystery every time, as if it came from nowhere.

Mine has a few faces. One of them is the plan. Ten days into a new city, I was sharing a flat with a friend and a cat that hid behind the bathtub and meowed for help. My plan to turn my life around was going about as well. By evening the motivation had left the room and I'd lose hours to YouTube.

One night I wrote in my journal that I'd worked it all out. Habits come from systems. Health comes from eating right and fasting, with some meditation on top. Better grammar comes from practice. More clients come from ads. Every line ended with the same word: consistency.

Then I reread an older page where I had promised that "today is the day", and watched myself slide straight back into the old routine. So I wrote that I'd make no promises this time. It was the most honest line on the page.

Having every answer on paper felt like progress, and it was the easiest place to stop. That's how the same mistake kept coming back dressed as a plan.

Patanjali names five knots.

Patanjali doesn't think it comes from nowhere. In the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras he says every kind of suffering we cause ourselves grows from five roots, which he calls kleshas (afflictions, things that twist the mind) (2.3). I think of them as knots.

He names them: avidya (not seeing clearly), asmita (the sense of I), raga (wanting), dvesha (pushing away) and abhinivesha (clinging to life).

Then he says something important. The first one, not seeing clearly, is the field in which the other four grow (2.4). Everything else is a plant in that soil.

Here is each knot on an ordinary day.

Swami Vishnudevananda explains the five in Meditation and Mantras, and his explanations are plain enough to check against an ordinary week.

Not seeing clearly, avidya, is mistaking what passes for what lasts. In practice: believing that this project, this person's approval, this evening's comfort is the thing that will finally settle you.

The sense of I, asmita, is the I-ness and my-ness that makes you feel separate from everyone else. In practice: my idea, my territory, my reputation, and a flash of threat whenever any of them is touched.

Wanting and pushing away, raga and dvesha, are the pair. Vishnudevananda calls them likes and dislikes, and says that when you're swayed by them you've set yourself up for loss and disappointment. In practice: reaching for whatever feels good and flinching from whatever doesn't, before you've thought about either.

Clinging, abhinivesha, is the fear of ending. Patanjali says it runs even in the wise (2.9). In practice: the low hum of dread that makes you overwork, overcommit, and say yes so you won't be left out.

Why does the mistake repeat?

Now put your mistake next to the list.

Mine is saying yes too fast. I used to think it was generosity. It's raga, wanting to be liked, standing on asmita, my image of myself as someone useful, growing in avidya, the belief that one more yes will finally make me feel like enough. Three knots, tied in a particular order, and the yes falls out of them like a coin from a slot.

That's the thing about the five. The mistake is only the last visible link in a chain, and the chain is tied long before the moment arrives. Sivananda lays out the same chain in Mind: Its Mysteries and Control: from ignorance comes the lack of discrimination, from that comes the I, from the I comes liking and disliking, and from liking and disliking comes action. He calls it the chain of bondage. You can only cut it at a link you can see.

Promising never to repeat the mistake means trying to cut the last link. The chain simply grows a new one.

The knots can be loosened.

Patanjali is practical about this. He says the knots exist in four states: dormant, thin, interrupted or in full flow (2.4). And he gives two ways to work on them.

When they're subtle, you trace them back to their cause (2.10). When they're active, you work on them through meditation (2.11). Vishnudevananda translates the first one into something you can do at a desk: when the knot is a minor pull, you put its opposite in its place. If the I flares up, think of what you share with the other person. If a like or a dislike grabs you, put contentment there instead.

So what do you do with this?

1. Write the mistake in one line. Plain. I said yes to the Thursday thing when I didn't have the time.

2. Find the want. What did the yes get you, in the moment? Relief? Approval? Staying out of the difficult-person seat? That's raga or dvesha, and it's usually visible in about ten seconds once you look.

3. Find the I under the want. What picture of yourself was the want protecting? That's asmita. Name it kindly. I like being the one who helps.

4. Find the belief under the I. What did you think the yes would finally give you? That's avidya, and it's always a promise that no yes can keep.

5. Next time, catch it one link early. The yes is too late. Catch it at the want. When you feel the pull to be liked, that's your moment, and it comes a few seconds before the mouth opens.

You won't untie the knot in a week. Patanjali says these have been tied a long time. But a knot you can see is already looser than one you can't.

Here is another way to look at it.

The Gita describes the same chain in two verses I quoted last week: brooding leads to attachment, attachment to desire, desire to anger (2.62 to 2.63). I used to read those verses as a warning. Now I read them as a map, and once you've walked it with your eyes open, you can see the turning coming.

Tomorrow: why you can focus on some days and not on others, and the three moods the Gita says the mind has.

Where to read more

The Sivananda-tradition books behind today's piece:

• Meditation and Mantras, Swami Vishnudevananda (commentary on Yoga Sutras 2.3 to 2.11)

• Mind: Its Mysteries and Control, Swami Sivananda (the chapter on raga-dvesha)

• Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 2.3 to 2.11; Bhagavad Gita, 2.62 to 2.63

If this helped, forward it to one person who keeps making the same mistake. And if you'd like to untangle yours on paper with someone who writes back, that's what an Explorative Letter is for.