Bead by Bead

When my nephew was getting trained to use the toilet my sister hung a piece of construction paper in the bathroom. He loves stickers, so he got a little happy face sticker for a pee and a big sparkly happy face or a fire truck sticker for a poop. My grown up, productivity oriented mind first saw this and thought – well you’re tricking him! There’s no cumulative value in it! Shouldn’t he get an actual firetruck after 100 stickers or something?

I was ready to start union negotiations for him when my wise younger sister explained to me that at two and a half years old he was so ‘in the now’ that a delighted ‘now’ was the best thing he could think of. The promise of something tomorrow held little interest.

This teaching stuck with me a few months, and became the answer to my own problem. Last spring when I was in full workaholic swing, I was struggling to maintain a 15-minute morning practice of Qigong, to cleanse my energy flow. I was convinced this 15 minutes would over time change the quality of my days but I couldn’t seem to consistently find the motivation or discipline.

Borrowing the sticker idea, I asked myself, “What small, cheap but precious thing would genuinely give me a rush of excitement and bring some celebration to each session of practice?...” From what I knew of learning theories, I felt it needed to be something small enough not to become an external reward. It needed that ‘sticker’ not ‘firetruck’ quality, since intrinsic rewards stick better in the long run.

The next day I stopped in the window of the bead shop on my block in Montreal. I’d eyed the pretty displays every day, but with no time for an active crafting habit I’d had no excuses to buy any. I walked in and dropped $40 on an assortment of shiny blingy things including a strand of turquoise, one big special final bead to work towards and some red thread that seemed… auspicious.

I placed the basket of little beads and the big bead on my altar as shiny motivation to my inner raven, an offering prayer to help me with discipline instead of tricking me away from my goal. I’d heard that after 100, or some say 120 times, doing something new it becomes a habit. I like round numbers and decided to overshoot just to be sure, so I vowed to get to 12 x 12 beads (with every twelfth bead being an extra special one.)

Slowly but surely, some weeks more than others, bead by bead I’ve been doing my Qigong practice. Finally on my birthday November 16^th 2013, I hit my 144th Qigong practice goal!

The 144 beads, strung one by one, remind me of every tiny moment of discipline. It just occured to me looking back that this is at least 2160 minutes spent dong Qigong! The final necklace is heavy and sparkly, just like the grounded delight of my beloved practice. These days when I skip Qigong something feels missing in my day.

I’ve especially noticed in the last few days since I finished the necklace, that the practice seems more intimately connected to me now. As if when I tied the necklace off my relationship with Qigong was sealed.

Now there is no shiny bead at the end of the practice, but we’re beyond that. At this point it’s almost as natural as sitting on a porcelain bowl instead of pooping my pants. Sure I could skip it and wait for somebody else to come along and clean me up, but I don’t really want to anymore.

~sab

my space-cabin, NC