Dear Cali Chica:

It is a delight experience for me to read such a detailed description of a successful mindful experience that you had. Your description is not jumbled at all but pretty organized. Excellent mindfulness work.

This making friends and keeping friends job is indeed a habit, like you pointed out. Mindfulness is about noticing and then interrupting the habit, making your acts intentional, following thinking and choosing, instead of automatic, or compulsive.

And you cannot interrupt a habit unless you notice that you are engaged in a habit.

Interrupt the habit further by catching yourself before you invite Juliana next time and resist the compulsion. Don’t invite her. You will probably feel distressed about not inviting her, being with your dog alone, but endure that distress, resist the temptation to reduce your distress by giving in to the compulsion.

You noticed other things as well, excellent. You noticed more about your motivation. Funny thing is, you never met your mother when she was naïve, a new immigrant, have you? You met Juliana and you imagine your mother was like her. Maybe your mother was not like Juliana at all.

We believe what our mothers say but what our mothers share about their experience is not necessarily true.

Back to the habit: it is impossible to “turn this part of (you) off”, that is, to turn the habit off. You keep interrupting it, and over time of persistence and lots of patience, it does get interrupted and the compulsion weakens and weakens.

anita