Old habits die hard
You wake up in the morning, brush your teeth and take a bath. These are all things you do instinctively. Why? It’s a habit. I have previously written about how the habit of making daily “to do” lists has helped me immensely.
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So let’s talk about habits today. We all have them. Some are good and some are bad.
On a daily basis, habit drives us to do what we do, whether it’s a pattern of thought or behaviour that occurs automatically. The more you do something, the more it becomes ingrained in your daily routine.
Forming a habit is the same process, whether it’s good or bad. To form a habit, all you need to do is repeat the activity. The main difference is that good ones bring success and happiness and the bad ones bring the opposite.
We all want to be healthy, strong, energised and happy. Yet, we continue doing things that take us in an opposite direction of where we want to be and expect to have a successful life.
So why do we continue to do the things that could be sabotaging our efforts? The answer is simple. Whatever the “it” is, has become a habit and getting rid of a habit requires change. Of all the things we do in a day, changing is by far the hardest.
Good habits help you achieve your goals and the reverse could be said for bad habits.
Bad habits stop you from accomplishing your goals, sometimes they jeopardise your health and wellbeing. There is a saying that old habits die hard but the truth is that ‘old habits’ can die, it just takes a lot of work.
It’s not easy to admit it, but we all have at least one bad habit that we need to work on.
Just before you start shaking your head in denial, look at the following examples; showing up late, eating unhealthy foods, not having enough sleep, overworking, spending too much time on social media sites, spending a lot of time on your mobile phone, procrastination, texting while driving…..
Do any of these bad habits sound familiar to you? Truth be told, we are all creatures of habit. We eat the same foods, go to the same places and repeat the same actions day after day.
Sometimes, we do certain things for so many years that we forget that there are new and more efficient ways of doing things.
Can you imagine preparing a document with a type writer while everyone else is using a computer?
How long do you think it would take you to finish as compared to using a computer?
In short, bad habits will take you away from your goals so how do you go about breaking them? From experience, I have found out that it is always easier to change a bad habit by replacing it with a good one. For instance, perhaps you have the habit of waking up late.
It is said that early morning is the most productive time. That means by waking up late, you lose the most productive time of the day.
You can get better results simply by replacing the old habit with a new habit of rising up early. If you smoke when you get stressed, then it's a bad plan to decide to just stop smoking.
It might be easier said than done. Instead, you should come up with a different way to deal with stress and insert that new behaviour instead of having a cigarette.
If you turn to alcohol whenever you have any problem, then you need to develop a new habit to replace drinking. Of course, this is not the only way to change bad habits.
There are many more ways but this is a simple step that can get you started for now. Maybe in the near future, I will come back to this topic and share other ways of changing bad habits.
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Your life today is essentially a sum of your habits. How healthy or unhealthy are you? How in shape or out of shape are you? How happy or unhappy are you? How successful or unsuccessful are you? Remember that what you repeatedly do will form the person you are or will become. You can’t just leave that to chance can you?
Good habits are an essential part of living a good life. We all want a good life so let’s work on what it takes to have one.
Author, The Seduction of Food
Barbs_sai@yahoo.com