Habits. We all have ’em: some good, some bad. Throughout this past week, I decided to pay some extra attention to my own habits as a personal experiment. The results weren’t too surprising: a good majority of what I do or say throughout my day can be attributed to my habits. As a matter of fact, I think that goes for everyone: each one of us can be very accurately described by the sum of our own habits. While this may seem elementary at first, I don’t think it’s all that simple.
Most of our habits develop at a very young age. Things like brushing your teeth, cleaning your room, or saying “thank you” are enforced by our parents to ensure these actions become second-nature. Building a good habit is an important achievement because it ensures the effortless performance of a particular positive behavior. For example, I’m sure all of us now brush our teeth multiple times a day without putting in much thought.
Of course, habits can be positive or negative. Getting rid of negative, or bad habits is much tougher than building new, positive ones. Naturally, the mind and body are reluctant to change. Furthermore, as actions are repeated over long periods of time, they become even harder to change. Those actions become a part of you. All of this isn’t anything new, you’ve heard this before, and I’m sure we all strive to strengthen our good habits and push away our bad ones.
However, when we think habits, I feel like we all jump to the idea of behavior and forget to include the fundamental driver of habits: the mind. Take for example that one friend we all have who starts to hit the gym with all the enthusiasm in the world, but quits only two weeks in. That is an example of someone who tried to develop a habit through behavior without regards to conquering the mind. For lots of us, we know how important a role our mind plays when making habits, yet we still fail. Why?
We conquer the first part: behavior. We focus on our behavior knowing very well that repeated behavior creates a habit. Then comes the second step: mindfulness. We mentally focus on creating our habit and actively choose to do certain good things while staying away from other bad things. And finally, third step: longevity. This is where we repeat our behavior over and over again in hopes of creating a good habit. The third step is where we fail. The third step is where I failed, time and time again.
For me, there was still a large disconnect between my actions and my mind. Reflecting on things like what I say, how I act, and what I do really made me think about my habits. I asked myself questions like, “why am I feeling this way?”, “why did I just say that?”, or “why am I acting this way?”. The motives behind the way you carry yourself may surprise you. It most definitely surprised me. I’m not hesitant or shy from admitting that lots of my habits were driven by my ego. Had I not taken the time out to reflect, I would have never diagnosed my reason for failure.
So my point is that I never focused on conquering my mental habits. I feel like not many people do. Everybody starts with changing their behavior when that’s actually the endgame. We try to force a habit that hasn’t developed because our mind doesn’t allow it to. We need to start with conquering the demons inside our heads. Reflecting on your behavior is a good place to start. It’s up to us to nag on ourselves and discipline our mental habits. Our parents were able to keep our behavior in check when we were little because they could see actions. No one can see inside our heads, so it’s up to each individual to develop the right mind that allows each one of us to nurture positive habits. A lot of us are in cruise control, and never stop to see where we are.
I encourage you guys to hop out of cruise control and actually put your foot on the gas pedal to take control of who you can be. Actualize your potential.
If you’d like a more psychological perspective of habits, you can check out How To Start New Habits That Actually Stick by James Clear. He explains it much better than I ever could.
the Kingh cause 