How often do you take the time to assess your habits? Generally, only when they are preventing you from reaching a goal. What would happen if you didn’t wait to assess your habits, but made effort to critically review your daily habits, what would you find? Rather than waiting for there to be an issue, think now, how are your old habits serving you? What new habits do you want to establish?
Our brain creates habits as a shortcut to make regular actions automatic, saving your mind space for new or unusual events. Each habit is created to support you to take action without the need to think through each step or make unnecessary decisions. While not all habits are ‘good’ and support your current goals or needs, however they were created from a good place, to satisfy an old want or need.
A great example is when you arrive home from work and you have no memory of your drive home, that is your automatic habits kicking in. Likely you were distracted, deep in thought and your mind may have wondered all over the place without you even noticing. If nothing remarkable occurred along the trip there was no trigger to bring your mind back to the present moment, so your habits kicked in to get you home safely.
Habits are often linked to an environment or trigger. For example, that 3pm coffee when you are working in the office or scrolling through your phone once the alarm wakes you up in the morning. Triggers and your environment can make it much harder to break your habits and it is often best to replace your habit rather than relying on willpower to stop you. Willpower is a finite resource and eventually you will run out.
You could swap out a habit that no longer serves you with a new one that you are looking to create. Maybe the 3pm coffee run becomes a walk around the block (not past the coffee shop) or the phone scrolling becomes an old school alarm clock short with a meditation or journaling.
We may not always consciously choose the habits that we have established, but we can make changes to suit our current goals and needs. As noted above, willpower is finite, so changing everything at once isn’t going to help you in the long run, but one step at a time to build momentum and strengthen your willpower will do wonders. Before you know it you will be running towards your goals at great speed.
Take a moment now to think of one habit that doesn’t support your wellbeing or no longer serves you. What can you do in its place? When can you start? What triggers or environmental factors to you need to be aware of?
Get started today, don’t wait to start working towards the future that you desire and deserve.