What are Your Habits Telling You--and Me?

Every one of us grew up knowing about habits--or did we? Sure we were told about not developing bad habits like smoking, to develop good habits like execise and the infamous 'habits are hard to break', but have you ever really given habits much thought? Or were you thinking about 'behaviors' of your own that were either good or bad habits (which I might add is totally a judgement thing) instead of what exactly a habit is?

It is my opinion that habits are no more easy or difficult to form or break than we decide them to be. Why is that, you say? Because habits, good, bad or indifferent are what is going on inside us and showing up on the outside. And a habit is simply an action, a thought or way of being that is performed repeatedly. This means that what you think and believe about yourself, whats possible for you & who you really are is showing up in those actions, thoughts and behaviors.

So you might decide to start a new health regime but, and this is a really big but, your habitual thought is that you are lazy, or unworthy or don't have the time, whatever it may be will build walls for you that not only allow you to not develop those new habits but in fact, perpetuate that belief of not being able to....

So you can stay stuck in those habits which do not move you forward. But there is good news. You can change habits that do not serve you. How, you ask? By understanding that habits are formed one action, thought or behavior at a time and giving some real thought as to why you have the habits that you have. So let me give you an example;

Say you are out of shape and have packed on some pounds; the new habit doesn't start with joining a health club and starving yourself--it starts with seeing that your opinion of yourself is reflected in the mirror and then evaluating that opinion. Most of the time our feeling of self worth is based on BS. Get your thinking straight, if you have done something you think justifies your low opinion of you then fix it. Once you have fixed it or if you can't fix it, either way does not matter, then forgive yourself. What can you do about yesterday? Pretty much nothing right? You only have here and now. There is no magic to this; its a simple decision with only as much baggage as YOU pack. Think of a child that has gotten into something he or she was told not to touch and in doing so has broken that item, does that behavior need to be punished over and over?

The next step is to understand that habits are formed one degree at a time and you only need to shoot for one degree better every day & that relieves you of the pressure of thinking, say; that yesterday you were Pigpen (from the comic strip Peanuts) but today you are Martha Stewart. If you do that you will defeat yourself and perpuate self defeat. But if you start the day understanding that you only need to take one step, one baby step, towards that new positive habit, then you wake up knowing that you can do that--easily & with one hand tied behind your back so to speak. You repeat this every morning and discover that habits are simply things that are repeated and that you do have the power over your habits & not vice-versa.