If we can plan and make good habits regarding what we eat, we won’t need to worry about making difficult decisions because they will already be made for us. On the other hand, I always brought lunch, so it was easy to eat healthily if I had a healthy dinner the day before. The problem was that there weren’t a lot of healthy options around, so a lot of the time, he ended up eating crap. I used to work with a guy who never brought a lunch to work, so he would head out to pick up something every day. In these situations, we are more inclined to make bad choices that adversely affect our lives. Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors that interfere with our ability to make good decisions, such as being stressed, tired or hungry. Most of our actions are driven by habit, but when they aren’t, we need to decide. Once we have that plan and groundwork, we need to keep at it, and often making a habit of keeping at it is the best way to get it done.Īnything significant will take repeated efforts, so getting yourself into the habit of making that effort will make what seems impossible more manageable. It is often impossible to accomplish something significant in a short period of time, so we need to break up those big tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. At the same time, while the effort to do something big may seem daunting when it is split up into daily or regular tasks, it isn’t so scary. By committing to doing something small every day, we enable ourselves to accomplish big things over time. It would be impossible to lose 20 pounds or write 100 articles in a weekend those sorts of tasks take time and dedication. 4) Our habits enable us to accomplish big things Rather than relying on willpower or motivation, focus on making a habit of regularly doing things you want to do. While we might not be able to get ourselves to step up to specific challenges, if we make a habit of the desired behaviour, we won’t have any choice but to keep it up. But since I’ve made a habit of doing it every day, I feel bad if I don’t do it, and so that is often all the motivation I need. I can tell you that it would be impossible to motivate myself to ride my bike after a long day. Rather than trying to motivate ourselves to do something, we should look at maintaining our practices instead. It isn’t easy to keep motivated, especially for extended periods, but this is where habits play a role. 3) Our habits fill in where our motivation lacks For myself, riding my bike once or twice doesn’t have much effect, but after nine months, I’ve lost 20 pounds.Īnything you do regularly will have a compounding effect, meaning small, unnoticeable daily changes result in considerable changes in the long run. Equally as important, if you make a habit of practicing something, you will see significant results in time. This means that while doing something once or twice won’t have much effect, making a habit of it will have a sizable impact in time.Įating a bag of chips after work once will not matter much, but you will see a big difference in your weight after a month or six of this. For this reason, we are our habits, so if we want to see ourselves as good, we need to develop good habits. When we look at who we are and what we do, it usually comes down to a series of habits that we do day in and day out. You can probably convince yourself to do anything sometimes, but it is impossible to convince yourself to do something all the time, and so this is where habits come into play. Neither of those things would be possible without a consistent effort. This isn’t to say that we are only our habits, but they play an essential role in making sense of who we are and what is important to us.Īt the beginning of this year, I committed to two things: creating a blog with lots of content and getting healthy by riding my bike. Ultimately we are our habits the things that we do all the time are who we are, so we derive meaning from those habits. 10) Good habits improve our health and wellbeing.8) Good habits help us deal with stress. 6) Good habits help us avoid wasted time.4) Our habits enable us to accomplish big things.3) Our habits fill in where our motivation lacks.
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