Your habits – those things you do each day (for better or worse) – are the defining factors of who you become.
Habits such as being on time, dependable, and thorough will serve you well in this life. If you steward the little things well, you’re more likely to handle big things well, because you’ve trained yourself to a level of excellence.
But what about being a pessimist, speaking ill of others, or seeing yourself as a victim? These are also habits, but they aren’t doing anything for you or anyone else. How about habitual procrastination (me!) or self-sabotaging (me!)? This is mindset stuff. How you think will determine how you act.
We must train our minds and bodies when establishing new habits. Exercise doesn’t necessarily feel great when we first start (hello, sore muscles), but if we persevere, this new habit brings us more energy, enhanced clarity, and maybe even pants that fit! Becoming properly hydrated may seem like a pain at first, but after it becomes a habit, we feel sharper mentally, our skin and digestion get healthier.
But we also have bad habits, like spending too much time scrolling our phones. Or sitting down with a bag of chips when we get home from work. Or eating late at night. Or drinking too much alcohol. Or complaining. These habits came to us too easily, but they don’t do us a shred of good.
Habits make or break us. The good news is that we can discard those that aren’t serving us well, and implement new ones in their place. A habit of inactivity can be replaced with one of intentional movement. Pessimism can be replaced with looking for the possibilities in a situation. Victim thinking can be replaced with empowered thinking. You go, Girl!
This goes beyond our natural impulses and moves into our will. Creating healthy habits of body and mind require intentionality. Of course this is hard. But if we can focus on what we want most, over what we want now, we’ll be off to a good start.
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle (smart guy, that one!)
What about you?
Do you have a habit you’re working on?
