Are You Your Habits?

I have been hearing a lot about the topic of habits and wanted to add my two cents. I do believe you can change your habits—both good ones and bad ones. The trick is you have to be very aware of what your habits are and how are they serving you.

It is important to realize how much of your habits make up who you are and what you do. I have been using an app on my iPhone called Lift that I love. It helps you track your habits. You can pick the habits you want to incorporate into your life and then track them. I have had a lot of fun over the past year and half tracking my good habits. Here is the catch. It only focuses on the habits you think are good and that you want to establish in your life, such as exercise, writing, setting priorities for the day, praying, etc. It doesn’t address bad habits, such as overeating, smoking, gossiping, etc. So what can you do to eliminate those bad habits and create more good habits?

As I just mentioned the Lift app is a good way to start being aware of these habits and just how ingrained they are into your lifestyle. Another great way to become aware of your habits is to become a detective of sorts about yourself. What are you doing without thinking about it? Do you always hit the snooze button several times before you get up in the morning? Do you drink three cups of coffee every day? Do you read from a good book every night? You can find out what your habits are just by paying attention to you and what you are doing. I think monitoring your habits is the first step to ensure you are living the life you want to live.

Once you have become aware of your habits, you need to decide if you want to replace any of your bad habits. I have learned from reading and from my own experiences that it is much better to try to replace a bad habit with a good one. It is tough to just quit or stop a bad habit. We need to put something in its place. One example I have seen is taking an hour of TV watching and replacing it with an hour of reading. I am not saying you have to give up TV altogether, but if you determine you are watching too much, replace the first or last hour of TV watching with reading.

The final idea I will share about habits is don’t be too hard on yourself. What I mean by that is two things. First, be patient because habits didn’t start in a day, and they can’t be changed in a day. Second, try to start one new habit at a time. For example, if you want to start exercising and you are a night owl who has trouble getting up early, don’t plan to spend 30 minutes exercising first thing in the morning. You will sabotage your efforts by trying to change your habit of staying up too late and adding exercise to your routine at the same time. You should probably schedule your new exercise routine for the evening and save changing your night owl habit for later. This tip alone really helped me as I was trying to shape my new habits.

Let me know what works for you as try to create new habits.

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