you must become conscious of your habits
Whenever we feel stressed, overwhelmed or exhausted, we fall back on our habitual patterns in order to cope with them better.
No matter how high we set our standards, when we face challenges and setbacks, we don’t rise to the level of our commitments, we fall to the level of our habits. That’s why the habits that you cultivate over time have a direct impact on the quality of your life.
Our brain is driven to conserve energy and that’s the reason it loves habits. It doesn’t distinguish between good or bad habits; it just doesn’t want to work hard. This can be a problem.
Instead of letting our brain take the reins, we must take charge and become cognizant of our pre-installed recurring patterns of thinking, behaving, and acting. Once we do that, we equip ourselves to make conscious choices about the habits that we want to keep and the ones we want to let go of.
We live almost half of our lives on autopilot. And if we’re not careful, we can fall prey to our habits and live unconscious lives as half-awake civilized zombies.
It’s time you become deliberate with your habits. Start challenging your automatic thoughts, behaviors and actions. Figure out what drives them, and work towards replacing the negative patterns into constructive ones.
Of course, habits don’t change overnight, it takes time and patience. It takes repetitive and consistent efforts to build new neural grooves. And while you do that, it’s easy to fall back into the old patterns. That’s why, successful habit change requires resilience, grit and the will to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Focus on one habit at a time. And don’t beat yourself up if you can’t change a negative pattern into a positive one. Take it slow — first go from the negative zone to the neutral zone, and then gradually nudge yourself to go to the positive zone.
As you work towards changing your habits, always remember the Compound Effect — little, consistent actions over time can help you create new thought patterns and behaviors.
Habit change is a marathon, not a sprint. It’ll take some time and effort on your part, but eventually, you’ll be able to master your habits and use them to work for you, not against you.