Habits Run Your Life

Life is simple.For the most part it is run by habits that we acquire over our lives. When I use the term habit I refer to a default way of responding to a reoccurring situation. Habits form because life is repetitive – common things happen over and over again. People act in predictable ways and our brain subconsciously starts responding in a preset way to certain reoccurring events.

Many of us, however, make it difficult by adopting the wrong habits. We start responding in such a way that is destructive to our lives. For example, people form the habits of negative thinking, laziness, pessimism, failure, depression, victim mentality and so on as a default way of dealing with tough situations.

Most of the time, people are not even aware of their destructive habit until somebody tells them so. Habits form because of the environment that we live in and because of the people that we are surrounded by. Humans learn by imitation and if we see something done enough times, we tend to accept as the default behavior to a particular situation. You can image what happens when a person grows up surround by the wrong role models – a ton of destructive habits that can run our lives into shambles.

If we were only able to change those destructive habits into constructive ones our lives would become a lot more simple and much more rewarding. That is all there is to it. Of course: “Easier said than done.”

How To Simplify Your Life

You could take the following steps to simplify your life.

• Become aware of your own destructive habits. This might the hardest step of them all. As I have mentioned before, most of the time we are not aware of us becoming engaged in a destructive action. A simple way to see if the action is destructive is to check if it interferes with your goals or your life purpose or if it slows your growth and development as an individual.

• Become aware of the situations in which you respond in a destructive way. Once you have identified your destructive habits, you will have to closely watch when the habit reoccurs and try to figure out what caused it. For example, if you start smoking after you become stressed out, you will know the stress is the trigger for smoking.

• Make a list. The next step is fairly intuitive. List your destructive habits along with situations that trigger them. Write it down and carry it with you. Glance over it daily so that you become more and more aware of the situations that trigger your destructive responses.

• Prepare a list of constructive responses. Once you have a clear list of the situations that trigger your destructive habits, create a completely new list of constructive habits to replace your destructive ones. For example, try this: instead of going for a smoke when you get stressed out, take a 5-10 walk outside as a new default response. The thing is, habits do not disappear, they must be replaced with a new habit; otherwise your brain will find its own default way of dealing with the situation. After all, habits exist for a reason – they offer us quick solution to common events. So it is in your benefit to make sure that you respond in a positive manner as opposed to becoming your own obstacle.

• Practice. That is how habits are created – by repetition. That is the only way to create a constructive habit that will change your life – practice. The more you practice the less you will have to think about it. Eventually, it will seem to just happen naturally. It might take years, months , or weeks for your brain to form new neuron connections and accept a new way of behaving.

• Reward yourself. This is helpful, but not required to reinforce a new positive habit. Think of something that will help you act one way versus the other. It might things as simple as watching your favorite show, treating yourself to a nice meal, a movie or a spa to reward yourself for your effort.

I Simplified My Life

Here is a very simple example from my own personal life to illustrate the above point. I was addicted to watching cartoons before going to sleep. I just had to watch them, or otherwise I could not sleep. This would keep me up until 1AM or 2AM  every night. Naturally, it would interfere with my work the next day as I would be sleep and tired the whole time.

The situation that caused me to watch cartoons was stress from the whole day. Simple enough. My destructive habit was watching cartoons. Once I had that, I had to write down a new constructive habit – it was meditation. So slowly but surely, I was able to cut out cartoons before going to bed and I would start meditating. It worked!

Now before I go to bed, I meditate. Mediation seems to work like magic and now I can go to sleep on time without wasting precious hours watching cartoons. Of course, because of that I am less stressed out the next day and meditating becomes much easier before going to bed. It’s a win win!

QUESTION: How could you use this technique to simplify your life?

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