Habits – Bad or Good?
I’ve just recieved an email from a client who has come to realise she has bad habits. There are things that she does regularly every day that bother her, I smiled as I read her email as I realised she’s not alone. I could recognise a few habits of mine I’d like to change. There are also habits I’m glad to keep, we need habits or routine to get us through every day. Get up, get washed, get dressed. They’re all good habits, they keep us busy and it’s just part of daily life. They serve us. It’s the bad habits that need to change. The ones that don’t serve us. These could be to exercise regularly, to eat healthily, to make decisions quickly, the list goes on.
Habits are also a useful way to remember and do the things we learn, the new skills we acquire. the more we do them, the more they become part of us. Think about something that was once completely alien to you and is now part of daily life, for example, driving a car, riding a bike, using a mobile phone. All of these things once learned became habits, things we could repeat easily and effortlessly.
Having this ability to repeat habits means that we tend to keep habits that we don’t want, for example; smoking, procrastination, staying in bed too late, over-eating. The good news here is just as we can learn to do things we can un-learn by doing something else. We can learn a new good habit to replace and old bad habit. All we have to do is get started. So why not write a list of three bad habits you could change today and write down what you’re going to do instead. Then start behaving ‘as if’ these new habits were already part of daily life. Keep going with it and soon your new habits will become part of a new you.
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Tagged with: Life on Pause? • Motivation • Positive Thinking
Filed under: Business Coaching • Life Coaching
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There’s only one habit I really want to change. I want to change my habit of negative self-talk. I’m trying to do it by thinking of four positive things every time I think of something negative. It goes a bit like this: you’re not passionate enough about anything to succeed. You love talking to people, you’re good at making visitors to your clubs feel welcome, your kids are happy and the sun is shining. that last one was a bit tricky, I had to look out the window, but hey, whatever it takes, right? Thanks for the post, Sue, again very helpful
Thanks for your comments Vanessa. Great idea to think of four positive things every time you think something negative, keep it up and let me know how it goes.