Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Habits

We talked last week about comfort & becoming comfortable in your life.  Another part of comfort is habits.  We all have habits that we follow everyday, habits can actually be good or habits can also be very bad.  The problem with habits is that they can be very difficult to change.  The repetition of these behaviors over & over again makes change more & more difficult.

I've written in the past that I've always been an advocate of change.  I truly believe that the way to grow & learn is through change.  But I also know that many people are afraid of change.  The truth is that change will happen with or without your participation.  It's a natural part of life, so why not embrace it!

So what habits do you have in your life?  Are there habits that you have that you'd like to change?  Habits take you away from living in the now.  They become so normal that we aren't paying attention to the current moment while we're moving through the habit.  Anything that takes us away from living in the now really shouldn't be apart of our lives.  The truth is though we all have habits.  They are apart of our life that makes us more comfortable & as we discussed comfort is also a dangerous place to be.  But comfort is part of our lives as well.

The good thing about habits are that if we create good habits, journaling, vision board, meditation, etc. they will become apart of our lives & we will repeat these good behaviors.  I've learned that if you actively think about the habits you want to change & replace the bad habits with a good habits within a short period of time you will move past the bad habits.  Now if these bad habits are something addicting like drugs, alcohol or cigarettes it will be much harder to change.  But I believe that even these difficult habits can be changed by replacing the habits with a good habits.  Of course if you have one of these addictive habits I would also suggest getting some help from professionals to ease you through the transition.

Our brains will rewire themselves fairly easily if we work to change the habits we don't like.  New nero pathways start being created quickly & these new pathways will become stronger with only a small amount of repetition.  Do you remember the old adage that if you repeat something (like a name) 7 times you won't forget it.  That's how easy it is to change the habits you want to change.

Create good habits and release the old bad habits.  This change in your habits will lead you to a more joyful life.

Till tomorrow,

Bill

Quote of the day: "Habits can be good or bad.  The choice is up to you, create good habits & lead a more joyful life"



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