How do I create good personal habits?

Habits can either be good and helpful in our personal lives or they can be bad and hinder us. A habit is an automatic routine that our body performs so that our minds will be freed up to concentrate on more activities.

If we think about simple things like walking, eating, or even talking we have the ability to do these functions without thinking. We can usually do tasks such as writing for typing easily. Our brain turns helps us, by habit to type a paper so that we can use our other brain power to help us write a paper rather than worry about typing.

Eating, writing, and walking are old habits that came from muscle memory over a period of time. We learned skills by practicing and they became habits. When we first learned to drive a car, it was very difficult for us because we had to look in the rearview mirror, behind us, and look at the side mirrors. After driving for some time we became accustomed to looking at all the mirrors without thinking about it.

Once something becomes a habit in our lives it reduces the amount of thinking we have to do on our part in order to function. Our brain receives tens of thousands of signals from our senses but our brain can only handle around 30 to 40 signals at one time. Habits that we acquire save us energy required to process these senses, something becomes a habit then it requires less strength either mentally or physically. That is why you often hear the phrase that we are creatures of habit.

Good habits give us a routine order, whereas bad habits give us the opposite effect making our routine dysfunctional. One thing about our habits is our brain cannot distinguish between what is a good habit and what is a bad one. Fortunately for us, we have the ability to understand what are good habits and what is bad. By looking at our behaviors we can figure out our certain habits and triggers.

There are all kinds of habits and most of us have habits we don’t even realize.

What is the first thing you do when you get home?

Do you kick your shoes off?

Throw your clothes somewhere?

Put your keys in a certain place?

We all have some sort of ritual when we get home from somewhere, especially in our bedrooms. Just take notice next time, these are learned habits that you created. Putting your keys in a certain place is a neutral habit, it is not good or bad. But throwing your shoes in the corner not organized seems like a bad habit to me.

Some bad habits we have may be drinking too much especially when around friends, doing something addictive like smoking, drinking coffee even when we do not need it, stopping at our favorite fast food place on the way home. Some of these things we do not even crave but they have become such a big part of us that our habits lead us. Imagine if our lives were filled will good habits in everything that we did.

Habits are hard to break because they are wired so deep inside of us. But there is a clear way in which they start, sometimes it can be emotional, a lot of the times it has to do with anxiety and stress. When we have anxiety or stress we tend to want a drink or go smoke, these are learned habits.

Habits are routines that run our lives.  Like I asked before, what is your routine when you get home for the day? How much do you really think about grabbing dinner, having a drink, and watching tv? I bet it is so routine to you that you just do it without even thinking.