What are habits?

Filthy Habittses always stealing things and running away. Sorry couldn't help a little LOTR humor. It's silly but kind of brings up my first point today.

People tend to put a negative connotation on the word habit. Most likely you think of destructive behaviors when the word habit comes up. And why shouldn't you. Often when the word comes up it is associated with drinking, smoking or even drugs. There are tons of bad habits. Things like driving too fast, not listening to good advice or just taking too many risks in general.

There are so many bad habits, that we tend to treat the words habit and bad habit as synonymous. And that is just not true. Literally, habits are just patterns or routines. Your habits describe what and when you do what it is that you do on a daily basis.

Unless everything you do is bad, all of your habits are not bad. There is nothing wrong with having habits. Without them there would be no order to anything all choices would be random and you would never do things the same way twice, not on purpose anyways.

So unless you are worried about Bishop from the comics coming back from the future to assassinate you in the present, there is no reason to avoid having habits. And now that I think about it, if you have good reason to believe that that may actually happen, chances are you have a lot more to worry about than what your habits are.

In all seriousness habits are a good and necessary part of life. The question  is are your habits serving you or are you serving your habits?

In your mind think of an average week in your life. Imagine every day from the time you wake up until you go to sleep. Think of all the things that you do on a daily basis. As you go through each day in your mind, make a list of all the habits that you can think of that you have. Until you are done with the whole week, don't filter anything out. Just write it all down. Be as honest with yourself and accurate as possible. Then separate the list into three columns, one that is good habits, one that is bad habits, and one for things that are either neutral or for things where you are not sure if they are helpful or not.

Then go down each column one item at a time and think about that particular habit. Think about why it is that you do that particular thing and what you get out of it. Because whether it is good or bad you get something out of every habit that you have, otherwise it would not have become a habit. Sometimes we choose things that we know are not good for us just because we want a certain result.

Give each habit a few moments of your time. Turn it over and look at it from every angle. For each one ask yourself if there is a better way to do this thing. Then think about what your life would be like without this habit.

You might find yourself with a few less habits once you're done or you may find more productive ways to get the same things done. Either way it's a win-win situation for you.