Habit

November 10, 2009 in Umum

Many times while I have a conversation with anyone, I just happen to to tell the person I’m talking with with unnecessary information. Well, to cut things short, I have a really big mouth, not in the physical sense – my actual mouth is a fairly ordinary size, but in the sense that I talk a lot. Some would call me an evangelist, others would call me an early adopter, Lia would call me a sneezer.

I read an article the other day in the internet and I’d like to share it with you guys internet peeps. Go figure the paragraph below.

I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.  I am completely at your command. Half of the things you do you might just as well turn over to me and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly. I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done and after a few lessons I will do it automatically. I am the servant of all great men, and alas, of all failures as well. Those who are great, I have made great.  Those who are failures, I have made failures. I am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a man. You may run me for profit or run me for ruin; it makes no difference to me. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you.

Who am I? I am Habit!  (author unknown)

Your habits can make you or break you.  They will drag you down or rescue you and keep you moving forward. So if habits are so important then we need to ask the question “who is in charge of your habits”?

It’s amazing to me how many people just surrender control of their lives to so many outside influences. We walk through life meeting the demands of everyone else yet too often we fail to meet our own demands.  We do what our boss, spouse, children, school, government, church, friends tell us to do and we form habits to accommodate these influences often without asking the simple question “how will this affect my health”? We are nothing more than a constellation of habits that play out over and over again. As the days roll into weeks, then months and years we seem to drift into situations that are often undesired such as weight gain, poor physical condition, lousy sleep, and achy joints. But the reality is that we chose these condition, we chose our outcome based on our habits.

Most habits exist simply because we haven’t explored other options. Maybe you eat toasted bread every morning because that’s what you were taught as a child and that’s what you’re used to. Is this a good habit? Maybe not. Maybe you don’t eat breakfast at all because you taught yourself years ago that there isn’t time, we must rush to get to work. (hmm it sounds familiar, indeed, ring the bell, Lia?) The result of both of these habits may be weight gain or poor energy and as time goes by we feel powerless to change and accept our fate as “just getting older.”

Would you like to fine tune your health and increase the energy and drive in your life? Then take a good hard look at your habits and decide if they are serving you, or are you just a slave to your habits. You can be and do ANYTHING. Yes you can exercise in the morning before work if you CHOOSE to and make it a habit. You can eat more vegetables even if you hate all vegetables just by slowly adopting one vegetable at a time and gently working them into your diet. It is an option you need to explore and decide to commit to. Your life is not set in stone, change the parts you don’t like.

So how do you form a new habit? It’s not that difficult. Simply identify a habit that you want to change.  Let’s take a real life issue such as eating chips, ice cream, coffee and other food-like toxic substrates late in the evening. Many people eat “crap” while watching TV at night, which puts unwanted pounds on their body. Stop it dude…

No one cares more about you than YOU. Take control of your habits and redefine yourself.  You are the only one standing in your way.