Namaste everyone.
Initially I had always thought that habits are the things you naturally do always either consciously or unconsciously. As I grew older and got to understand myself better I had to redefine what habits is, in my new perspective I had to rule out the word ‘naturally’ and replace it with ‘intentionally’. And so habit to me is what we intentionally do overtime that grows to become a part of us in such a way that we could do them consciously or unconsciously.
source
Overtime, when I got to understand this fact I had to intentionally create a habit myself and with that I feel happier with myself now than before.
As a student and my life in general, procrastination was a great thing to deal with, I tried not to but I guess I had made it a habit already. It affected me so badly that one day I got so angry with myself, I thought of what to do and was so worried.
I decided to speak to my mentor about it, and guess what he said, he said “just do it, keep flipping the pages, you don’t have to wait for a specific time to do it, just do it anyway”. These words kept resonating within and that helped me a lot.
So if I were to study, instead of waiting till my study time, I would just have to read at any little time I am not so busy.
I did not just do it but I ensured that I kept doing that as often times as possible and so the habit I tried to build in was consistency.
Instead of battling with procrastination I built consistency. I got to realize that it is not so much about the bulk of what is to be done but if I can do it little by little every day then I can always finish up.
I had to be very intentional about it, I kept reminding myself that my little efforts everyday would amount to something big just like how drops of water could make a mighty ocean.
So the first habit I inculcated intentionally was consistency, the second habit was learning how to control the thoughts in my mind.
Learning to control the thoughts in my mind. It might not look like a habit but till you understand how powerful the mind could be that's only when you will learn to control your thoughts. A lot of times, I figured out things turn out the way it was in my mind.
Most times a stupid thought shows up and if I give in so much energy to it, I realized that it will eventually happen. Not just that, fearful thought too, fear is so unreal till we feed it with the energy it needs to manifest.
So sometimes a fearful thought would just pop up and before u know it I keep thinking about it and eventually I will get scared. Imagine being in a dark room or walking alone in a lonely road and such thought pops up, it would make me so scared that I can't even realize that it was just a thought and most times the fear becomes real.
It was really traumatizing not until I watched one video on YouTube, a man said "you become what you think and if you can change what you think then you can change what you become" these words kept ringing in my ears and that made me to start a habit that has changed that aspect of me.
I had to intentionally start changing what and how I think. Whenever fearful thoughts comes I would intentionally not give it a thought rather I'll meditate on the scripture that says "for God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of sound mind"
I did this very intentionally and it has helped me since then. I barely have any fearful thoughts, I don't feed it any more. I had to screen what I think and meditate
That was the habit that helped me out.
I realized that building a habit is not a one day thing, you can't even build a habit in a week it's just a gradual intentional effort summed up to give us the rightful habit we need.
Habits requires intentionality, you have to be very intentional about it and watch the magic happen.
In response to Indiaunited community prompt Click here to join