Habits,the good and the bad of it
"A habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it"
image source:here
to act automatically without carefully thinking about what you are doing._ Whenever you do something the action leaves a kind of an electric track in the gray matter of your brain. Each time you do that same act over and over, it becomes easier to do because there is a tendency for the nerve currents in the brain to follow the same pathway. Eventually you can do the act, such as walking, without even thinking about it. It becomes automatic.
Just think of how terrible it would be if you had to get up every morning and learn how to walk all over again, or how to eat, or how to carry out all the daily task, we would never get much of anything else done.
How do we learn a new habit, like learning how to play the guitar? You do the same thing over and over, repeating it regularly without fail, till you can do it without thinking about it. How does a tennis player perfects a good serve? By practice!
We have lots of good habits that permit us to carry out our daily routine quickly and efficiently. There are new habits that all of us would like to gain, like learninghow to play a musical instrument or being especially skillful at some sport.
We also have bad habits that we would like very much to be rid of, like tobacco, or alcohol, or maybe bad languages that marks us as not being very courteous to others.
How do we break a habit? The way you break a habit is just the opposite from the way the habit was formed. If you make up your mind that you want to learn a good habit, like playing a musical instrument, you first make a resolution. You determine you are going to learn how to do that skills. If you give up along the way, chances are that you will never gain the skill.
If yu want to break a bad habit, you have to do the same thing; make a resolution that you need to stop and not let the habit happen, not even once. This will not be very easy for you. If you have been accustomed to behaveing in a particular manner for a long time, it is natural for you to continue doing so. So you must make up your mind that you will not permit yourself to fall back into your old way no matter what.
A good way is to keep a record on a calender where you mark off every day that you have been sucessful. At the end of the week you can check your score. Maybe it's three to seven, maybe it's two to seven, maybe it's a shutout. At the end of the month you can look at the score you achieved for the month and make up your mind that you are going to beat your bad habit without complete shutout early in the next month.
Here are a few suggestions that may help you with your habits.
First: Don't fool yourself. It's easy to make comments like: "Oh, that's just my way. After all, nobody is perfect." Excuses are just aiding your habit to continue and diminishing your willpower to stop.
Second: Approach you target with a rifle, not a shotgun. Take onepart of you habit at a time. not all at once. shoot down part of it before you take aim on thenext part.
Third: Be realistic. Your habit wont be over in a short time; it may take a month. Dont give up if you have a few failure along the way; it's long term reserve for freedon that counts.
Finally: Start today. Now is the best time thus far in your life because you've been thinking about it, and you know youhave a plan which will succeed.
image source:here
Ask your friends to help you by encouraging your efforts and by talking with you about how you are going to beat your bad habit. But the real victory will lie with you. Whether you are trying to perfect a good habit or whether you are tryingto break a bad one, you are the one that profits the most or loses in the end.
