You are the sum of your habits.
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Everyone has habits - things you do over and over again repeatedly. You are a creature of your habits. You routinely perform the same pattern over and over again. Some habits are pretty obvious and conscious, mostly your habits have become unconscious over time. You develop biases that feed your habits simply because our cognitive filter distorts, deletes and generalises your experiences.
We are not born with habits and biases, we learn them.
Over the past weeks I have talked and written about your ripple effect, values, motivation, energy, confidence and finding out how we close the gap between our now life and our future life. The gap between now and the future is largely dependent on your habits and is deeply linked to your values. To fully evolve as a person we need to consciously and deliberately look at your habits, reflect on them, evolve them and align to what is required to achieve your future goals and success.
If you don’t like your life or aspects of your life, you have the power to change. Your thoughts, your identity, your purpose, your behaviour and your habits institutionalise your way of being that creates your future energy. Your energy attracts or repels people and opportunities.
What is a conscious habit? Let’s say you are thirsty. Your conscious decision is to get a drink, your action that follows is to go and get a drink. You knew you were thirsty, you had a desire to have a drink, you were fully aware of going to get a drink. If you were to drink the drink quickly, you may even comment ‘I needed that’.
What is an unconscious habit? Let’s stick with the drink concept. Someone places a drink on your desk. You go to take a sip and it’s already finished yet you do not remember drinking the drink. You might even feel disappointed. You were not aware that you had drunk the drink, it was an unconscious action.
What is a bias? A feeling or show of preference/inclination towards something or someone. If you grew up using a specific brand of food, you may favour this brand as it’s what you grew up. How you develop preference - is simply repeatedly watching the same habit.
Habits are so powerful - once we are aware of your habits, you can manage the reactions you impulsively do, which impact your ripple effect.
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