Disciplined Habits
This is the eighth tool in the Mindset Toolkit…
What is it?
This is a tool of awareness.
It could be so much more if we chose to explore tactics for developing habits, this though is a topic widely publicised and one covered in an excellent way in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. When it comes to developing your desired habits, I would strongly recommend reading a copy of this book and applying the lessons.
What then is there to be aware of?
The importance of disciplined habits and why you should bother to focus on them.
How does it work?
Being a tool of awareness, we are going to focus on why habits matter and why you could choose to improve yours. I will now share some angles to explore…
Unconscious Unfolding
Here is a quote from the great Lao Tzu:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words;
watch your words, they become your actions;
watch your actions, they become your habits;
watch your habits, they become your character;
watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
Habits are the manifestation of unconscious programming that was once consciously chosen then re-enforced through reptation over time to become the unconscious behaviours they are.
Our habits form over weeks, months, and years and they can take an equally long time to reform. Our habits though are where the rubber meets the road in terms of action in our life; this is because self-defeating or even destructive habits can undermine our ability to achieve our goals.
As Lao Tzu outlines, thoughts flow to words, which flow to actions which become habits; the term habits is all encompassing and applied to all those things that precede.
This means to truly understand our habits, we must be willing to look not just at our behaviours, but at our thought processes and inner dialogue that is driving this behaviour.
Use the Use of Language tool to get started on this journey.
Decisions Every Moment
The average person is estimated to make 35,000 decisions a day.
This are both conscious and unconscious decision and can range from what hand to hold to tooth brush in a morning to life changing career decisions.
Every decision represents a choice and our mind develops habits (wired behaviour patterns that have become unconscious choices) to save us the time and cognitive load of making all these decisions.
That is 35,000 opportunities to make a difference to your day.
When taking a particular course of action as a precursor we have decided what information to consider, how long to consider it, how to consider it, then have drawn a conclusion to for our action plans and chosen to execute it.
This whole process takes milliseconds in our minds and the more often we face similar situations, the more efficient this specific process will be come and eventually it will result in a habitual course of action where the stimulus is almost immediately responded to with a predetermined action.
Think of it this way; if you choose to learn a bit about how you can take responsibility for and begin to shape your habits, you have 35,000 opportunities a day to practice!
So, the blocker to change is not a lack of opportunity, all you need to do is gain the knowledge and begin to apply it!
Remember, a habit could be consistent lazy thinking by not being willing to interrogate or face hard truths. Is there something you need to face in to when it comes to taking responsibility for your habits?
Pain and Pleasure
Pain is an interesting concept. Is it just the absence of pleasure or something much more?
Humans experience pain both physically and psychologically. The mind and body are so deeply connected, psychological pain can even manifest as physical pain too.
The yin and yang of pain and pleasure sit as drivers behind most, if not all, human behaviours. Either avoiding/alleviating pain, or pursuing pleasure.
When we know and acknowledge this, we can learn use it to our advantage…
You see, humans have a preference towards avoiding pain over seeking pleasure. So if we want to stop doing something, all we need to do is learn how to associate negative and painful emotions to it. If we want to start doing something, we need to associate positive emotions to it. It is a pretty simple context.
A pretty simple insight that can be really useful when trying to reshape our habits.
The Good Wolf and the Bad Wolf
Changing our habits can be extremely challenging. Our habits are programmed in to our mind in the same way that data is stored on a computer.
Just like our bodies though, the information that is stored in the neural networks of our minds is fundamentally just energy.
The more you focus on something, the more energy you give to it and the stronger it gets.
When you deprive something of energy it eventually dies. This is knowledge that can be applied consciously to both psychological and physical behavioural patterns; our habits.
In the Max Payne post, we explored how pain and pleasure are mutually arising. Much like yin and yang one needs to exist for the other to exist. This is the essence of an equilibrium.
Breaking habits can be done by exercising a choice to create disequilibrium; there by forcing a new more preferable equilibrium to arise. The act of removing something creates the need to replace it.
There is an old Cherokee expression:
“There are two wolves that live inside us. One wolf is good and one is bad. They are constantly in battle with each other. The question is, which one wins?”
“The one you choose to feed.”
When applying this theory of disequilibria, one must also be aware that your overall balance must remain. You can’t just not feed the bad wolf; you need to feed the good wolf too.
In other words; when you are trying to break a habit, you can’t just stop doing whatever it is (creating disequilibria). This may work in the short term but for sustainable change you need it to redirect your energy in to something else (creating equilibria). Replace the bad habit with a new good habit.
Remember: Unspent energy returns to the bad wolf.
Establish disequilibria but maintain balance.
Benefits and Practical Applications
Being a tool of awareness, the primary function is to aid you to shine your torch of awareness on to the choices available to you.
Choosing to develop disciplined habits is about taking full responsibility for your destiny. Habit reshaping is something that can take time, but as we have seen, you have 35,000 opportunities a day to make a difference.
Remember that every moment we are alive is life, so look for habits that span both your time at work and at home to find the right things to tweak to have the biggest impact. Your behavioural patterns repeat in every aspect of our lives; we just need to be able to spot them to begin to turn the dial.
Know that by even reading this you are starting your journey to manifest a more authentic future.
This is not about simply developing new programming in alignment with some ideal to allow you to continue unconsciously moving through life, it is about awakening to the present moment and allowing your fully conscious, authentic self, to shine.
Use this tool to build the why in you to drive the change, then get yourself a copy of Atomic Habits by James Clear and begin the work.
The unexamined life it not worth living.
– Socrates
Enjoy, for now.