Category: Law of Attraction
Love like Jesus
My Beliefs are Helpful to me and that’s what matters
To Fail is Human
When choosing who you want to be, stay away from the Dark Side
What do you ACTUALLY want to do with your life… not be when you grow up
What are you willing to change?
You are your habits.
Habits are really hard to break. It doesn’t matter how many tricks you read about, it doesn’t matter if there’s a “change your habits in 28 days… or your money back”. You may as well ask for the money back now, because habits are hard to break. Now, that is not to say that they are impossible and you’re stuck with it forever.. but it’s going to take work.
I know someone who every time he walks past the kitchen he opens the refrigerator. He is constantly surprised by this fact. He could have just finished eating dinner and just walks into the kitchen to throw away a piece or paper.. he opens the refrigerator. He can be walking through to head up to his bedroom or to the bathroom.. opens the refrigerator. It drives him insane. He doesn’t even mean to, it just happens. It’s a habit.
I know someone else who has to have the TV on at all times. She walks into the house and automatically turns on the TV, whether or not there is something she wants to watch or not she turns it on and scans or searches or just keeps it on for background. This inevitably causes her to sit and watch instead of doing things on her “to-do” list, but it’s a habit. She doesn’t think about it, she just does.
I saw a meme on social media today about how parents are advised to put something “important” in the backseat with their babies as to not forget them, and people are going crazy, “what is more important than your baby!”.. but this is not about important, this is about habit. People so commonly do things out of habit they sometimes are at a detriment to themselves or their loved ones.
One man eats when he’s not hungry. One woman sits mindlessly watching TV. One parent drives to work on auto-pilot forgetting that it’s his/her day to drop the baby at daycare. All are important, some just have a more immediate result. All are the result of habits. Drug abuse is often called a “habit” and to a certain extent it is. When someone starts to feel a certain way they turn to what has worked in the past.. their “habit” for feeling better.
There are good habits and obviously there are horrible habits. All are easier to create than to make. So when you see something that says, “break habits in 28 days” what it’s really saying is create new habits.. that is possible.. but again.. not all habits are good, and even good habits designed to take the place of bad habits are not as easy to make/break. If you want to make it a habit to take off your shoes every time you walk into a house.. sure, a month later it may just be ingrained in your head, you may not even think about it. Your neuro-pathways have been sparked and you have reminded yourself enough that it’s habit. Same as your drive to work.. it’s auto-pilot.
If you want to stop yourself from looking in the fridge, or get yourself into a new exercise routine, or find better ways of coping with problems than drugs.. that’s going to take time. That’s going to take more than reminding yourself for a couple weeks. That’s going to take creating a new sense of self.. because those habits are linked to your personality, your ego. Those habits are part of what makes you you and how you see yourself as a person.
If you want to break major bad habits you have to decide that you are not a person who does these things. You are a non-smoker. You are a healthy person. You are strong. Because the moment you are a fat person trying to act differently your brain stops listening. The moment that you are an addict trying to be better.. you’ll have all the excuses why you it is who you are. You can’t go to the gym.. you’re too fat, people will laugh. It’s ok if you eat the cake.. you’re fat.. and everyone else is. It’s ok if you use again today… all your friends are and you don’t want to lose your friends.
You are not those things. You are a being that inhabits a body. You are whatever you tell yourself that you are. If you decide that you are healthy and are only going to do healthy things, and keep that in your mind, your heart, and your self.. your ego will evolve. Your habits will form. New habits, based on who you decide that you are. If you are an excuse… then you’ll never run out of those.
What would you do if you could do anything?
What would you do if you could do anything? I remember playing that game as a kid.. when you’re really little it’s things like fly or shoot laser beams out of your eyes or what ever. As we hit our teens it’s date a famous person or travel the world or get a Lamborghini. By the time we’re adults it’s things like, sleep.. or eat chocolate without getting fat.. or maybe something practical like buy a house.
We live a lot of life and as that life goes on we lose the magic that makes life worth living. I have a 5 year old and I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.. he’s torn, either an alligator tooth brusher or a jungle swinger… but thinks maybe he can do both. He doesn’t just think outside the box.. he doesn’t understand that there even should be a box, and much like a cat.. if there is a box anywhere around it will soon become one of his favorite toys.
There is something fundamentally sad about “growing up”. It’s not the fact that we have to pay bills or that we suddenly have responsibilities. It’s because we lose the piece of ourselves that we used to let dream. How many people are told that they can’t do something because there’s no money in it or the chances of being successful are so low, or because it’s not “practical” and how much is the whole world missing out because of that?
When I went to college I had no idea what I was going to be when I grow up. I’m not 42 and just starting to figure it out, and it has nothing to do with the degree that I am still paying for. How many of us believe, especially in the US, that our jobs are our identity? Yet most of us got into a particular job because it was the one that was hiring or most convenient for our schedule or our location or our limited skills based on classes that we took predominately in our teens.
When I think about what I could do or have if I could do or have anything.. I may not want to fly like Superman, but I do want to see the world. I may not want laser beams that shoot out of my eyes but I do want to use my eyes to discover and see every beautiful thing that this world has to offer. I want to make a difference in this world. I want to raise my son to know that he can do and see and be anything that he wants, even if he has to go to the jungles and wrestle alligators with Aquafresh.
It’s been about a decade since that movie “The Bucket List” came out and people started to contemplate what they want to do before they die. The problem that I have always had with that is that people think they have forever. They think that they’ll be 90+ and have decades to make up for the time that they’re wasting now. But we don’t.. this is our life.. every day.. every minute. We don’t get it back. What do you want to do.. not before you die.. what do you want to do with your life?
Sometimes those closest to us are not always the best support.
I know people can get a little turned off when I mention the word “church”, but I was in church last week and we had a visiting priest from Africa. The Central African Republic to be precise.. anyway, he said that he was very interested to do the homily that week, because it was about Jesus’s (trigger word… bare with you) speech about being judged by those you know.
There is a part of the Bible in which Jesus speaks and everyone questions his authority, as he was just the son of a carpenter… and they knew of his humble beginnings.. and how could HE possibly be important. The Father went on to say how he knows how it feels. He came to this new church on the other side of the world and he was welcomed and respected, and though he loved his home there were always those that would never take him seriously because he was the kid that did…. what have you, 20 years ago.
When starting something new in life this is often a problem that people have. We are already set in our ways and it is difficult enough to start a new course and reprogram our own minds, but it is all the more difficult with the naysayers in our ears. I can remember when I was starting my health journey and I was cutting bad foods and trying to exercise more, and the hardest people to be around were the ones that were closest to me. The ones who were like, “oh… another diet” or “yeah, we can go out next week when you’re over your kick” or “it’s just a piece of cake” .. or pizza or what have you.. “It’s not a big deal. You’ve always eaten it before.”
There is something about human nature that people almost take it as a personal insult if you decide to change.. as if you’re trying to be better than the other person or that your change means that they should change as well.
As I have mentioned before people are very determined to stay the image that they have assigned for themselves. They like their habits. They know their identity. Anything outside of that makes them very uncomfortable. So if identity is permanent than you shouldn’t be able to change yours either. This is an extremely hard battle to wage when you’re already fighting your own mind.
A lot of people will tell you not to share your process or your plans with others. I’m not sure that I agree with that or not. I think it depends on your own resilience at that time (which can change from day to day and minute to minute), and also your opinion of the other person.. as well as a million other things. I do think that it is important to have a support system.. and that there are always those in your life that you KNOW you can’t depend on for support. Them, you avoid like the plague.
I believe this is why support groups like AA and weight watchers and the like are so important. Humans are, at our core, social beings. We need to connect with others. We need support, whether we like to admit it or not, but we can’t always get that at home with the people who are happy in the status quo or feel more comfortable holding our pasts against us. When it’s time for a change.. sometimes we have to make bold sweeping changes. We need to turn away from getting comfort in what’s familiar and move on to a new tribe if you like. The most important thing is not letting other’s define your identity.