Three Steps to Greatness: Using Your Habits to Influence Your Goals
by Laura Stack
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2021 Issue 2 |
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irst, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit is persistence in practice.” — Octavia Butler, American author and MacArthur Fellow. As complex as people are, when it comes down to it, you might consider us intelligent meat machines fueled by chemical reactions and guided, in large part, by programs we call habits. These boil down to repeated, automated actions – something like those of a robot on an auto assembly line, though not as stringent, and not always occurring in the same order. One of my colleagues almost always makes a large cup of coffee first thing each morning, eats a bagel and gets to work. After years of doing it daily, he doesn’t have to think about the process of coffee-making, nor does he have to remind himself to refill the water reservoir or add new pods to the holder when they run low. He does so without much thought. Some habits, like this one, we self-program over time. Others we have programmed into us by parents, teachers,
mentors, employers or pastors. But humans are more than just habit-based robots; we have free will. We can decide to change our programming to accomplish astonishing things. Constructive habits are pure gold when they become routine, as they help us achieve our objectives more quickly, with less heavy thinking. This can make a huge difference. However, doing the same thing the same way every day without deviation from the status quo at the appropriate times, in the appropriate ways, won’t accomplish anything new. So, when the need drives you, you can program yourself with new habits to achieve new goals. Start with these steps: 1. Clear out the deadwood. Kill off any habit failing to lead you toward your goal. For example: even spending a few minutes on Facebook or taking excessive personal breaks at work steals valuable time. So put stakes in the hearts of slacker habits and remove
