“While ignoring your bad habits may help you feel good initially, that avoidance will eventually catch up to you. When you don’t address the unproductive and unhealthy things you’re doing alongside your good habits, you’ll stagnate.” Amy Morin
We all have habits, good and bad. Why are guilty pleasures, bad habits, so appealing? Intellectually we know that these bad habits will eventually not have a favorable end. You might eat the whole pizza at 10:00 at night, or impulsively make purchases, or drink one too many drinks too often, or you might make promises that you know you can’t keep. You might even be that procrastinator and leave everything to change. All while knowing, in the back of your mind, that you should correct your behavior.
Good and healthy habits prove more challenging to maintain for an extended amount of time, although it can be done. How good do you feel after a good night’s sleep, have a healthy meal, or a good workout? Staying healthy and practicing positive rituals are habits with amazing benefits.
We are blessed with the strength to do and be our best; the physical strength required of the body to perform a particular task, the mental power of the mind to learn a new skill or take on a new responsibility, and the emotional advantage of heart to surmount a difficult challenge. All while we have the courage to move onward in a proactive way.
Each of these strengths is enhanced as we add spiritual strength to experience and trust God for guidance, confidence, and comfort to be effective. Our individual and collective responsibility can be to take this time as an opportunity for the development of self, getting needed rest, eating well, and expanding our knowledge by reading, watching documentaries, taking an online class, and looking out for our loved ones and neighbors.
We must keep in mind that each of us have degrees of both inner and outer strength to accomplish, achieve and/or overcome anything we set our mind and heart to, with grit, determination, and faith in humanity.
We have choices to heighten our bad habits, and we have opportunities to enhance our good practices. Choosing good habits forces us to weed out the bad ones.
Penned by Lewis Howes: “The key to forming good habits is to make them part of your ‘rituals.’ I have a morning ritual, afternoon ritual, and Sunday ritual. It’s one way to bundle good habits into regular times that you set aside to prepare yourself for the life you want. Rituals help you form habits — hopefully, they are the good ones.”
