As a human, we tend to create things in our mind, which we believe to be true.
For example, a person might believe he is an avid reader because he read a book within a week. However, he read once a year. Such kinds of images often distort the actual reality of life. People end up believing things they shouldn’t, and it harms them.
For example, you take yoga classes every week. After a few weeks, you start to practice even on off days.
You create a mental image of yourself as a yoga person. So, even when you miss your classes, you are ok with it as you would practice later by yourself.
However, missing classes by experts are never ok. That is why you should attach an anchor of reality to keep you grounded.
The best anchor is tracking your habits. If you have hard evidence of the things, you do in a day. You can’t deny them after seeing evidence every day. It will remind you what you are doing in a day and what you should do more to remain close to your mental image.
How to track your habits?
The easiest and simplest way is to write everything down in a diary. Start with filling your whole days’ time slot what you did in the morning, afternoon or evening.
If you are too lazy to write this down, then do it on an app which reminds you each day. Moreover, you can add alarms in the app which will keep on buzzing unless you fill in the day’s entry.
If you want to track specific habits such as working out, yoga or anything else. Just maintain a diary where you sketch a small box or anything else, for each session you put in.
This way, you have an incentive for working out and filling the day. This is a great way to shoot two birds in one shot. Or, you could ask someone else to write down the data and review it each week. This might also work for many people.
What are the benefits of tracking your habits?
1. Subconscious changes in your habits :
As you start to track your habits, you will notice you aren’t the person you think you are. You waste a lot of time, don’t dedicate enough towards the goal, etc.
After a week or two, when there is no escaping this truth. Your mind would subconsciously try to remind you and influence you about it.
For example, if you are playing a video game for far too long, your mind would remind you about it. Even make you feel guilty. The next step in this event is to leave your video game for something better.
2. Replace bad habits :
Now that you started to recognize different ways in which you waste your time. You can see the problem in front of you.
Now, some of us might ignore them, but if you have a mindset to improve yourself. You can replace these bad habits with something better, which doesn’t waste your time.
You can also replace these bad habits with joy fillers. For example, if you have a busy schedule but twice or thrice a day, you blatantly waste your time.
You can this time to call old friends, family, catch up or anything else which keeps your mood fresh and doesn’t seem like a waste. Not everything needs to be work-related.
3. Build confidence :
Once, you start to see changes in your habits and behavior. It will have the opposite effect from before. You will more confident, ready to work, and even enjoying this hard work.
Confidence goes a long way in life; it affects your personality, your energy, and most importantly, other people can see it. So, now your perspective in their eyes has changed just because of a small change in your habits.
Conclusion :
Our life is made up of small and big habits. Hence, it is important to track them to see what your life is. What changes it needs to transform into a more productive and entertaining life.
This might seem trivial and tough to practice. But with time, it would become a habit, and then the sky is the limit for you.