Throughout a day, we make a lot of choices, and each of these decision feels like a well-throughout decision.
However, in reality, they are not. They are just our habits, and our brain constantly uses them to save effort.
Habits are very interesting; they can happen naturally or can be orchestrated by you or someone else. The majority of our habits don’t require our permission.Our habits play a big part in our life more than we realize.
For example, if you are used to drinking coffee just after waking up. You would do that irrespective of you brushing your teeth or not. This is a clear example of how habit has more influence on you than even common sense.
1. How does your habit affect you?
Habits build our character: Character is nothing but a sum of all your habits and If you have good habits like waking up early, cleaning your room daily, working out, etc.
If these good habits outweigh and outnumber your bad habits, your character is much better build than most people.
2. Habits can make or break your life :
Our entire day is filled with habits driven decisions. So, if you have a lot of good habits, you will make a good decision for yourself and vice versa.
Imagine, you have a test or some important work the next day, and you need to prepare for it. A good habit would be to prepare early and chill for the rest of the day.
But if you procrastinate, you are vulnerable to unforeseen hurdles, which usually lies in an important task.
3. Habit trigger happiness :
One of the reasons why we engage in habits is happiness. The reason why we go to the gym daily or watch a certain show is that they bring happiness to ourselves.
We keep doing it because we want to feel happy. While fear also drives habit in many cases, such as lying to your partner because we believe telling them the truth will drive them away.
4. Are we slave to our habits?
As saw in the above example, clearly, we live by our habit. In a way, we are a slave to our habits. However, we have a special power, and that is our brain.
Habits are never rooted permanently in our minds. We can change or shape them according to our needs. We just need to figure out a way to change them.
5. How to modify your habits?
To change your habit, you need to decide to change it. That is to have afirm belief that you will modify that thing.
This would require you consciously accept the hard work and the reward that is driving the change.
Let’s imagine you want to wake up early and workout at home. Now, if you are a late night sleeper, the change won’t be easy at all. And when the alarm hit at 6 in the morning, your brain needs to be strong enough to resist the sleep; and no clock can wake you up.
Hence, Self-control and self-consciousness are very important to mentally prepare yourself for the change.
For the first few times, it would be very difficult to change your habits. But with time, it would become easier, and this new activity would become a habit in itself, which you wouldn’t need any consciousness.
6. How do habits affect your unconscious?
The first and obvious situation is the things you do while sleepwalking. None of your senses are at full work; still, your muscle memory is able to let you walk properly.
Religion has been the biggest beneficiaries of unconscious habits. You can’t scare people into believing your religion. At some point in time, they will revolt.
However, If you teach them the habit of faith. This can be as simple as praying for a second while passing a church, mosque, or temple will turn into a habit.
In your time of need, you will look for help from anywhere. As human beings, we look for a pattern and if the help arrives with little connection to religion.
Our faith will grow tremendously, and slowly over time, this faith becomes even stronger than we realize.
Conclusion:
Habits have a special power, which helps to control us. However, if we have the control and willpower, we shape them in any form we like for our benefit.