Personal Habits - Make Your Habits Work For You

Personal habits are the things that make us and break us. They help define us as individuals. As people say, we are what we repeatedly do. We have our own way of tackling issues, tackling challenges, tackling life. We have our own way of living our life and our habits have their place in helping us along.

We all have our own persoanl habits; some are long standing, while others are more recently acquired. Some are useful, some are habitual, some we really enjoy, and some are things we would rather not do. Some are annoying both for us and others. Some habits work in our favour, while others can help defeat us unless we are careful.

Different habits

What is the meaning of the habits we have? What can we say about the habits we have and use in life? Habits can

• Be addictive
• Be customs we have got used to
• Affect our demeanor
• Alter our disposition
• Come in many guises
• Be mannerisms we have developed over time
• Form a pattern - either useful, productive or detrimental
• Be part of practice that can create the platform for success and accomplishment
• Be performed just by rote rather than for meaning or purpose
• Form part of a rut we can find yourself in
• Be routine and we can benefit from their familiarity
• Be second nature to us when frequently used
• Be tendencies to act in a particular way
• Be frequently used, or their usage can be irregular in nature
• Be a vice or ways of handling situations
• (also relate to our attire or apparel, costume or dress, garb or garment, gown or suit)

So habits, personal habits, can take on many forms, some useful but others less so.

Habits for success

We have many personal habits. We can replace one habit for another to try to accomplish more. But we can mostly agree that good personal habits help us through life. Help us to accomplish more. But we have to choose and repeat our habits carefully for best affect.

What makes them into a personal habit?

What is it that makes something we do a habit? Is it anything we can use in our life to assist us? Or is it a bit more? Something we

• grow accustomed to
• that we commonly use
• that we are familiar with and therefore comfortable with
• find natural and easy to do
• regularly use in a particular situation
• persist with because of past successes

Some examples then . . .?

What are good personal habits to get into using and using on a regular basis? What can help move our lives along?

• Let life be a good teacher - watch, listen and learn
• If you are doing something utilize the momentum you generate and the corresponding energy to forge ahead with your endeavors
• Utilize your time for best advantage - we cannot get it back
• Think about what you are doing and assess the outcomes before acting
• Be positive in life, talk positive, think positive
• Equally remove the negative from our life
• Don't just focus on yourself, contribute to life and others
• Stay motivated and help to motivate others
• Utilize our talents and strengths
• Develop our weaknesses
• Don't fear fear itself
• Live in the present, don't dwell on the past, look with hope to the future

How do we make something a habit?

How do we get into a habit? How to do something, then repeat it, find it useful, then repeat it again - and make it habit?

• It has to be genuinely useful to us
• It has to be something we can do, or learn to do, or can improve on with practice
• It has to be something we need to repeat - however infrequently

And to create a habit out of it? Or to change a habit or habits?

What makes something a habit?

• Most people say it takes about 3-4 weeks to make an action a habit
• Something does not become a habit without effort
• An action needs to be repeated to become habitual
• If we can make it something we can do without thinking we are well along the road to creating a habit
• See the benefits of our action and these must outweigh the effort
• Be positive, think positive, start to enjoy the activity
• Let time go by and if the action follows we can then stick at it or with it
• Repeat the repeating and our habit is formed

(Once you 'make' a habit then you have to put in another effort to undo it or stop it.)

To sum up . . .

So habits can be really useful. We grow familiar with them. We use them regularly. (We can use them infrequently.) They become part of us. We keep using them because of the affects they have and the uses we put them to. They become part of our life. We think nothing about them, but they perform such a purpose.

Our habits are a part of us. Use them well and they will serve you well and really contribute something to your life. Use them wisely and achieve more in life.