HABITS IN TIME, BECOME AUTOMATIC

by Cheryl Bishop

Bad habits are a distraction, they are often habit’s that do not serve you or me to become our best.
Many people have a variety of bad habits like spending more money than they earn, putting things off (procrastinating), drinking too much, lying, gossiping, or scrolling through social media. These habits impact your productivity and in the long run, it will affect your chances of being successful in life. To be successful you must get rid of the bad habits that are harming your success. Your habit(s) that you have are your decision… will it take effort to change a habit? Yes. Is it easy? Not for everyone. However is it doable for everyone… YES! I constantly have to remind myself when I get into the old habit.

Some people love to get up early while some people like to sleep in. This is a habit that starts off your day. We become so used to our daily routine (habit), we hardly notice that we are impacting our lives via these habits. Every morning for me, I have created a routine of being grateful for the blessing that will happen today, for the blessings that happened yesterday and for all the future blessings. This starts my day off to a great start. I used to be one of those that would sleep in.

When you decide you want to have a successful life, then it reflects on everything you do and everything you do not do. Your every habit shows your commitment to success. So, before you decide to change your habits to be successful, just find out how your habits affect your success in life.

Your habits can be a distraction and time waster.
Whatever habits you have, they need a certain time period to operate in your life. For example, if you have a habit of watching television or something else that takes your time away then it becomes your habit. Therefore, your habit(s) good or bad effect your time and in long-term your success. Just think about it. Two hours a day of television is 14 hours in a week, which is 56 hours gone in a month to television. Maybe ask yourself, what you could do with more time on your hands? Let’s say you cut television time in half; you would then gain 28 extra hours in a month to work on your success.

Habits are the result of your decisions.
Whatever habits you pick is a decision you take, so when you decide to pick a good habit, then think of it as your steps towards your goals. If you decide to pick the habit of reading inspiration personal growth books, then it impacts your life in a good way. 

Developing good habits is in your hands.
It is important to remember that developing good habits is in your hands. When you develop good habits and productive habits you improve the chances to be successful in life. 

I would like to encourage you to take a serious look at what good habits and what bad habits you have. Then make the decision (which is your choice) to enhance your habits. Take the chance that a new or enhanced habit will assist you to become a better you. Make the necessary changes because one thing I know for sure is … Your Birthright IS to BE Successful!

HABIT OR COPING STRATEGY?

by Anarah Sharif

But sometimes, people engage in habits to NOT feel what’s underneath i.e. uncertainty, anxiety, sadness, anger or whatever it is they’re avoiding in their carefully ordered world. These habits then keep them in the safe zone of ‘doing’ a good life.
 
But inevitably in life, something happens such as a health scare, or a challenge with child or a partner, and either we are unable to stay in our habits, or engaging in those same habits does NOT help in the way it once did. 

When life gets disordered or disrupted, when everything underneath that’s been so carefully engineered to stay submerged, starts to come to the surface, that’s often when my work with my clients begins. Often the biggest personal breakthroughs come when we are taken out of the comfort of our habitual ways of being (or doing).

So have your habits and enjoy them. And if you don’t enjoy your habits, we can do some subconscious re-patterning work to create different habits. 

And when you’re ready to look a little bit deeper about what is driving your conditioned ways of thinking, what is driving you, “what is behind the curtain”, then we can do a session or a series of sessions to get beyond habits.

In this process, we move from automatic ways of being into a world of self Mastery. Here we can have freedom and experience a deep sense of connection and intimacy. We are able to look into the mirror and to like, enjoy, smile, and even to fall in love with the reflection.
 

ONE STEP BACK

by Kelly Mabel

As a young girl, I hadn’t learned what love was, that place where we can be still and present and in our own skin with another, without discomfort or fear in some way.  I had a tumultuous upbringing with divorce and long haul moves that separated my family yet more importantly myself. 

I literally couldn’t deal with my feelings as an 11-year-old and very quickly learned how to numb out the pain with food. So innocently was the way in which my thinking said every feeling, needed comfort, and at 11, food was so accessible and always felt good so there you have the habit.  This pattern was being formed which would take me out of my life for a better part of 25 years and I was totally blind to it.  

If I knew then, what I know now about thought, how my behaviours are born in thought, my patterns are created by me and I am the one choosing what goggles to wear, to see the world.  The thought of being lost, separated, alone, unloved, ugly, bad, etc. would have never taken hold of me.

These thoughts grow neuro pathways in the brain like an old favorite hiking trail. The more we walk them, the more the path becomes clear and feels easier than trotting out a new trail. This is how habits form themselves. 

Many of mine were born out of parental guidance, social media, interpersonal drama, and distractions. Similar to wash your hands before dinner, take off your hat at the table, you had better bring something for the hostess, your fat, your stupid... you get my drift.

Most of these behaviours were birthed in me by someone else’s standard and way of being or direct criticism that came past my peripheral and I decide to stick it to myself like it was mine.  Don’t get me wrong here, a lot of the behaviours I have, I am very grateful for yet some of them, I could have rid myself sooner and created what was true for me, better thinking in the moment.  As I learn more about people and relationships to self, I see sooner the demise of my ways.  This awareness is all I ever needed to create a new path, I call it “seeing” or “Pause” in the one step back. 

If you can take a moment, by stepping back and observe yourself in the behaviour, it release’s it’s holding on you in the moment and this creates space for fresh thought to come in. Try it out, I kid you not. If one step back could help with anger, love, commitment, decisions, parenting then why not. This position is often called witness or observer, a place where you can be present and see more than you could whilst you were in it.  There is a good feeling that arises in this place, it’s called stillness, I can see myself from this place, give it some focus with a fresh breath. It clears the snow globe of emotional thoughts to give rise for clarity. 

This small step back creates a new path that ripples more love to me and others in that one moment than I could ever imagine.  Who knew it would be so easy, yet take a lifetime to learn?

So, here is to take “one step back”!
 

KEYSTONE HABITS

by David Fyfe

Our brains are amazing biological super computers that are constantly trying to process the almost infinite amount of information coming in through our five senses. To stop us from being in a constant state of overwhelm, patterns of stimulus that move us towards a reward are stored deep in our brains (basal ganglia) in the form of a habit. Neither good or bad, a habit is just the quickest path to the reward we are seeking, thus utilizing minimal mental bandwidth so we can focus on what is in front of us and not die, lucky for us. 

Our brain's ability to simplify complex information into unconscious patterns keeps us alive and well. At the same time, this reward-seeking machine is having us reaching for chocolate cake and turning on Netflix instead of the healthy food and exercise that we need to thrive. This is where the magic pull of keystone habits can help inform our subconscious programming and influence small changes with much less effort.

Keystone habits can take many forms, some examples are; yoga, mediation, walking, journaling, reading, running, healthy food, routines, daily goals, to name a few, for me it turns out one of my keystone habit changes was taking up running as a sport.

Running gave me many ways to access the feeling good “rewards” my unconscious mind was searching for. Here are some positive byproducts of running that helped override some bad behaviors and lock in this new habit for me:

• Like-minded connection from my running group folks
• Boosted my self-esteem by setting and achieving goals
• Promoted positive body chemistry (feel-good hormones)
• Got my competitive juices flowing by signing up for various races
• Spend more time running and connecting with my daughter
• More time in nature, giving me a sense of peace and universal connection

Here are some of the new habits that emerged from taking up running:

• Started waking up earlier in the morning to train
• Increased by daily water intake significantly
• Improved my diet with a focus on healthy whole foods
• Started going to the gym to achieve more balanced strength
• Spend more of my leisure time in active pursuits

“Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character” – Stephen Covey

By changing a key habit, in my case running, I was able to have many small wins that added up exponential positive change informing many other aspects of my life. With each small behavior change I opened the door of my subconscious a crack to invite in another healthy behavior thus building habit change momentum.

New habits formed from the original keystone become keystone habits in their own right and influence even more positive change. This creates a sub-conscious ripple effect of healthy habits that can touch every area of your life.

Old habits never go away, but the new healthy ones will crowd out the old and take over producing radical positive change that will last a lifetime.

Small wins are the fuel of transformational change. With this in mind what new keystone habit are you willing to take on? We can help.

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