The Good, the Bad and the Unconscious
We are all creatures of habit, but what is a habit? A habit is a behaviour that has been repeated several times over a period of time and has become more or less an automatic action. It is done without purposeful thinking or sense of awareness. Habits such as brushing our teeth, getting dressed or tying shoelaces, we all do them on a daily basis that we don’t even think about them. However there are different types of habits to watch out for. Below we have put them into categories:
Creatures of Habits
Unconscious habits: habits helps us through our day. When we are doing something habitual we are not invested on the task as we would be while doing non habitual activities. Unconscious habits are the kinds we mentioned above and more such as holding our cutlery, drinking water, eating and so on. Let’s take Steve Jobs as an example. I am certain we all remember him dressed with a black turtleneck and blue jeans. Why is that? This is the kind of unconscious behaviour. We don’t have to think about it, we just do it. This gives our mind the opportunity to focus on other things such as problem solving, tackling challenges, situations and so on. We don’t have to waist brainpower on something that is usually done automatically. Regardless of a habit being unconscious, it can be good but also bad.
Bad habits: whether we like it or not, bad habits are bad for us. They can affect us mentally, physically emotionally and socially in some cases. These habits can be smoking/drugs, drinking, consumption of unhealthy foods, overspending money, and the biggest which we all know is procrastination. Why put off something for tomorrow when you can do it today? See it as being one step closer to your target. However bad these habits are, we do enjoy them as they bring us a sort of pleasure, but it’s a pattern that needs to be broken.
Good habits: one of the most important things we need to have in mind is that human beings are creatures of habits. Therefore we need to be careful as to what becomes a habit because once it is ingrained it is very difficult to get rid of it. Think of riding a bike, we all learnt to ride when we were younger. Fast forward 30 years and haven’t ridden since, as soon as you get back on it, it’s like you never stopped. This is to show that just because you learnt or did something many years ago and stopped it, does not mean you forget how to do it. The same logic follows for habits, no matter how many years go by the memory cell is still there.
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