Habits are things we do continually, over and over again, simply because to not do them, would make us uncomfortable. It might be physical or mental. To rid these uncomfortable feelings we carry out our habit. Take for example the (relatively) safe and good habit or brushing one’s teeth.
If one has done so consistently everyday, without fail, one would get into the habit of teeth brushing. To not brush would often lead to guilty feelings; we might feel that our mouth is simply unclean, or any other reason we might come out with, so that we will be forced back to brush.
How about ‘bad’ habits? Smoking? Alcohol? perhaps even shoplifting or other socially-frowned upon activities? What about them?
The thing about these activities is that though we know that they are not good in the eyes of many people, they ease our tension, the uncomfortable feeling that builds up from not having the habit done; we do not really realise that it is the habit itself that is creating that feeling.
Another important thing is that we often have this feeling/mentality of “I can quit anytime I want”. Of course, this is often to the contrary. We often cannot quit anytime we want. It may seem easy, but when it comes down to quiting, it’s harder than we thought.
When we fail to quit, especially when we so expected to, we sort of give up even trying to break it, making the habit even more difficult to break; and it doesn’t help that almost all of us have a habit of accumulating bad habits!What can we do then? Well, we can harness the power of habits.
Much ado about habits
If habits are so difficult to break, why not create more good habits? If we have 5 bad habits, and 3 good habits, we have a “-2” on the habits score. If we accumulate more good habits, we can have an infinite amount of good habits, and 5 bad habits, depending on whether you take the effort to break the bad ones, of course (and I assume you didn’t). This would lead to a “infinity-5” habit score!
So accumulate good habits, and don’t bother so much about your bad ones. Just let them be, and they may go away, or they may not; but remember, out of sight, out of mind. Do not think about your bad habits and they will slowly creep out of your life and be taken over by the good ones you have decided to bring into your life.
So what good habit are you going to sow today?
Donn, fragments 
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