First, We Make Our HABITS, Then Our HABITS Make Us!

"The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half." -Fedor Dostoevsky

Studies have shown that 45 percent of what we do everyday is habitual - that is, performed almost without thinking in the same location, or at the same time each day, usually because of subtle cues. Or as Frank Clark put it "A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them."

I've been thinking about HABITS this week as we try to get our students programmed to do certain things on autopilot (like read their scriptures daily and come to class on time). It is so interesting to think about how similarly we construct both a good habit and conversely a bad habit.

To develop a good habit the psychology suggests that exercising self control in any area of your life may help you regulate in other areas too. There was a Posture Experiment (The Baumeister study) where college students were asked to work on their posture over a two week period - improving it whenever possible. Students who worked on posture actually improved their self-control in other areas too. Baumeister and his colleagues show that self-regulation can act like a muscle! A muscle that can be trained to get stronger... or if weak, becomes easily fatigued.

Self-regulation becomes our personality process to exert control over our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Under this theory one of the best ways to create good habits in any area would be to structure something simple into our life that doesn't turn everything upside down but creates enough structure that we will see change and that change will create further change, etc. Jim Ryun said that "Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."

So it all sounds well and good but the biggest frustration I have regarding habits is exactly what Somerset Maughan describes: "The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones." Gosh, darn....wouldn't it be great if it were just the other way around!