Happy new year! It's been a week into 2024 but I'm still celebrating.
I'm not only celebrating the birth of a new season, but also the breaking of old habits such as codependency; which manifested as an unhealthy allegiance to people who have repeatedly hurt, abandoned, betrayed or disrespected me, with no remorse. And the old habit of rationalizing my doing what's in their interest at the expense of my self-respect and mental health. No matter how hurt or betrayed I felt, I had the habit of always eventually going back to engaging with them like nothing ever happened to uphold the illusion of peace and harmony. I had a fear of confrontations, a fear of abandoned and a talent for disassociating among other things, but I have grown so much since then.
We have grown together actually.
Let's take a moment to celebrate that.
I walk about six kilometers three mornings each week. I find it relaxing and refreshing, so much so that I usually zone out. I don’t think about what my body is doing and my mind usually wanders elsewhere. Recently, I needed to take an overseas client call during my usual morning run time.
“No biggie,” I thought.
“I can walk in the evening instead.”
However, the time shift created some peculiar behaviors that evening. I left the house for my walk at dusk and as I was about to pass my neighbor taking out her trash, she made eye contact and smiled. I politely saluted her with “Good morning!” and then caught my mistake: “I mean, good evening! Sorry!” I corrected myself, realizing I was about ten hours off. She furrowed her brow and cracked a nervous smile. Slightly embarrassed, I noted how my mind had been oblivious to the time of day. I scolded myself in my mind and promised not to do it again, but within a few minutes I passed another neighbor running and again—as if possessed—I blurted out, “Good morning!”
What was going on? Back home, during my normal postwalk shower, my mind began to wander again as it often does when I bathe. My brain’s autopilot switch turned on and I proceeded with my daily routine, unaware of my actions. It wasn’t until I was reaching for the foundation to start doing my makeup, that I realized that my body thought it was morning.
The evening version of my morning walk had triggered a behavioral script that instructed my body to carry out my usual walk-related activities—all without mindful awareness. Such is the nature of ingrained habits—behaviors done with little or no conscious thought—which, by some estimates, guide nearly half of our daily actions. Habits are one of the ways the brain learns complex behaviors.
Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits. How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits. How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits. What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray. So when I took a huge L a couple of years ago that sent me right to rock bottom, it was definitely a result of my old habits of people pleasing, codependency, overworking, and stress eating, just to name a few.
Bad habits interrupt your life and prevent you from accomplishing your goals. They jeopardize your health — both mentally, and physically. And they waste your time and energy. So why do we still do them?
Most of the time, bad habits are simply a way of dealing with stress, trauma and boredom. Everything from biting your nails to overspending on a shopping spree to drinking every weekend to wasting time on the internet to going back to a toxic friendships, romantic partners or family members can be a simple response to stress, trauma and boredom.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can teach yourself new and healthy ways to deal with stress, trauma and boredom, which you can then substitute in place of your bad habits. Mostly, it all comes down to finding purpose, as well as knowing and avoid the people, places and things that trigger you. I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but keep reading and I’ll share some more bad habits that need to be broken.
1. SELF-SABOTAGE
You try to do something good for yourself or for someone else and somehow manage to turn the whole thing against yourself. You keep doing the very things you didn’t want to do or don’t approve of, and you can’t seem to figure out how you do that. It’s a perfect system for self-hate because:
1) You’re operating out of an ideal.
2) You don’t live up to your ideal.
3) You can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong.
2. TAKING BLAME BUT NOT CREDIT
If something goes well, it’s a gift from God. If it goes badly, it’s all your fault. And even if you do take a little credit for something, you can always avoid feeling good about it by finding what could have been done better.
3. ALWAYS RUNNING LATE
Maybe you are a people pleaser and an overdoer, packing too much in. Or maybe, deep down, you may think your time is more important than others' time (or at least it comes across that way to the people you always keep waiting). Either way, you lack some essential time-management skills.
4. BEING SECRETIVE
You don’t let other people know what’s going on inside you so that you can be in there beating yourself with it.
5. HOLDING GRUDGES
You review old hurts and injustices rather than being present to yourself now.
6. NOT BEING ABLE TO RECEIVE
Gifts, compliments, help, favors, praise, etc. are things you have difficulty allowing yourself to have. Go to therapy. And start journaling.
7. TRYING TO BE DIFFERENT
Just being who you are, your “plain old self,” isn’t enough. You feel you have to maintain an image.
8. ATTEMPTING TO BE PERFECT
This one speaks for itself.
9. BEING ACCIDENT PRONE
Your attention is so often focused on some other time, person or thing that you injure yourself in the present. You don’t feel you deserve your attention. Others are more important.
10. CONTINUING TO PUT YOURSELF IN ABUSIVE SITUATIONS
Even if you realize that you have this pattern, your fear and self-hate are too strong to let you break out of it. Seek professional help.
11. MAINTAINING AN UNCOMFORTABLE PHYSICAL POSITION
You hold your shoulders in a way that creates pain. You clench your teeth. You “sit small” on the bus so as not to intrude into anyone else’s space. You continue to sit in an uncomfortable chair at work because you don’t want to make waves.
12. MAINTAINING AN UNCOMFORTABLE MENTAL POSITION
Clinging to “shoulds”: “It’s not right to be happy when there is so much suffering in the world.” “People should say please and thank you.” “Children deserve to have two parents.”
13. PROCRASTINATING
Recognize that when you procrastinate, others may think you don't care about getting that task done—and that's worse than completing something less than perfectly. A good trick to get you started is holding yourself accountable and keep a productivity Journal.
14. SLOUCHING
You may have slouched when growing up because you were self-conscious or taller than others or developed breasts before your peers, and the posture stuck. Or you might just be tired and stressed (understandable).
Do 10 shoulder rotations forward and 10 rotations back to bring awareness to your posture and remind you to stand and sit tall. And do regular physical activity really helps combat the mental and physical fatigue that can contribute to slouching.
15. GOSSIPING
You try to take the focus off your own flaws by exposing those of others. A person who gossips by habit doesn't truly believe they are good enough on their own. Gossiping can also feel really good in the moment—to vent about someone or something, to bond with friends or coworkers, to make yourself feel better.
Instead become exceptionally attuned to what you choose to talk about. Use your conversations to share your experiences, such as discovering a new restaurant or your latest read. Brush up on current events, music, TV shows, or sports to give you something else to discuss besides other people. If the topic moves toward talking about other people, make an effort to say only nice things about them (or neutral, if you can't think of anything).
Plus, you never know who could be in earshot of your conversation. If you are complaining about a coworker, be aware that her best friend might be the woman directly behind you on the train.
Gossiping also makes you seem untrustworthy. You may even lose friends and professional contacts when people realize you are a gossip.
BODY SHAMING
Please stop perceiving God's work as a project gone bad. You are not a white elephant either. If God wanted you to be taller, lighter or less creative, He would have made you that way.
We have to take time to examine the habits and routines that have made failure or unhappiness our friend, because we hold the key to improving our lives.
What other habit would you add on this list?
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