1. Get in the habit of mak­ing good habits

I stare at “num­ber one” in my list of per­sonal goals. The first, last, and only goal I’ve been able to come up with so far.

Right. At least it’s a strong start.

I tap my pen against my note­book. I stare out the win­dow. I twirl the pen through my fin­gers.

I fi­nally focus again after about twenty min­utes. And only be­cause I ac­ci­den­tally sent the pen fly­ing across the room and had to go get it.

As I trudge back to the task I’ve set for my­self, I won­der. How does one go about mak­ing a habit on pur­pose?

I’ve heard peo­ple say “oh, it takes six weeks to make a habit”.

But I find the habits I make on pur­pose are the eas­i­est for me to break: going to the gym, going on a diet, writ­ing in my jour­nal, tak­ing up run­ning, keep­ing a food jour­nal, count­ing calo­ries. These are all things I have made a habit (that is, I did them con­sciously over an ex­tended pe­riod of time); and they are also all habits I have, at one point or an­other, de­lib­er­ately de­cided to break - and in some cases, sub­se­quently re­in­state

I won­der if it has some­thing to do with the fact that they’re all re­lated to per­sonal health; or the fact that, in some cases, I was going di­rectly against my own na­ture (let’s face it, I’m a walker not a run­ner).

When I think about my habits, the ones that seem to have “stuck” were gen­er­ally not started on pur­pose. I keep my fin­ger­nails squared off rather than rounded - don’t ask me why, I don’t re­mem­ber why I started doing it but I like them that way. I read, if not every­day, at least very fre­quently. If some­thing is re­ally both­er­ing me, chances are I’ll end up writ­ing about it - it’s my way of work­ing through it. I eat mainly (but not com­pletely) veg­e­tar­ian - it was cheaper in col­lege and I kind of kept with it.

I think of these habits as hav­ing sprung from per­sonal pref­er­ence or ne­ces­sity and cir­cum­stance.

My prob­lem is form­ing habits when I want to. I can spell out which habits I would like to cul­ti­vate (lis­ten­ing to my body so I don’t eat more than I need; mov­ing more dur­ing the day rather than sit­ting and read­ing for hours). But if I start think­ing too much about them I...​psych my­self out. I set my­self up for fail­ure. The only time I have suc­ceeded in a habit I specif­i­cally cul­ti­vated was when I was some­how able to ar­tic­u­late the habit and then for­get about it for about three months (while fol­low­ing it sub­con­sciously).

It’s a con­vo­luted process; and once I fig­ured out my trick, I pretty much ru­ined it for my­self for fu­ture use.

Hm…

1. Get in the habit of mak­ing good habits

1. Learn how to not over-think mak­ing a new habit so you ac­tu­ally suc­ceed.

Tap. Tap tap tap. Twirly twirl. Tap. Tap.

1. Make a list of habits. The hide the list for three months. Re­visit at that time and de­ter­mine suc­cesses and fail­ures.

Tap tap tap.

Right … here goes. I open a new doc­u­ment:

“My Habit Time Cap­sule”

(to be opened in three months)

1. Eat slowly to enjoy food and give my body to tell me “I’m done”.
2. Get out of the house at least once a day for a walk.
3. Limit al­co­hol in­take (to what? As yet to be de­ter­mined)
4. Focus on eat­ing a healthy, bal­anced diet that lim­its processed foods.
5. Ask more ques­tions re­gard­ing Celiac when din­ing out.
6. Write every­day (750­words).

As I look over my list, I won­der whether I can trick my­self into form­ing good habits.

I’ll find out in three months.