You Are Not Your Habits

"Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of effectiveness, happiness, and trust-based relationships." - Stephen Covey

As Aristotle once said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." It is exciting to think that we can overcome and conquer ourselves by simply making deliberate, consistent action toward the direction of our dreams. And all we have to do is act as "if" we've already accomplished or achieved our objective in order for it to manifest itself as a reality. We have to develop the habit of telling ourselves that we have already achieved what we set out to achieve and our subconscious will go to work to make that "perceived" reality manifest itself.

Creating a new habit and sustaining that new habit may be new territory for you. Perhaps you'd like to work out three times a week, or read ten pages a day from an inspirational book... or simply develop the habit of doing one thing everyday you didn't have to do in order to show your spouse you love them. It can be done!

Let's take reading everyday, Monday through Sunday... you want to get to the point where even if you are in bed with your eyes shut, and you're halfway to dreamland, you'll wake yourself up and read in order to stay true to your new habit. If reading isn't something you are particularly fond of or you find difficult, start with one page a day, then move to two when you're ready etc. You can continually increase the number of pages you allot for this activity until you are consistently hitting your initial goal; the trick is to strive for consistency rather than performance. If you are too tired to read one night I suggest reading one sentence before you nod off; for the sheer fact that you have maintained the habit one more day; again consistency over performance. It's all about stringing those victories (yes, reading one page a day is a victory!) together in order to achieve your goal... after all, every thousand mile journey started with a single step.

In John Assaraf's The Answer, he tells us how NASA designed an experiment to test the "...physiological and psychological impact of spatial disorientation..." on the human body. The astronauts were given a pair of convex goggles that "...flipped their field of vision 180 degrees." Meaning the world as they saw it was completely upside down. Per Assaraf's explanation, "The test subjects wore these glasses twenty-four hours a day, even while asleep." So what happened?

Fascinatingly enough, after twenty-six days "...something amazing happened to one astronaut: His world turned right-side up again." He was still wearing the goggles but now he was able to see everything the way it was meant to be seen--right-side up. His brain rewired itself in order to adapt! Within the next few days all of the astronauts reported the same result. So after twenty-six to thirty days of this new input the mind adjusted in a radical way! In subsequent studies it was determined that if the goggles were removed during the test period the "neural adaptation would not occur." Their conclusion was that it takes "...about twenty-five to thirty days of uninterrupted, consistent input of new perpetual (conscious) information for the nonconscious brain to accept that it had to adjust to this new information and regard it as normal."

So what does this mean for you? Anyone can do this! Anyone can develop the ability to have, do, or be anything they desire. You simply have to believe it and repeat that belief to yourself day in and day out. The development of new success habits or disciplines is not reserved for any one class, race, or gender. We all have the opportunity to take advantage of this gift that lies within us. In order to develop a new habit of success, therefore, you must simply be consistent in your approach. The mastery of this phenomenon will take you anywhere you wish to go in life.

Remember, you are not your habits! Change is upon you! Start today.

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