The Habit Blog Post

So I've been reading some books lately on habits, and instead of mentioning books and their guidance on it, I wanted to talk about what building habits or learning something new means to me. Habits and learning a new skill are synonymous in this post.

The jist of it is habits take time, at least that’s what ive been told. The golden rule for mastery is to spend 10,000 hours to master anything, and the rule on habits is 27 days to develop a habit.

So where do I find the time?

So creating sacred time for this habit is something that would be new in itself, and creating time would be the first part about building a habit (27 days). Some people find that a trigger or conditioning before it is time to learn something new and go one step further, but in all creating time for a habit is something that has to be deliberate and practiced. 

Next, after time is be the place. Where would you be learning this new habit? The bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, office? For me who lives in a 1 room apt, I don’t have that luxury of going to the kitchen table to isolate myself from distractions so maybe I might use my bed to read, journal, sketch, or get better at a video game. Maybe for someone else, sitting in their car on their phone is the only place where they can apply for jobs at the beginning until it becomes a habit for them to apply and look past the mundane process to the point where its not only natural but important for them to be doing this practice.  

Now that we’ve talked about the importance of time and setting, let’s talk more about a better mindset. Trying to make something fun, such as learning something new or building this habit could work very well for some. Exercise for example, and given its almost the new year, is not as simple as signing up for a gym membership to some. There are many other ways such as joining a spa for the sauna, or finding a tennis coach for a league, or hiring a trainer to make the habit an activity or even to look forward to and create importance. 

So in all, what will fuel this need to change yourself and learn a new habit? Some people are fueled by adrenaline in the day to day and don’t have time to start something new. I can’t drop everything and go to the chess club every wednesday to build a habit or learn something new. Some people need urgency and deadlines, and be told what to do at work and to get them to do anything. Do most people make it a habit of showing up early? I think that’s not always up to the person on what they consider early and worth it, but that habit would open up other doors such as learning to think ahead and more. 

In all, the idea of learning a new habit is to imagine yourself made of clay. Whether you consider your life the perfect glazed pottery without any need for change, or if you consider yourself malleable clay; would you even be able to learn something new or change something about yourself if it could improve your life. And by no means am I saying that change is the way, but believing that you could change and how you would go about it is a skill in and of itself. 

Finally, bringing it all together.

1. To build a habit it begins gradually, and builds upon successful steps. 

2. How often can we contribute to learning or building upon this skill? Once a month, week, or daily, or even hourly.

3. What time of the day we can learn to develop this habit.   Early in the morning and would you even be able to get up early enough to practice? Late at night, and if so would the new habit even stick after stressful days?

4. How will your state be when learning this habit? Open or closed? Relaxed or energized?

I hope you enjoyed this blog post on habits and be sure to follow my socials for updates.