I’ve been seeing habits a bit differently lately.
There’s been a lot of literature in popular culture around the power of habits, or atomic habits, micro habits that lead to big changes. It frames habits as your friend, something to harness and leverage to create new ways of being and acting or behaving as you go through life.
But what if habits were something we needed to be more careful of? What if we shouldn’t get attached to our habits, but maintained a slight gap between an automatic, habituated response and the inputs that come in from the outside world? From a stimulus to a response, habits sit in the middle; those neurological ruts in our brain function that provide us with shortcuts to getting things done more efficiently.
Of course, when we fall in love with who we are, and our habits, and get attached to them, we then find it very difficult to respond and change. But the bigger challenge with getting attached to your habits is that it creates discomfort: when your habit is running and expecting something, and not getting it.
For example, you could have a habit that says everything I do needs to have a monetary value. Or my body needs to have coffee every morning, and that’s justifiable and normalised in society, so it’s okay. Or I’ve worked hard today, I need to relax, and I’ve earned my drink of alcohol. Everything can be a habit if we run the routine often enough.
A lot of Buddhist philosophy talks about not getting attached to your habits, holding them very loosely, and always being vigilant with a third perspective. This simply says: if you see yourself acting out on the stage with all of your patterns and behaviours and habits, always maintain the ability to stay in the audience and watch yourself at play. It’s this third person perspective on your own life that allows you to opt in to the habits that you might be running on automatic.
Then the question comes, how do I maintain this distance, or perspective, on these habits that are running? And therein lies the challenge with the human condition.
Lately I’ve been putting a sticky note on my mobile phone as I go through my workday. It simply says: do you really need to pick up your phone? And I think quite often now, with all of my habits, I’ve got this imaginary post-it note in my mind just before I reach for some chocolate, or overdo my workout in the gym and put my body at risk, or have to say that one extra thing when I really possibly should just be quiet.
Putting these virtual post-it notes on your habits, or in and around where you’re executing these habits, could be a life hack worth experimenting with.