I am up and I am writing as I do every day. I also am still battling some stomach bug. I feel well-rested and much better than yesterday but it would be easy to blow off my early morning routine. Except that now it is habit. It is a pretty strong habit, thankfully.
It is hard to describe how important habits are in our lives. I only relatively recently discovered their power and consciously set about to change mine. Once I realized that so much of human behavior is habit, I no longer wanted the vast majority of mine to be driven by conscious or more likely unconscious choices I made years and years ago. So I decided to change mine. It was small and slow at first. Mostly just becoming more aware of the habits I already had and identifying those I wanted to change. I added a few things and I was able to build on those. I also looked for a lynchpin habit that was really the key to changing a host of other habits.
A lynchpin habit is one that a whole group of other habits rests upon or tag along with. Breaking that one habit leads to major gains in breaking the habits that tend to group with that. For me, sleeping late was a key factor. When I slept late I had to rush to get to work and be focused. I couldn’t even consider working out first thing so I had to make sure that I had energy and drive to do so at the end of the day. For years I paid a personal trainer and that worked to get me to the gym and his coaching made sure I worked out and worked out hard, whether or not I had energy at the ready. When I slept late, I had little time, energy or desire to think about or do anything other than what was on my must-do list. Most often, as I have discussed, about 90 percent of my must-do was driven by outside influences, not by my conscious decision to move me toward my destiny. I never really even had time, energy or desire to look into what it is that I wanted.
I was in the habit of working (a lot), working out, traveling (usually for work) and sleeping. Perhaps you can relate. I still do every one of those things, better than I did before, in fact. But now, my time and big goals are on my radar at all times. Focusing on them and how everything else fits in has become habit. I love that I get to help others make this happen in their own lives, for that is my calling.
