How It Starts
We get up in the morning and look for the coffee pot. We find that we forgot to set it up the night before. We are running late for work, with no time for breakfast, either. Suddenly, you are looking at a difficult day!
Good habits are like routines that can make your life run smoother. Habits are routines you repeat on purpose until they are automatic in nature. You begin to feel that something is missing when you fail to complete the routine.
It is the realization that if you set the coffee pot up at night and make sure you have what you need for breakfast and set the alarm to give you enough time to do your morning routine, your day will go much better.
Why Worry about Habits?
Often, we fall into habits because they help us manage our basic needs. That would include providing our meals to avoid hunger, paying our bills to avoid past due calls, filing our taxes to avoid the IRS, and taking a shower to not offend others when we go to work.
Those are habits to avoid discomfort. What about habits that can improve our welfare and outlook for our future financial stability? Those may be habits worth making.
Protect Your Welfare
There are good habits and bad habits. Remember, habits are repeated actions, routines done without much thought. You still have a choice if you want to replace a habit.
Bad habits, like smoking and drinking alcohol, can be stopped. However, when chemicals are involved, the change can be difficult. The best plan is to replace the bad habits with good habits.
My point is not to ask you to stop smoking or drinking alcohol. However, I do want you to evaluate what those habits are doing to your health and your prospects.
Do What Works—Consciously
Regardless of what habits you have allowed yourself to develop unconsciously, you must consider what good habits you can develop consciously to help your future endeavors.
Habits can be formed consciously, especially if they are meant to replace old habits formed unconsciously. Yes, a lot of conscious effort is involved. That is why you need a good reason to make the change, to form a new habit.
There are plenty of good reasons to work on new, good habits. Those reasons may include what you consider as your goals, such as earning a better income, becoming stronger physically, and becoming debt free. There are many other possibilities, I know. But I will start with these.
First, to earn a better income, reading and study (good habits) may have alerted you to the need for adding new skills and taking some formal classes. Thus, making reading and study a habit could benefit you financially by helping you find better-paying jobs.
Second, your conscious effort to go to a gym or get out to walk every day can become a habit that yields enough benefit to help you look forward to doing it and will improve your health.
Third, with a goal to become debt-free, your awareness of spending versus your income will drive you to a more consistent saving mindset. Spend less to pay off more debt. A worthy goal becomes a worthy habit!
Basis for Better Decisions
When we find ourselves making excuses for the results we experience, we should consider whether it was our actions or inactions that produced the results.
Many of our disappointments, our missed opportunities, come because we were not prepared to act on them.
Good habits can help you make better decisions. Good habits include managing your day with awareness of your time limits and your commitments, making the conscious effort to build health into your actions, becoming acutely aware of your need to manage your money better, and making time for reading and research to become better with all aspects of your life.
The more you are aware of your need to improve what you know about every phase of your life the greater benefit you can derive from developing good habits.
Knowledge becomes important. You can avoid acting on unknown or unproven sources of information.
The preparation we make by gathering information will help us make better decisions. The excuses will disappear because we will know why things happen the way they do. Some things we control. Some things we do not control. If you seek that understanding, you will get it.
Good Habits to Learn and Develop
There are some good habits that can have a dramatic effect on your life. Those include learning to be a reader, learning about managing money, being conscious of your health needs and acting on them, and helping your family grow with you by sharing information.
I want you to build a better mindset for money which is why I included “learning about managing money.”
However, the point of having any good habit is the positive benefit it will give you over time. Giving yourself a reason for the habit makes it much easier to develop. That fact will give you a lot of hope for making positive improvements in your life.
When you fail to achieve some goal or find yourself without employment or find yourself faced with a difficult situation, you can easily become discouraged. A good question to ask, was it your action or inaction that put you in that position? How could you have been better prepared?
Having goals will give you reasons to form habits that will help you achieve those goals. Goals are your dreams about what will make you enjoy life more.
Knowledge can come from reading, study, and conversations. The habit of gaining knowledge will benefit you a lot.
Learning skills to manage your resources will help you relieve stress over money matters. This habit can bring you considerable hope for the future.
Learning and acting on the benefits of exercise and eating right can lead to a long and healthy life.
Making the habit of sharing with your family what you have learned to make your life go better will greatly enhance your relationships.
Make Good Choices
There are good habits and bad habits. Reading and reflection can help you see which habits are good and which habits are bad. There are consequences for each one.
Make good choices and experience good consequences!