Why Habits Are Important

 

I find habitual individuals wildly interesting- "really?? So, every morning you get up, return emails and then go to the gym? Every morning??"... yet have a great deal of trouble sticking to my own.

Habits reflect discipline and commitment to ones goals, growth and, well, self. One of the reasons for my odd, okay, weird infatuation is because the most habitual people I know are some of the most compelling and successful (see my review of The Creative Habit). When I say successful I am referring to individuals who are grounded, satisfied, and committed to growing towards some larger goal that fulfills them each day.

We pick and choose our experiences. The beauty of habits is that they reflect intentional choices that add value to our greater self and take us closer to our goals. Now of course life gets in the away, the dog must go to the vet, the car needs an oil change, your best friend breaks up with her boyfriend and needs support. Still, all of these are not ‘musts’ but conscious choices that reflect your character. 

If anything, honoring commitments and consciously choosing how to react to the many options that sprout throughout the day speaks to someone who knows what they want and has a deep sense of self.

I often thought of this through a seaweed/moss metaphor. Seaweed flows chaotically in the tide where moss is rooted deeply to a rock. Regardless of how tumultuous or calm the ocean is, the moss is stays put while the seaweed goes for a wild ride. (Marine biologists… please leave my lovely metaphor alone).

Though I'd really like to be moss, I find myself most often entranced with tide, swaying wildly through life like seaweed. Okay... I can't believe I am comparing myself to ocean weeds. What I am trying to say it that self-discipline has always been a weakness of mine. I now see that this had less to do with me being flaky and more to do with not knowing who I was or what I wanted. 

IMAGE 1. Seaweed (not me).                                IMAGE 2. Moss. Me... :)

Being jobless however, gives you a lot of time to sit with the "what the hell do I want out of life" question. I sat with it, I walked around it, I talked about it endlessly, I scribbled away in my journal, I re-read articles and books that inspired me... in essence I researched myself. The result?

In two months, I grew from having absolutely no clue what I wanted career wise, to building a pretty solid foundation. My overall career goal is to be a writer (I will tell you why in another post as this one is turning into lengthy beast). I can practice and develop writing in a great number of professions; at the moment, I am not worried about what those will be. My goal right now is to become much better writer than I am right now. To reach this goal, I am taking a series of writer’s workshops, looking into journalism masters programs, talking to writers, and submitting pieces to as many magazines, blogs and newspapers possible.

I will transform each of these steps into daily habits that I will track on this blog, posting a progress report every Wednesday; midweek seems like a good check in time. If anyone else is interested in tracking their progress towards a certain goal, be it cooking each day, working out every morning, increasing their blog traffic, I would love you to join me… support and success are mutually exclusive!

Comments

[Janet]

I want to join you. Let me think about what goal I should track...

[Allese Thomson Baker]

Hey Janet,

Thank you so much for your comment! I would love you to join me on this challenge and am looking forward to hearing what your habit is. Tomorrow I will post a general outline/rubric of what my more specific goals are and the habits I plan to follow to reach them.

Thanks again for your comment!

allese

[sliceofpink]

So, I am going to start with a simple goal. I've decided that I need to figure out a better way of dealing with my ridiculously unorganized email system. So, I think I am going to try to check my email only a couple of times a day (rather than having it open all the time) and I am going to respond, trash, or file every email promptly.

Also--I'm hostessing a Girl's Night Out Blog Party in SF this Friday night. Email me if you are interested/available and I can send more details and get you on the guest list. It would be fun to see you again!