There's a reason most people cannot be radically consistent — it's difficult and often boring. Motivation, willpower, focus, and discipline will only get you so far. Eventually, you will break your consistency unless you bring along a companion. Everyone has this companion, but not everyone has introduced themselves to it — and it may be the most powerful force in your physical life.
I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. Half the things you do, you might just as well turn over to me, and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly. I am easily managed — you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done, and after a few lessons I will do it automatically. I am the servant of all great people, and alas, of all failures as well. Those who are failures, I have made failures. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you. Who am I? I AM HABIT.
This famous riddle has so much truth to it. So much of our success and failure in life runs on our habits. If there's one thing I've found to be true about habits, it's that we all have them. We all have things we do without even thinking. Things that are almost pre-programmed into our heads. We don't think about them, and we do them with remarkable consistency. The things we repeatedly do are the things that will ultimately determine what our lives look like.
Think about last week. What do you do when you first wake up? Do you hit the snooze button four times before rolling out of bed? When you get to work, do you check your email first thing? When the day winds down, do you sit in front of the TV with a drink? Or do you go for a run? Walk the dog? These are all things that make up the typical hours of a day. While we all possess our own unique talents and abilities, we all operate under the same basic parameters. We are all influenced by the power of habit.
Whether you like it or not, habits will form in your life. There's no way around it. We're creatures of habit, and no matter what we do we will always have habits. It is, however, up to each one of us what those habits will look like. We decide our habits, directly or indirectly. Either you choose a habit or choose not to choose, but the habit still exists.
How Habits Actually Work
There are three things that must be present for a habit to take root: the queue, the routine, and the reward. There's something that triggers us to act, the action itself, and the result of the action. Without all three of these things present, the habit will never form and certainly will not last.
When you look at almost everything we do on a daily basis, you find that these conditions are met in almost every situation. First thing in the morning when you hear your alarm go off — the queue — you roll over and are forced to make a decision. You can hit the snooze button or turn the alarm off and get out of bed. The action in this case depends on what you decide. If the action is to hit snooze, the reward is nine more minutes of sleep. If the action is to get right out of bed, the reward is feeling less groggy throughout the morning and having more time to get ready.
The interesting thing about habits is that they aren't picky about anything. There's no bias whatsoever when a habit forms. The queue is typically something out of our control — the alarm going off in the morning is, to some extent, out of our control. Once it's set, it will sound regardless of how much we don't want it to. The specific reward isn't necessarily important when it comes to the formation of a habit. If the reward is healthy or not, the habit doesn't care, as long as it gets a consistent reward. If the reward is there, the habit can form.
Since the queue is somewhat out of our control and the reward is the same regardless of what we decide, there's only one thing left to focus on: the routine. The routine is typically what decides whether a habit is good or bad. What is it that satisfies the craving when we experience the trigger? When the alarm goes off, is my craving to not feel tired anymore satisfied by hopping out of bed and into the shower, or by rolling over for a little more sleep? The reward is the same — I don't feel tired anymore. The difference is that one leads me to be more productive, have more time, and feel less groggy throughout the day, while the other simply delays my decision another nine minutes.
One is a good habit and the other is a bad habit. The queue and reward are the same, but the routine is drastically different, leading to drastically different results.
There’s no question that habits will form in your life, so be intentional about what they are. Rather than mindlessly allowing bad habits to form, make the commitment to intentionally form good habits in every aspect of your life. This will have a massive impact on how consistently you show up in every aspect.
