Healthier Habits for Humanity

A habit is defined as "a recurrent, often unconscious, pattern of behavior that is acquired and maintained through frequent repetition. Habits can be thought of as programming in our brain.

We have all been programmed in many ways from an early age in response to choices we have made over the years. What results is an established and prevailing disposition of the mind or character."

"The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." --- Johnson

We all have thousands of habits which act on a sub-conscious level, which means they happen without us being aware we even "decided" to do it.

For example answer these: "What is your favourite colour and favourite car?" Now, try and remember the exact moment when you made those decisions? Chances are you cannot as you did not consciously make those choices -- they just happened.

First we make our habits, then our habits make us because a habit is not resisted now, soon it becomes a necessity.

Habits that are compulsive, extreme, or harmful are called addictions; these enslave a person.

We cannot avoid forming habits. We are always either passively or actively forming habits by everything we do. We are all creatures of habit, and every action we take is reinforcing a habit.

Habits are the motivation upon which we grow and express ourself. If you are feeling unmotivated or depressed then chances are likely it is due to your habits. We are constantly forming our own destiny by our choices and the good new is that with willpower and the right information you can choose new habits.

Instead of thoughtlessly allowing our habits to accumulate, we have the priviledged ability and under-estimated responsibility to choose our own habits with deliberacy and intentional good actions.

"When we have practiced good actions awhile they become easy; when they are easy we take pleasure in them; when they please us we do them frequently; and then, by frequency of act, they grow into a habit." --- Tillotson

Good habits are hard to form and easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form and hard to live with. You have a choice in this moment, take time to form the hard habits to live an easy life, or neglect the time and form easy habits and live a hard life.

"Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters." --- Emmons

The choice is yours!

"There is a secret psychology to money. Most people don't know about it, that's why most people never become financially successful. A lack of money is not the problem, it is merely a symptom of what's going on inside you." --- T. Harv Eker



"Give Me Five Minutes and I Can Predict Your Financial Future." --- T. Harv Eker

A habit that was once appropriate can become a harmful rut if we do not periodically evaluate its usefulness. There is a saying that there's a very fine line between getting in a groove and a grave.

The circumstances of our lives might change, or we might find a new and better way of doing something. Then it is appropriate to update and modify a good habit to make it even better.

Habits, good or bad, have a cumulative effect.
One bad habit might not seem so objectionable, but it often leads to another, and several together can cause serious problems, pain, and anguish. On the other hand, small beneficial habits, formed gradually and unnoticed in themselves, can add up to a momentous effect in the lives of our families.

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"In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry or idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then and their future life is safe." --- Lydia H. Sigourney

Habits are learned best in youth and childhood. Helping your children learn good habits at a young age is a great blessing for them (and all those around them) throughout their lives.

Charlotte Mason wrote: "The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; While she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children."

There are ways to get children to develop healthy lifelong habits. Here are some tips:

Follow the "rainbow-on-a-plate" principle. This simply means offering foods with a variety of colors in order to cover the widest range of vitamins and minerals.

Avoid allowing your children to fill up on sugar or fat, especially less than two hours before a meal.

Get them involved. Small tasks involved with food preparation - i.e. measuring out and adding ingredients, stirring in milk, grating cheese, etc.

Children are much less likely to reject something when they've invested their own time and effort.

Children will not "grow out of" bad habits. You need to consciously train them in good habits. Yelling, calling attention to the habit and punishment do not usually work to stop the behavior (and may even increase it!), but praise, positive rewards, and patience are likely to help.

It's perfectly reasonable to ask children to take at least one bite of everything on their plate and to stay at the table until everyone is finished.

"The Perils and Promises of Praise" by Carol S. Dweck, published in Educational Leadership, October 2007. In this article, the author suggests that we need to draw children's attentions to the processes they use to create products or to find answers, not only to the products they create or to their intellectual ability. In other words, we need to help children identify when and how they used habits like persistence, metacognition, flexibility, drawing on past knowledge, and the like.

By focusing our praise on the use of these strategies, rather than on the child's innate ability, we can affect how students view their intelligence. Intelligence becomes something that can be increased, not something that is fixed. Researchers refer to this type of feedback as "process praise."

It pays to tell children what they've done to be successful and what they need to do to be successful again in the future. While young, children can easily pick up the bad habits of their playmates. This is one reason that care must be taken in their supervision.

"Bad habits are as infectious by example as the plague itself is by contact." --- Fielding

Parents find many habits and behaviors of their children annoying. When you want to change an unwanted behavior, it helps to first understand why your child is doing it.

Often bad habits are just a coping strategy. These behaviours may become noticeable when your child is: stressed, bored, tired, frustrated, unhappy, insecure, or falling asleep. Often these "bad" habits are actually calming and soothing to the child.

Scientists say they have found four keys to a longer life - or at least four healthy habits that can add more than a decade to a person's life.

Researchers tracked the lives of 20,000 people and found that those who practiced those habits lived an average of 14 years longer. Those findings of the study were recently published in the Public Library Science Medical Journal.

Scientists identified the four common factors in the lifestyles of the long-lived study participants as:

1. Not smoking.

2. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables.

3. Exercising regularly.

4. Drinking alcohol only in moderation.

Healthy habits like these are not necessarily hard to pick up, and even practicing just one of them can make a big difference. Start small and build up healtier habits one by one, it's a mistake to try the "major overhaul" approach.

Work on forming good habits for yourself or your family by planning and prioritizing as follows:

1. Make a List of Desired Habits. This exercise alone can help you become more aware of what you or your family needs to work on. How do you know what to put on this list?

Consider: Routines in your daily schedule. Problems that come up that you would like solved once and for all by forming a good habit. Bad habits that need to be replaced with good ones.

2. Assess Your List. Check off those habits that are already established. This can both encourage you and remind you to maintain these good habits. Note habits that certain family members need to work on that others do not.

3. Prioritize your list. This is necessary because it is more effective to work on just one habit (or a closely related group of habits, called a routine) at a time. Update your list when you can check off a successfully formed habit.

The adage, "Old habits are hard to break," is true. In fact it is a myth that we are able to just stop any habit without replacing it with another.

Therefore, the only way to break a bad habit is to replace it with a better habit. It will take extra effort, determination, and desire to overcome the force of thousands of repetitions; it requires consistently repeating a positive action.

"Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny." --- G. D. Boardman

Go slow! Remind yourself that you're building a powerful friend. It's better to build a single helpful habit than try for a total overhaul of life--and fail. Approach habit building one habit at a time!

Changing a habit takes undivided focus and commitment, so tackle them as they come up in your daily doings. Only after you've established a new habit should you move on to another.

Seek out support! When it comes to building habits, a support network is worth a thousand words. Trade "nags" with a friend: you hold her accountable, she holds you accountable as you work on new habits together. Include support people in the new habit itself, where possible. Have you decided to walk for 45 minutes each day? Walking with a neighbor or a spouse will double the motivation and the fun!

The key to the successful formation of a habit is the consistency of the repetitions. The power of your conscious decision to do a certain thing grows stronger by exercise. What seems difficult or impossible at first becomes natural and easy by constant repetition, as thoughts and actions become habitual.

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It takes at least 21 days to form a habit!

To our knowledge, the 21-day time period first appeared in pop psychology via Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of The Power of Psychocybernetics. A plastic surgeon, Dr. Maltz noticed that it took 21 days for amputees to cease feeling phantom sensations in the amputated limb.

Opinions vary, but most people need to do something very deliberately for 21 days for a habit to become ingrained in their lives. The time might be shorter or longer depending on several factors such as the person's age and motivation, the habit being formed, and the methods used.

In regards to time, there is agreement on two things:

1. However long it takes, it is time well spent.

2. It takes a lifetime to maintain a habit.

This means that you have to do something at least 21 times before it begins to become part of your everyday routine. So . . .

A. Decide exactly what you want to do.
B. Write it down and post it where you can see it every day.
C. Be as specific as possible.
D. Schedule time to do what you want to do.

Again, it takes 21 days to form a habit, so schedule at least 21 days on your calendar and don't let anything get in the way of your schedule. If you miss one of your scheduled days, it's best to start over and schedule another 21 days. You must be consistent and dedicated to doing what you want to do.

Once you reach your 21 days, congratulations! Don't stop now though, schedule another 21 days, and then another and so on, until you do those things you want to do, without even thinking about them . . . like brushing your teeth.

Need to remember something? Here's how to make it a habit:

10 - 24 - 7 is the combination you need to remember as a formula for habit making.

Here's how it works:

10 = 10 Minutes.
You need to do the desired behaviour for at least ten minutes.

24 = 24 Hours.
You need to do the desired behaviour within 24 hours of the last time.

7 = 7 Times.
You need to repeat the desired behaviour for 7 times.

For example: If you wanted to committ a specific routine from your favorite yoga instructor you would do the following:

- Practice the yoga routine for at least 10 minutes.
- Practice the same yoga routine within 24 hours.
- Practice your yoga routine regiment 7 times.

Voila!! you now will have impressed upon yourself the memory of doing the yoga routine without instructions.

*Interesting note: 10 - 24 - 7 = -21 (number of days to turn something into a habit)

In order to change an unwanted habit, you must first seek to understand the nature of habits.

If you had to have heart surgery performed on you because of your unhealthy habits, one might think that would be primary motivation enough to stop the habits that led them there right? Apparently not! Did you know that a recent statistic tells us that 97% of people that had quadruple heart by-pass surgery revert back to their old habits?

To understand how this could happen, first let's take a further look into the nature of habits.

Earlier we defined a habit as a "a recurrent, often unconscious, pattern of behavior that is acquired and maintained through frequent repetition", but how did this all come to be you might wonder?

A behavior is something that you do, for example an action that you take. Conventionally, a behavior is something that you act out physically, such as taking a walk, or smoking a cigarette, or rolling your eyes when your spouse is complaining. However, behaviors can be subtle, non-physical things too. Thinking can be considered a behavior, for instance. In fact, we all have a habitual way of thinking, which believe it or not, isn't pre-determined at birth.

It turns out that a very few behaviors are directly instinctual and designed into the human condition. A infant's rooting reflex (how it knows to orient its mouth to the breast) is one, and human being's preparedness as infants to learn languages when exposed to them is another. Most other behaviors are learned.

All animals, from the highest and most complex to the lowest and simplest, have basic needs they need to meet and are designed in such a way so that they know how to meet them. All animals get "hungry" in some fashion and search for food, and all animals know to avoid extremes of temperature, predators or other environmental threats to their continuing existence.

Another way of saying this is that all animals have in common that their behavior is motivated. Any animal that can be motivated, can be manipulated according to the principles of learning theory, so as to shape the animal's behavior.

There are two types of animal motivation: the motivation to approach something, and the motivation to avoid something. These two opposed orientations are caused by ancient brain systems that most all animals share in common.

In learning theory, approach motivations are described as "rewarding", and avoidance motivations are described as a risk or "punishing". Something that an animal desires to approach can be considered to be a reward for that animal, while something the animal desires to avoid can be considered a "punishment".

Things don't innately have rewarding or punishing properties; rather these properties are things that animals assign to things, each according to its own needs. What is rewarding to one animal, then, may not be rewarding to the next. Similarly, what punishes one animal, may not punish another.

Animals are born with different temperaments (genetically determined basic personalities and dispositions), and each individual animals temperament helps determine what they will respond to.

To make things more complicated, there are two kinds of rewards, and two kinds of punishments.

Positive reward and positive punishment occurs when an animal is confronted with something they either desire, or wish to avoid, respectively.

Negative reward and negative punishment occurs when an animal was confronted with something they desired, or wished to avoid, and then that thing is taken away.

A negative punishment is not punishing! A negative reward is not rewarding! Instead, negative punishments are actually rewarding, and negative punishments are actually rewarding. This is is a complicated idea, so an example will help comprehension.

Positive reward is the classical kind of reward that occurs when you provide a desired thing. Your child gets straight "A"s on her report card, and as a reward, you take her out for ice cream.

Positive punishment is the classical kind of punishment that occurs when you provide an aversive thing. Your child uses curse words at the dinner table and as a punishment, you send him to his room without opportunity to finish dinner. Presumably, there is no TV, Internet or Nintendo in the room, so it is actually a punishment for him to be there.

Negative reward occurs when you take away a desired thing. Your child acts up while watching a favorite TV show, and as punishment, you turn the TV off.

Negative punishment occurs when you take away an aversive thing. You've previously sent your child to his room for bad behavior. He is allowed to come back to the dinner table on the condition that he apologize He does apologize, and you allow him to return to the table.

To make it easy to remember, just remember the following:

Both positive reward and negative punishment are experienced as rewarding.

Both positive punishment and negative reward are experienced as punishing.

"A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit." --- Desiderius Erasmus

Take charge of your life and finally set the goals that you will be naturally and irrestibly motivated towards accomplishing.

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Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even better.

Take a moment now to consider what you will do in 2008 to make your life and career even better. Are there any little habits you could stop that are holding you back from getting to the top?

On page 40-41 of his book with Mark Reiter, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" is the list below which covers the 20 habits Marshall often find in successful people. Dr. Goldsmith helps successful leaders become even more successful by helping them stop these habits:

1. Winning too much: the need to win at all costs and in all situations - when it matters, when it doesn't, and when it's totally beside the point.

2. Adding value: the overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.

3. Passing judgment: the need to rate others and impose our standards on them.

4. Making destructive comments: the needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.

5. Starting with "No," "But," or "However": the overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, "I'm right. You're wrong."

6. Telling the world how smart you are: the need to show people we're smarter than they think we are.

7. Speaking when angry: using emotional volatility as a management tool.

8. Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work": the need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren't asked.

9. Withholding information: the refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

10. Failing to give proper recognition: the inability to praise and reward.

11. Claiming credit that we don't deserve: the most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

12. Making excuses: the need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

13. Clinging to the past: the need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.

14. Playing favorites: failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.

15. Refusing to express regret: the inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we're wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.

16. Not listening: the most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

17. Failing to express gratitude: the most basic form of bad manners.

18. Punishing the messenger: the misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.

19. Passing the buck: the need to blame everyone but ourselves.

20. An excessive need to be "me": exalting our faults as virtues simply because they're who we are.

Deep Breathing
Eat Healthy
Lose Weight
Gain Energy
Prosper Personally
Home Management
Get Organized
Establish a Schedule
Live Stress Free
Building Character
Self-Education
Self-Health
Manners and Courtesy
Propriety & Safety

If you have a habit you would like to see added on here for others to use as a habit uncovering resource your participation is welcomed via the guestbook. ;)

According to Denis Waitley here are some guidepost rules regarding change:

Rule 1: No one can change you and you can't really change anyone else. You must admit your need, stop denying your problem, and accept responsibility for changing yourself

Rule 2: Habits aren't broken, but replaced -- by layering new behavior patterns on top of the old ones. This usually takes a least a year or two. Forget the 30-day wonder ones. I don't know where motivational speakers got the idea that it takes twenty-one days to gain a new habit. It may take that long to remember the motions of a new skill, but after many years of being you, it takes far longer to settle into a new habit pattern and stay there. Habits are like submarines. They run silent and deep. They also are like comfortable beds, in that they're easy to get into, but difficult to get out of. So don't expect immediate, amazing results. Give your skills' training a year and stick with it, knowing that your new ways can last a lifetime.

Rule 3: A daily routine adhered to over time will become second nature, riding a bicycle. Negative behavior leads to a losing lifestyle, positive behavior to a wining lifestyle. Practice make permanent in both cases.

Excerpted from Denis Waitley's Safari to the Soul book. To get your copy today please see below.

1. Stimulate yourself mentally.

There's lots of evidence that human beings both crave routine and stimulation and that things go haywire when one takes precedent over the other.

2. Get some rest.

We face too much workplace stress, and additional hours spent on cellphones and BlackBerrys just doesn't add up. Just like when you deplete your battery, you need to recharge it.

2. Mix up your day.

Work life is more exciting if you change your routine. Try taking another route home from work, go try a new place to eat lunch, talk a walk in an unusual place you're attracted to.

4. Recognize others.

Reconnect with your co-workers whether you're in a large company and spend most of your time on e-mail or in a smaller place where it's not always common to interact in person. Save the gossip but find try heart warming ways to connect with others.

5. Do what you love.

Focus and develop the elements of your work that mean the most to you. Focus on building the skills and strengths that come naturally to you. Manage and delegate areas you aren't so strong.

6. Request help.

Even the most productive person can be up against a tight deadline. Ask for assistance. You can do more with a team behind you than by yourself.

7. Re-evaluate your career.

Any time is a good time to re-evaluate your career path. Do you love what you do? Change "I got to work" into "I get to work".

8. Enhance your skills.

For example, if you're not sure how to effectively present your project, join an organization that focuses on developing skills such as Toastmasters.

9. Find a mentor.

There's no better way to learn than by being advised by someone who has taken the path you're about to take. Once you have a mentor in place, find a mentee. This completes the cycle of support.

10. Make a stress-free, healthy workplace a priority.

For example, at the end of your day, turn off the lights and your computer. Clear your desk, organize yourself for the next day before leaving.

Inner Feng Shui is about getting everything aligned. Your intentions, beliefs, actions, environment and outcomes. All in alignment with what your heart is calling out for.

1. Focus on changing 1-2 habits at a time. Any more and you'll dilute your efforts and become overwhelmed. Focus on these 1-2 things for 30 days and then move to the next. Change one thing a month and that's 12 new habits in a year.

2. Tell as many people as you can: the more people you tell, the more you'll stay accountable. Talk about it on your blog, tell your subscribers (as I did), tell your family and friends. It's so easy to let things slide if there is no one you're accountable to. Because I told my subscribers and clients I was letting go of complaining about the weather, I made sure I did. And they stopped asking me what the weather was like, which supported me in keeping to my intention.

3. Focus on the outcome you want: one client chose coffee as her thing to let go of. Now, caffeine is highly addictive and letting go of it is not always a comfortable process to go through. Some people go cold turkey, other gradually reduce their consumption. It's possible that you may not do it perfectly at first. See yourself with the outcome you want. Imagine how good you'll feel having done it. Imagine how much confidence you'll have about changing your next habit.

Each morning remind yourself of your intention and why you're doing this. Find an image that represents how you'll feel when you've succeeded. Write your intention on your mirror - whatever it takes to keep it front and center in your mind. For my client it's part of her intention to create a healthy lifestyle. That's worth focusing on.

4. Replace the old habit with something new and focus on the 'doing' rather than the 'not doing'. The second habit I chose to upgrade this month was my habit of going straight from leading a teleseminar to the kitchen to nibble. Being more 'out there' on the call triggered nibbling. So I created a new association. Now I either go sit in another room and read a fiction book for 20 minutes - something I never usually do during the day, or I declutter something. Either of these do a better job of helping me decompress and prepare for my next task than food ever did. I expect within a month my new habit will be firmly in place.

My other habit of complaining about the weather, I decided to replace with taking one photograph a day - adding something I am passionate about into the space I had opened up - a double whammy!

5. Acknowledge yourself for your successes. So often my clients feel they've failed when they don't make an immediate 180 degree turn around in some habit. Listen folks, a habit is called a habit because it's an established way of behaving. Perhaps you've been practicing this behavior for many years. It's ingrained. It's quite likely automatic. This is why it's commonly said it takes 30 days to create a new habit. And it happens by taking one baby step at a time.

What progress did you see today with changing your habit? It might be just that you were aware of doing this thing and you refocused on doing it differently tomorrow. I've found having the support of a buddy works well. So often my buddy will remind me how far I've come with a change I'm in the midst of making - especially when I have a day when it just seems like nothing at all has changed. And we all have days like that.

Changing a habit takes intention, desire and commitment to yourself. These 5 tips will support you in maintaining your commitment and making the change you wish to make. When you let go of an old habit that no longer serves you, you make space for something you'd really like. Something that you feel passionate about and that brings you joy.

Vicky White is the go-to-gal when it comes to Feng Shui and the Law of Attraction. With her expertise and gentle nature, she helps women feel empowered and clear about what they're doing in their lives - even during difficult transition periods. Get her free report, "The 5 Biggest Attraction Mistakes: and How You Can Avoid them" and see what manifests in your life! LifeDesignStrategies

Mark Victor Hansen, America's Ambassador of Possibilities, is the co-creator of the wildly successful Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, and the co-author of a new book, The One Minute Millionaire. For more than 25 years he has influenced society's top leaders, and the general public, on a global scale, speaking over 50 times a year. He is also an active entrepreneur, philanthropist and humanitarian. Mark Victor Hansen is an enthusiastic crusader of what's possible and is driven to make the world a better place. For more information, visit www.markvictorhansen.com.

SelfGrowth.com- - SelfGrowth.com is the most complete guide to information about Self Improvement, Personal Growth and Self Help on the Internet. It is designed to be an organized directory, with articles and references to thousands of other Web Sites on the World Wide Web.

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Healthier habits for humanity means a healthier habitat for us all.

"Habit is something you can do without thinking, which is why most of us have so many of them." --- Frank Clark

"Habits...the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction...You allow them to persist by not seeking any other, better form of satisfying the same needs. Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way - by finding that it is a means of satisfaction." --- Juliene Berk

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." --- Aristotle

"Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts." --- Marcus Aelius Aurelius

"Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable." --- Francis Bacon

"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses." --- George Washington Carver

"It's not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them." --- Isabel Colegate

"Feeling sorry for yourself and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have." --- Dale Carnegie

"Never permit failure to become a habit." --- William Frederick Book