”1. Habits either serve us or hurt us. They are little programs that help us navigate through life on ‘auto-pilot’ so that we can focus on other things a little more productively. Most habits are nothing more than reinforced patterns of behavior that operate at a subconscious level.”

I’ve often described myself as a slave to my patterns; doing the same thing day by day because its ‘what I do and who I am’.  The auto-pilot metaphor is more eye-opening however as to the true problem of doing without thinking.  Habits are not bad by definition, but bad ones allowed to run rampant are.

 ”2. Interestingly, what we define as a good or bad habit is often driven by societal paradigms. Hence, exercise, eating healthy, drinking, smoking, taking drugs, etc. are all labeled as good or bad. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether they serve us or not. In short, be mindful of why you want to form or break a habit in the first place. Is it because YOU think you should or because you believe someone else thinks you should?”

I am good at recognizing bad habits in myself when I take the time to identify them.  Taking that time is however, yet another bad habit.

 ”3. You don’t break habits. This may sound crazy but you have to look at the biological underpinnings of a habit. Neurologically speaking, we program habits into our nervous system and then reinforce them through a process called myelinization. Read Daniel Coyle’s book ‘The Talent Code’ and you’ll get a sense for what I’m talking about. With this in mind, you can think of a habit as something that you’ve constructed through repetitive action. You don’t just go in and wipe out a biological code that you took time to create. This is one of the reasons why people say they can’t ‘break’ a habit. Willpower doesn’t rewrite code that you’ve invested days, weeks, months or years writing and reinforcing.
 4. You have to ‘Replace’ a habit with something else. In other words, write a new biological code. When I decided to become a triathlete 12 months ago I weighed 35 pounds more than I do now and didn’t do any type of physical activity. I had to rewrite the code which was to get up late, eat doughnuts and lounge around. I needed a new code, a new habit. The new code I wrote was to get up at 4:30A and work out every day, eat right, etc. At that point I’m wiring a new set of instructions.”

The notion to replace habits instead of quitting is a concept I have not heard of very much.  In everything from drinking to smoking to procrastination everyone always wants you to quit, whether 12 stepper or cold turkey, quitting was always the answer.  Its been one of my stinking points however, when I decide I’m going to quit something, that particular time of day comes around again the next day and then what?  More than once it took only a day before an old habit came right back.  My biggest issue is remembering I even quit the habit but I in part think that’s related to the fact that I did not have anything lined up to replace the old habits timetable and so boredom, a not busy mind, and discomfort brings back ol’ faithful, the bad habit.

 ”5. The underpinning of the new habit formation has to be a personal vision that you choose for yourself. You have to decide who you are in your mind’s eye irrespective of where you are today. For me, I said ‘I am a triathlete’.”
 ”6. The interesting thing is that forming new habits has less to do with something you ‘Do’ and opposed to ‘Someone you Are’. So what do I mean by this? You have roles in your life that you don’t question. For instance, it might be father, friend, employee, etc. You don’t question the fact that it’s ‘Just Who You Are’. You do things in keeping with those roles regardless of how you feel. This is why feelings are so unreliable when it comes to forming a new habit. At some point you have to decide that being a healthy person or whatever it may be is just who you are. Then, you go to work building a new set of instructions. Once they are built and on auto-pilot you move onto another one.”

This also is a stopping point for me, as I cannot seem to pin down exactly what I want for myself.  I know the big things, sure, the family, house, vacations, all that jazz, but who am I and what will I be doing with the rest of my life besides running on auto-pilot?  It’s plagued me for years, the sense that I’m moving forward, but with no goal you have no way to monitor progress or even be happy about whatever progress you may have had.

How should this whole process work?

I spent this 4th of July weekend at the house with the wife and son.  Very low-key weekend, did some cleaning, cuddling on the couch and plenty of soulsearching, an exhausting amount of soulsearching.  With a plan to start an at home business in August and needing to get my health back under control so I can be here for my son for as long as possible alot of things come to light.  But where do you begin?

I plan on starting with identifying any daily process that needs changing or even elimination.  Take that list and simultaneously come up with a list of processes that need to be added.  Theoretically, this new daily schedule (or weekly, however you need it) should be a snapshot of a good week for you, where all your requirements are met, plenty of time for yourself as well as appropriate amounts for friends and family.  Too rigid a schedule can be counterproductive so care needs to be taken to not go beyond the reasonable.

And thank you @MarkOOakes, for your time and inspiration for this post!

Dislikes:
most green vegetables
constantly being hungry
yellow and orange cars
dirt
bugs
creepy, crawly bugs
anything that’s boring
having to nap
having nothing to do
bill collectors
car salesmen
Tab cola
Crystal Light
food with brain matter consistency
having unfulfilled dreams
ignoring my own dreams for others
being both a hippo and a sloth
knowing what to do and not doing
some music
being indecisive
being shy
stuttering
being afraid to express myself
thoughts in my head when others view me
a day with way too many errands
losing control
forgetting things
being too literal
traffic
driving in rain on full roads

It probably took a week before I realized what I had in front of me.

1) Finding resources

As some know, I work as a computer programmer.  Still using a somewhat old language, Delphi, finding competent programmers and toolkits isn’t an easy task.  A quick Twitter search of “delphi programming” revealed all sorts of links, sites, programmers and online resources, even email lists I never knew about.

2) Ways to enjoy your hobbies

We all have hobbies, and more than half of us have hobbies that only us or us and one other person actually participate in.  For instance I have a fascination with railroad trains, mostly the old steam engine ones, but modern ones are cool too.  A quick Twitter search of “train pictures” and you can come across links for test runs of new light rail systems, pictures of motorcoachs, stories of people who ride trains on a daily basis, news of recent derailments and even photo journals of trans-continental train journeys.  It’s an easy way to find people interested in what you are, even if not all of them live near you.

3) Networking

Never before have I found such an easy way to get in contact with people doing what I want to do and willing to share their secrets more than I have with Twitter.  Just a quick search on WeFollow and you turn up with tons of CEO’s, entrepreneurs, bloggers, motivational speakers, everything you need to help get you motivated to get past your funk, out of the job you hate, or better yet to improve the job you already love.

4) Instant updates

The biggest advantage of Twitter, in my opinion, is when you check your timeline, what you are seeing is typically what people are doing/thinking/experiencing right now, all your data is fresh and up to date.  It isn’t like a blog post where someone was raving over a new idea, yet by the time you logged in and got caught up on the site, the idea has been expanded upon or worse, no longer relevant.  There’s only so much time in the day, the most useful information is typically always the most current and that’s the first thing you see, get you to it so you can get on with the rest of your day.

5) Following is free

Some would tell you that the more people that are following you, the better.  However it could be argued the more you follow the better.  Follow anyone and everyone at first, find who has the most interesting and relevant to your lifestyle tweets, then later remove the rest.  It doesn’t require their permission to follow them and for the most part, you definitely won’t be the guy with the highest followers or most followings, so use the service for what it’s capable of.

6) Fellowship

More than once I’ve heard a friend talk about someone else that I have yet to meet.  With the very nature of tweets, you can know get to know someone before you’ve actually met them.  Watching conversations over trending topics is interesting at least, valuable at most.

7) Involvement

I’ve read more than once blog post or article that I’ve really enjoyed and wanted to thank the writer for, however if your like me you hate to post an entire comment with just a “Good post, thanks for writing!” line to it, seems such a waste where an actual useful comment could have gone there.  This sort of thank you post just screams tweet, reply to them and leave your message, 30 minutes later it’s long since scrolled off their screen and no longer taking up space, but you said it.  Also, even the big guns of the industry have a bad day or have plans they look forward to, reading what those are and replying with a simple one line message probably opens more avenues of communication than you’d imagine and makes the whole process more fun.  Getting your name known happens many ways.

All this is above and beyond your own need to tweet, which is another post all-together.

Real men read ‘Twilight’: Brad Meltzer admits his love for Stephanie Meyer’s ‘girlie’ vampire series.

lol