Realizing Habits

How many aspects of our lives could be considered a habit?  To me, a habit is some behavior or thought that we have engaged in or experienced so repetitively that we continue to do it without much thought. 

The reason I bring this up is because I surprised myself at some of my habits once I actually realized they were habits.  The challenge now has been breaking old habits and creating new ones. 

A few of the habits I realized:

• Drinking wine, and alcohol in general, WHENEVER it was available
• Watching TV, regardless of what was on it
• Procrastination and avoidance of trivial things like mailing back a Netflix movie
• Thinking about doing and wanting but rarely executing or pursuing
• Thinking that the above list wasn't hindering progress in other areas of my life!

Now, there are of course plenty of other habits I have like stopping for coffee before work, throwing my keys on the counter when I walk in the house and so on.  This short list shows the ones that were most limiting for me and that I have been focused on changing. 

At a certain point over the last year or so, I started getting frustrated at how fast time was passing and how little progress I was making towards living the life I wanted.  During this time, I started to look at what I was doing with my life, piece by piece.  And tried to examine my life as it is today, compared to the life I was longing for.  This was not an easy exercise and I should add that I had the support of a therapist and career coach during this time period (both who are amazing and I owe so much to!). 

Taking a conscious look at what I was doing and how I was thinking on a day-to-day basis and comparing that to what I really wanted, and realizing that they did not match up at all, was just the motivation I needed to start making some changes. 

Writing things down was a huge help in this exercise - writing down my frustrations, my goals and even "to-do" lists for daily tasks.  What I found was that I tend to get overwhelmed when I feel like I have too many things to focus on - from "bigger picture" things to small trivial things - and thats when some of those habits in the list would kick in.  Recognizing that and developing new habits for dealing with being overwhelmed has been an amazing, life-changing challenge. 

Different people have all kinds of different habits.  I wonder how many people are aware of their habits and how they might be impacting their life or the lives of others around them - for better or for worse.  I also wonder what makes some people motivated to recognize and change habits and what makes others remain "set in their ways".