Habits

I’m back.  Once I got out of the habit of writing every week, I got out of the habit.  I would love to outline all the excuses, um I mean reasons, that kept me from writing.  But I won’t bore you with all those details.  I will say it was summer and on top of having two mini people to hang out with, I also really wanted to have some fun.  It’s easy to say I’m back, because I am sitting down and writing, right this second.  The true test will be if I am still writing once a week in another three months.  

Spoiler alert: this is about habits.  

I set a goal for myself to write once a week.  At first I was on a goal high and I was writing closer to two times a week and thought there was no way I could slow down.  Then a few months later, I had to start setting an alarm for myself to remind me to write.  I would still get my writing in but it was a lot harder and I had to be really proactive to get it done.  And then a few more months passed and I wasn’t writing at all.  I was barely keeping up with emails.  

What I realized, it doesn’t have to be nutrition or exercising, habits are hard to make and easy to give up on.  When we get started we usually jump in with both feet, excited for the changes and challenges.  Maybe too excited that we don’t always prepare for the plateaus and patterns that we have build and push through to really make something a part of what we do.  I think that those ebbs and flows are what really test our ability to stick with a habit or give up when things get stressful or busy or we go on vacation or we have some sort of life change.  

So much of our everyday lives is a habit, a pattern, that we don’t even think about.  Hitting snooze, pressing “start” on the coffee maker, putting your seatbelt on.  Our day is filled with habits that we just do.  And when we try to change those habits we have to fight really hard to break the mold that has been created over time.  Some habits are newer and some we have been doing for years, tens of years.  Adding new habits is a lot harder than just saying we are going to do something.  

To make a habit really successful, it should take some planning and it should take some spontaneity.  Sometimes the spontaneous is all we need for a jumping off point, but it may not keep it sustainable.  For sustainability we need to have a little bit of a game plan, a guide to help us get through some of the hard days, or moments.  

I felt like I had a game plan.  I felt like I would just keep writing every week for the longevity.  But a few months is really not that long.  Letting my summer pull me away from my writing was an excuse.  And like any excuse, it was a good one.  It was one that I could feel good about as I went about my summer watching my computer collect dust.  And now that I am back at it, I still don’t have a great game plan for all of life's little surprises, but I know a little bit more about my weaknesses and have started setting goals to keep me on track.  One goal is simple, if I can’t write one week, write the next week.  Another, if I don’t have much to write, write something, even if it’s small and ends up in the trash later.  

Hopefully I will stay on my goal and turn my weekly writing into a habit.  Because I realized that a few months was not long enough to make it one.