Over the past couple years, I’ve been pretty successful at creating and implementing habits to propel me towards my goals.
The more you perform a habit, the easier it becomes. It’s like a knife carving a piece of wood. Each time the knife goes through the groove, the deeper the grove becomes.
Once a habit becomes routine, you can use your surplus willpower to start building a new, more advanced layer of habits. After a while, it becomes a formidable tower of habits deliberately stacked on top of one another. Seemingly these habits are deeply engrained but there’s one factor which can knock your habit tower over without much effort.
That factor is your environment
Back to the analogy about a knife carving grooves in wood. When you change your environment it is like changing the piece of wood, you no longer have any grooves to rely on and have to start from scratch.
This can be good if you’re trying to kick old habits, but unfortunately it can also erase good habits.
When someone has a substance abuse problem, they go to rehab. The key word’s here are “go to” rehab. Addiction is a habit pattern, there are environmental cues which trigger certain behaviors and one of the most effective ways to stop a behavior is by removing the cue.
While in a rehab facility, it is much easier for people to stop the negative habit patterns. But on release from rehab, that’s when the real work starts. Going back to the environment which triggered you to abuse the substances in the first place is incredibly difficult.
Habits While Traveling
I’m currently visiting my parents for the holidays and finding it a struggle to keep up with my good habits. In the void of where my good habits used to be, I’ve noticed old unhealthy habits creeping back into my life. For example, my parent’s kitchen is stocked with all sorts of cookies, crackers, candy and tasty treats. But over the past year, I’ve learned how important maintaining a healthy diet is to my mental health. Avoiding added sugar, alcohol, and refined foods has been instrumental in stabilizing my moods and warding off depression.
Back at my house in Portland, I just don’t buy anything I don’t want to eat. When you don’t buy junk food, you only need to expend willpower at the grocery store by simply not buying it. There’s no temptation in my house. But at my parents’ house, there’s temptations everywhere.
It’s a Slippery Slope
Habits are largely momentum based. When you lose base level habits like diet and sleep, higher level habits like writing and content creation suffer.
But honestly, seeing my habits slip away with my environment has been a really useful observation. It’s remarkable how long it takes to internalize habits and how much the environment you’re in dictates you habits. I’ve been working on a system to make my daily habits even more deliberate, efficient, effective and portable. I will share that system soon.
Stay strong in your habits, and if you find them slipping away, notice what your good habits are and the bad ones that replace them so you can create an environment which fosters your good habits and an advancement to your goals.