COVID lingers in variants. The news media is on an automatic loop of mandates and misery. Tic-toc-tic BOOM!
When I decided on my words to live by in 2022, 2 of my 3 words are habits and perspective. The pandemic lockdown and my own self-imposed immunocompromised lockdown have forced me to consider my daily routine.
Is it a habit or a routine?
It is a matter of perspective.
Am I anxious about how I just spent the last 1,440 minutes, or how I will spend the next 1,440 minutes?
Routines can be good if we are talking about children. Routines helped my children create good sleeping habits, for example. Routines, however, quash creativity.
Perspective, my last nerve died
Last week I was told that I was an “anti-crastinator” – the opposite of a procrastinator. While I am a planner personality when my paycheck depends on it, I began to wonder if monetary rewards were my answer to building sustainable habits to ending my boring daily life.
Routines become actions.
There is one routine that has become a daily habit. Journaling. How was I able to sustain that habit without the fishpole with a dollar bill dangling from it? Journaling provides me immense pleasure no matter my disposition.
The enormous body of research and anecdotal evidence says that habit formation starts with small, tenacious steps that forgives transgressions and supports the ultimate high endeavors of achievement. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse.
The first clue.
The harmony in mind, body, and spirit creates a sustainable habit in which not even money can satisfy the power of doing whatever it is whether exercising, a hobby, or a creative project that brings joy. It is forgiveness. What do I mean by that?
The second clue.
The reason I choose three words to live by each year instead of new year resolutions is that resolutions rarely succeed. New Year resolutions fade away usually by this time of year. Choosing words to live by allows me that tenacious transgressional step of the equation not once a year as starting again in a new year but every day no matter my disposition. New year resolutions require perfection or at least I believe they do to the outward world. The ultimate high endeavors of achievement happen when there is harmony in mind, body, and spirit. My journaling for example does not take perfection.
The third clue.
Boredom had killed my last nerve. Getting ourselves out of a rut and developing sustainable habits is difficult. Unsatisfying habits are always unhealthy, even if we do not specifically think of diet and exercise.
A sustainable habit must give us something that we cannot get elsewhere. It must rely on the mind, body, and spirit to achieve it; otherwise, there is no harmony in it irrespective of our disposition.
What is the value of harmony?
Is it a monetary reward? Is in the experience? Is it in the sharing of it with others?
My perspective on habits have been challenged in lockdown. Truthfully, they were challenged before COVID dominated our lives. The pandemic lockdown killed my last nerve by considering how I choose to spend them each day. The news media on their COVID auto-loop has confirmed that I am like so many others assessing daily enrichment.
My anti-crastination has kicked in and I am fully invested in creating sustainable habits that bring harmony into my life in mind, body, and spirit. Who knows? I might just become more physically active, mentally durable, and spiritually alive. If I do not fully achieve habit sustainability? My perspective is on forgiveness and the little anti-crastinator that could. Now, that it harmony!
Peace,
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