"First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you." - Rob Gilbert
I see a heap of motivational quotes and pictures on the internet these days, they get posted to facebook or tweeted by the 1000's. Now they can be very beneficial for mtoivation but how many people really take these words on after they have either liked or shared them? I could confidently say hardly anyone. And why? Well it may come back to that top quote, many people read and share these motivational quotes/pictures but no action is taken due to the habits they have formed. Habits are easy to form but really hard to break or change.
So lets do ourselves a favour, stop relying on a motivational quote on facebook to get us going, lets first concentrate on forming habits that will lead to success. Without addressing our habits first, our endeavours may be fruitless.
Habits are consistent patterns in our character and lives that determine the effectiveness of our life. In many cases we are not aware of the negative consequences of the habits we have formed until we really analyse them and then try and change them.
Unfortunatley once formed simply stopping your bad habits is very hard and an insufficient strategy, an effective strategy would be substituting a new productive behaviour (that will lead to a habit) in place of the one you are trying to end.
Let's use an easy or common bad habit of sitting down in the evening/night and watching TV and eating. This is a destructive habit, it will lead to increased weight gain, inflammation inside the body and general ill health. People develop a habit of sitting down watching TV and snacking (or eating). During the shows you see ads for foods, the fridge or cupboard is normally close by, and your vulnerable, you then make poor eating choices. This becomes a habit, if you dont believe me try and stop it. It is nearly impossible to stop once it becomes habitual, the only way is to substitute the habit, so instead of watching TV, turn it off, substitute it with a gym session, a walk, read a book, and watch yourself start to change your habit.
Again this all sounds easy in theory, we need motivation however to change a bad habit, we need the realization that the bad habits have a negative affect on our lives and that by replacing the bad habits with good habits will give us life benefits.
The bottom line is this, at some point we need to take action, we need to interrupt our undesirable habits and change the pattern. Whatever the habits are, stop them by substituing in a positive habit, the first few weeks are hard but once that new habit is formed it easy to maintain them, it becomes instilled into us. So if you find yourself looking at motivational quotes on facebook and liking them but then failing to live by them its time to firstly address your bad habits. These are the destructive habits stopping you from being truly great. Address these habits and most likely you will not need any motivation at all as your habit is one of excellence already.