The word habit by definition means a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior. An acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or clearly involuntary. We've all tried to break bad habits, and develop new ones. Routines in which we put investments of time to improve something about our life. I love to write, and I hope to do it for a living one day. But in order to make this reality, I had to become good at developing habits. And at the same time get rid of ones that would prohibit me from reaching my goal. To be honest, I'm the worst with habits. I find myself falling into bad ones without even trying to and it baffles me how easy it can be to fall into bad ones versus falling into good ones. It seems as if the good ones you actually have to work for and the bad ones you have to fend off. It's comparable to life in the sense that all good things are tough to attain. They must be worked for. Developing the habit of developing good habits and fighting off the bad ones is the key to success in any form in our life. Or that's my belief.

My job at the high school I work at has been essential to being the groundwork of habit-making or habit-breaking. To develop the "big habits" for example writing habits, workout habits, diet habits; you must be able to implement "small habits" into your life. Getting used to doing so can provide the ability to take on more habits as time goes on. As well as to increase the magnitude of those habits. For me, training my mind on a smaller scale has been vital to developing habits on a larger one. For example (and this may sound crazy, but try it) every time I get out of my car I've trained myself to make sure I turn the radio down, turn the radio off, and turn the air off. It sounds small and petty, but works. When I first started this I caught myself getting out of the car without doing all three tasks. I started making mental notes to do it. Making this a habit. Then I would do two out of three. Now I do all three. This was a small habit that showed me how powerful mental routines can be.

Simply having a routine-based work environment has been enabling me to create habits. I eat breakfast every day at the same time. Same with coffee. Once I realized I was doing both of those without conscience, I began to add in writing time in between or before or after breakfast or coffee. Soon, I was eating breakfast, drinking my coffee, and getting half of my thousand-word word-count in before 11:00 am every day. This blossomed into the full thousand-words being done, and the habit is solidified. To be a writer, you must be a reader. I started to find gaps in my day where I would be on my phone or having down-time. So I decided to make it a habit that every time I caught myself doing this I would pick a book up. At first, reading that much was hard. It wasn't routine. Wasn't a habit.

"Silly," you might say. But I've gotten myself used to make habits by making small habits. Inconspicuous ones that you'd think are silly do a great job in helping your mind get used to making new mental routines or breaking old ones. If anyone wants to reach a goal in their life or make a change, they need to get used to habit-making and habit-breaking. It's so easy to get out of them, break them, or never form them at all. The only thing I've learned is once making habits becomes a habit, you've got a recipe for success.