Habit

Habit is another one of those life-simplifying tools, same as beliefs and prejudices. Habits reduce the amount of time we need to spend planning or deciding what to do with our time. But the trade-off is similar to those for beliefs and prejudices: by reducing the time we need to spend thinking about what we're doing, we may fall prey to stopping our thinking about what we're doing completely.

Good habits enrich life. Being in the habit of getting regular cardiovascular exercise increases the total quality of life. The body adjusts to the habit and releases more endorphins and serotonin in the brain. Habits of planning daily schedules or making regular to-do lists can reduce average long-term mental stress. Keeping a journal can ensure that previously made mistakes are not repeated and also that previously made good decisions are repeated.

Bad habits are addictions. The total quality of life is decreased because of actions that we delude ourselves into thinking will make us happy for at least a little while. All addictions force us to live in opposition to reality: we strive to live in a fantasy where the addiction will make us happy and are made permanently miserable when the fantasy collides with reality as it always must. Fighting reality always guarantees a loss.

Sometimes the same habit can be good, bad or neutral depending on circumstances. What's the intention of the habit? Am I attempting to enrich my own life or to be seen by those around me? What was the source of the habit; did I choose this or is it only what I've always done?

Is it possible to have a bad addiction to something good? I believe everyone can think of an example of someone taking a good thing to excess: the track runner who runs instead of eating or the health-food nut who has become a slave to food labels. The ancient Aristotle believed that virtue and vice were not opposite extremes of one continuum but that either extreme was a vice and the virtue is attaining a mean between the vices. For example, courage is the virtue in between the extremes of cowardice and rashness. All virtues are a kind of moderation.

All habits must also be an iterative reflective process. Is this habit helping me accomplish my goals? If so, can it be modified at all to help me obtain my goals more quickly or efficiently?

Habits, like prejudices, if left unchecked will take us to one extreme or another. In everything we do let us examine what the goal of our action is and how well it is accomplishing that goal. May we always have a reason for every action we take and delight to take full ownership of every choice we make.