Core Habits: Why everybody should know about them
The key to act in consequence with our inner truth is rooted in the habits that will help you grow and nurture your most important objectives and purpose.
This article will help you understand what core habits are and why you should have a clear vision about them.
Identifying our habits
We all have habits, thats a clear thing, but not all of them have the same importance or we prioritize them in the same manner. When we are kids we are normally taught basic habits by our parents and teachers at school to help us adapt and progress through life. Some of those we as adult may keep and others not.
Then as young adults we start choosing all sort of new habits that are closer to our personal interest, but we don’t always succeed on growing them because of lack of motivation and discipline.
If I could ask anyone how many habits do you have and how many of them did you choose, how many of them do you work consistently on or how many of your habits are you aware of. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that somebody ansers: “I am not sure how many habits do I have, maybe most of my current habits were grown at a young age motivated by my enviorenment, I can only work consistently in 1 or 2 habits, maybe I am not fully aware of all my habits”.
When speaking about habits I like to separate them into 3 categories, external habits, internal habits, unconscious habits.
The external habits are those that represent any kind of behavior that is directly related to our occupation, relationships and self expression. Like at what hour do you wake up, how many days do you workout, your working hour schedules and routines, how do you intercat with others and what sort of relationships do you build. Basically anything that requires to interact direclty with the outside world.
The internal habits are subconscious layers of our behaviors that happen in our psyche. Emotional patterns, mental patterns and the interaction between them that normally fuel and motivate our external habits. “I workout because it makes me feel happy” for example, could be seen as only one habit, but in reality is formed by a group of them, external and internal repeteative actions that together build up the behavior and the habit.
Also everytime I get angry or lose patience I shout to the person that apparently is to blame, afterwards I feel guilt for my lack of self control and this generates a feeling of distrust, sadness and frustration, which may be strengthening a current habit that is always present in all my relationships, but because people accept the way I act, then the habit is never changed.
So we could observe all the habits going on in that sequence and understand why I can never feel real happiness within myself and my couple. In that sense we need to understand that habits don’t work as a singular action, they are all related to each other like a plate of pasta, making it hard to recognize where is the begining or the end.
The third kind of habits, the “unconscious” are all the habits that we constantly do and we aren’t aware of. So basically most of them unless you have done a big job indentifying how your pshyche is built and also, you are consciously choosing every word you think and say, every aspect of your life and how you manage every relationship. Personally I believe that being fully aware of everything is an endless work and the risk is to fall into an over-restrictive and excesive control way of life, that in result can bring stress and unhappiness overall if there is no balance and healthy ways to manage yourself.
The Habit Hierarchy
One solution to become aware in a healthy way of our habits is to learn their hierarchy, basically giving them a value and focusing on those who are really important. By prioritizing our habits we also learn to be coherent with our truth and core values.
The question we need to ask is: To which values are my habits related?
When we start taking care of the most important habits that define our current life, the way we act, the way we feel, the way we look, the way we think, the way we share and connect to others, then all the rest of our behaviors, patterns and small habits will fall like domino pieces. The seceret is to take care of the root first and then take precise attention over the branches, if necessary.
Core values and Core Habits
Once you have identified your top 5 core habits (the ones that basically sustain who you are internally and externally) is good to get a deeper understanding about them by making a cross comparisson to your core values. If there is a habit that is not coherent with any of the most important values it means that there is somethig you will want to change.
Either you change that habit or review your values and check if that is who you really are and want to be. By addressing your values and habits you build a powerful structure that will give support to your overall life. Also by identifying your core values you will know why and what really motivates you, which will be transfered as a fluid energy source for you and your daily life.
Here are a set of questions to help you recognize the core habits that you need to reach any objective in your life.
- What are the 3 most important things in my life?
- What do I do in a daily and weekly basis to nurture this parts of my life?
- What am I not doing but I know I should be doing to get better on this 3 aspects or objectives?
- What values motivate me to have this habits in my life and get better at them?
- Which habits could I change or let go to prioritize those that are most important to me?
Please share your answers with me and this blog post with your friends if you feel it can help anybody to improve their life!
