The Thing About Habits…
POV: All there is to say about habits has already been said!
The thing about habits is, it is all good and well learning about it. The science behind habit formation? What are habits? How to build good habits? How to break bad ones? How to hack certain habits? What are some habits we should adopt? What are billionaire habits one should adopt... etc. etc.
Learning is one thing. Applying that knowledge is another thing.
And ironically, sometimes the more we know about the more abstract of things, the more complicated it becomes in our mind and we can no longer see and do the simple things.
Everything we need to know about the habits that we should or should not be doing has already been said. It has been written. Probably studied and documented somewhere as well. Does that mean we should all know how to ‘hack’ habits?
You have probably been struggling with embedding a good habit in your daily or weekly routine for some time. That, and/or have been struggling with just this one bad habit in your life. Regardless, no sane human is perfectly operating on autopilot all of the time.
Consuming content on habits can help. However, reading article upon article; watching videos; reading books or research papers even, can only go so far. (This might be a little ironic that you are still reading this blog post... but hear me out).
The thing about habits is that you have got to get stuck in.
It is not impossible to break free from bad habits and build good ones. The idea is to keep working on them and to not give up. With the right intentions, support and sincerity, you can fix anything. Saying this, it does not mean that a truly healed person does not still face temptations and can struggle on some days. We are tested until the day we breathe our last breath.
Of course, the severity of the impact that the habits are having on the quality of your life will vary from someone else’s habits. There are different levels. If addiction is involved, you need to seek external, and maybe professional, help. If the habits are faith-related or faith-impacting, then there is a lot more guidance written by experts in the specific fields than you can get from this blog or any general book or article about habits.
The take home message from this short blog is: it is good to know and feel like you are doing positive things about habit change by knowing more. However, the application part is what matters most. Sometimes the change only happens when we struggle with the habits once we are stuck in.
One verse from the Holy Quran (Ayah) to remember always is:
“…إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ…”
{الرعد:11}
“...Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves...”
[The Thunder: 11]
And anyway, what is the big deal with habits? We can’t learn to do everything on autopilot, can we? Where’s the joy in living life as it comes? Intentionality is more what matters, right?
There is a much more detailed chapter on Habits in the book that I am writing as a guide for the Studious Muslimah. If you are interested in seeing more, please do sign up to the mailing list.
You can also watch a video I filmed on Habits on YouTube.
