We Are Our Habits

"Your habits are how you embody your identity." (James Clear)

Do you have an important goal that still hasn’t materialized in real life?

Being motivated alone won’t get us there. The only way to make progress with our dreams and manifest them into reality is by adopting new habits aligned with those goals and the identity of the person you want to become.

A few years ago, I wrote this article on how to align our long-term goals with daily action items, and more recently, I wrote about the power of organization. Organization and discipline are the foundations to adopting and staying committed to supportive habits.

“The only proper way to eliminate bad habits is to replace them with good ones.” (Jerome Hines)

We also need to replace the habits that don’t serve our long-term vision by new ones that are aligned with who we want to be. Unfortunately it’s not easy to let go of old habits or to commit to new ones. Our nervous system adopts habits that generate an internal reward, and doesn’t stay committed to new habits that don’t bring immediate pleasure or satisfaction. That’s why most of us fail with New Year’s resolutions. When a resolution only relies on willpower, it doesn’t take long for the habit to be abandoned and the old ones to return in full force. We need more than willpower to stay committed.

If you want to learn more about how to work with habits, I recommend you to read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. As you explore his suggestions, it’s also really important to reflect on what caused pain or is causing pain in your life. Our habits are rooted in attempts to get our needs met, and the intensity of our needs is proportional to our unhealed pain and trauma. I believe that it’s another important element to consider in addition to Clear’s phenomenal ideas. The greatest gift you can give yourself is healing your old wounds.

From a place of deeper healing and relaxation, some of our most compulsive habits lose their grip and more energy is made available for adopting new, more productive, habits that will support us in manifesting our most precious dreams.

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)