To apply truth to your habits, take a moment to assess the habits you’re already running. What are your best habits? What are your worst? Do you have any addictions? Do these habits serve you well or hold you back? Do they help you align with truth, or do you feel compelled to lie about them? What habits are you hiding? What habits are you most proud of?
Grab a piece of paper and brainstorm two lists: a list of your positive habits and another list of your negative habits. How do you know if a habit is positive or negative? Use your mind’s predictive powers to imaging what long-term, cumulative effect each one will have if you maintain it for the rest of your life. How will it benefit you? What will it cost you? What does the long-term outlook suggest? If you could snap your fingers and change this habit immediately, would you do so? Be brutally honest with yourself. Then accept any unpleasant truths you discover, even if you feel powerless to change them.
Now brainstorm a third list: all the new habits you’d like to implement. Which new habits would enhance your life? Would you like to become an early riser, go vegetarian, or exercise daily? What would your life be like if you gave up television, newspapers, and random Web surfing? What would happen if you only checked e-mail once a day and used the time you saved to pursue a new hobby? What positive new habits would you love to adopt—if only it were possible to do so? If you successfully adopt these habits today, what will your life look like ten years from now?
Review your three lists again, and ask yourself if you’re willing to accept the long-term consequences of your current habits. Are you willing to live with the outcomes you predict, or would you like to improve them by making some changes? Is the status quo good enough for you, or can you do better?
Bringing truth to your habits is an important step, but nothing will change if you don’t take action. You must accept the greater truth that if you don’t consciously and deliberately alter your habits, you’ll continue reinforcing your existing patterns by default, and your predicted outcomes will likely come to pass. If you wish to improve upon those results, you must do whatever it takes to change your habits now, even if you expect the process to be brutally difficult. Facing a significant short-term challenge today is vastly superior to decades of regret.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina