Habits are funny things…
For a very long time, habits have been important to me. It has been my belief that the outcomes we achieve in life are a product of our habits, both good and bad. I have read and studied quite a bit about how habits form and we maintain them – how hard it is to break bad habits and how much discipline it takes to maintain some of the good ones. These are the lessons I try and keep top of mind as I go through life; trying to move away from habits I want to change and to stay disciplined to the habits I want to keep. As I continue to ripen (nice way to say getting old), most of my habits are well defined and the changes I make are incremental. Or should I say were.
As many of you know, I sustained a debilitating back injury over the summer. I was down and out for a number of weeks and two months later am just starting to feel back to normal. One of the interesting by-products of this ordeal was that so many of my habits were disrupted. They say it takes 21 days to form/change a habit. Being on the PUP list (physically unable to participate) for such a long time, I have found that so many of my habits I took for granted I need to rebuild. No longer am I in maintenance mode: it feels more like reconstruction. As I work to re-establish the important habits I had, it reminds me that I am not always being conscious, aware, and grateful of the things that work in life. This is one of the great shortcomings I see in some of the business leaders I work with; they constantly focus on the things they want to change in business and in life and rarely give themselves credit for all the good things. It is this credit (and there is usually way more good than bad) that gives us the confidence and energy to tackle these new challenges.
There are a few months of heavy lifting in front of me to get back to my happy place. Going forward I plan to be much better at appreciating all those good habits.
What I am reading:
Work: Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella – Amazon Link
The quest to rediscover Microsoft’s soul and imagine a better future for everyone
Pleasure: The Grid by Gretchen Bakke – Amazon Link
The fraying wires between Americans and our energy future