"HABITS", DEFINED

“HABITS” DEFINED

Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits. Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they consistently follow us, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily express our character and produces our effectiveness or ineffectiveness.

But how do we define an example for habits in context of what we are talking here?

Let us take most fundamental habit of a human being, i.e “Listening to others”.

Communication is the most important skill in life. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are the four basic types of communication. We spend most of our time in communicating. But consider this, we have spent years learning how to read, how to write and how to speak. But listening? Did we do any training that enables you to listen so that you really, deeply understand others?

Are we listening to our work associates? Are we listening to our spouse? Are we listening to our children? Are we listening to our parents?

May be yes in some extend, not fully. Because we constantly tell them what we think, but we never really listen to them. Until and unless we search out correct principles of human interaction, we may not even KNOW we need to listen.

Here comes the first contribution to our habit, “KNOWLEDGE (what to do, why to)”.

Even if we do know that in order to interact effectively with others we really need to listen to them, we may not have the SKILL, means we may not know HOW to really listen deeply to another human being.

Here come the second contribution to our habits, “SKILL (How to do?)”

But knowing we need to listen and knowing how to listen is not enough. Unless we WANT to listen, unless we have the DESIRE, it won’t be a habit in our life.

This is what third contribution to our habits, “DESIRE (want to?)”

So creating a habits requires work in all three dimensions. Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the WHAT TO DO and WHY. SKILL is the HOW TO DO. And DESIRE is the motivation, the WANT TO DO. In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three.

 

Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your characters; they become your destiny.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle 

Keep Winning 

~Your Madoo