Source: http://www.pickthebrain.com
By Stephen Guise
The quality of your life is largely determined by your habits, which comprise a significant portion of your daily behavior. Given their importance, let’s discuss some of the worst bad habits you can have (and what to do about them):
1. Believing “I am who I am”
Growth is a defining component of health. In nature, healthy plants and animals alike grow bigger until maturity. When an organism is unhealthy or sick, it stops growing. The life of a person is the same way.
Healthy people learn, improve, and change over time. Unhealthy people tend to believe that life is static, that they are static. Their belief that they can’t change and grow ensures that they don’t. This habitual way of thinking blocks ideas of positive change before they have a chance to come to fruition. It’s simple: to be healthy, you must first believe you can grow.
2. Being (habitually) controlled by negative spirals
Life is greatly defined by spirals and momentum, both positive and negative. Successful and healthy people are often in positive spirals. It’s important to note that this isn’t just because “they’re lucky,” but because they habitually thwart negative spirals and nurture positive spirals.
Unhealthy people don’t know how to stop a negative spiral before it starts or climb out of one when it does. Most of them rely on motivation to pull them out, but in this “low” state of mind, motivation rarely comes, which keeps them stuck in their spirals of laziness or depression. It becomes a habitual cycle of pain.
The way out of this is with small steps. Two years ago, I was in a laziness spiral. I busted free by starting a mini habit of one push-up a day, and 2 years later I have a six pack and I’m in great shape. At the low point in my laziness spiral, I could not motivate myself to do a single 30-minute workout, but I could do one push-up, and that small step sparked further small steps. That day, it turned into a 30-minute workout. Over time, it has developed into a positive upward spiral of fitness!