Habits: Defined as something that you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it: and I would add that it is usually something that is hard to stop doing, especially because a lot of the time you don’t notice that you are in fact doing it!
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/habit
Habits can be learned, they can come from your experiences, from the people you hang out with or work with, your parents or mentors, and sometimes, you don’t even know the origin of how or when it began.
Breaking habits can be hard and take time to work through.
It has been said that in order to break a habit, you need to consciously stop doing it for 21 days and then after that time frame it is no longer a pattern. I have utilized this and it does work on smaller things, larger things have taken more time and effort.
I often think of this little story I heard years ago when I think of habits and things we do on a regular basis.
This lady was getting supper ready – it was a roast and veggies. She prepared the veggies and then the roast. Before she put the roast into the pot, she cut off both ends of the roast and then put it in the pot and put the pot in the oven to cook.
After she had finished, her daughter asked her why she cut the ends off the roast. Not having a clear answer for her daughter other than that was what her mother had done, she decided to investigate it further, as she had never questioned it.
Her mother was deceased, so she connected with her aunt and asked that her why her mom cut off the ends of the roast before cooking it. Her aunt wasn’t 100% sure either, but mentioned that was what her mother had done and all of them continued to do so as well.
Her aunt looked into it further and discovered that it originated from her grandmother and the reason she had done that was because the pan was too small to fit the whole roast! So all these years, other generations continued to do the same thing, wasting precious, valuable meat because no one understood where this habit originated from.
This always reminds me to take into consideration where my different habits stem from and what I should consider letting go of.
Some habits are beneficial, but some are not.
Questions to Ponder:
What are your habits?
Are they healthy ones?
Do they benefit you?
Do they benefit others?
Where do they come from?
