1) Our days are filled with habits
Most of the time in our day, we move and do things habitually. We do it without even thinking because it is natural for our body to conserve energy, and not use it the whole day.
So our body forms habits so that it will just keep going on auto-pilot, there is no need to think or make a decision, it will just do it!! We do our habits without even realizing it.
When we understand this, we know that we are not in control the whole day, we just do our habits. It makes a huge difference in our day when we carefully cultivate habits that are good for us.
The beauty of habits is, you will only have to do the work in the beginning when you create your new habits. After that, they will take control and you will take a back seat and enjoy the ride and reach the destination! Isn’t it amazing!!
2) Decision-making
You cannot keep making decisions the whole day, decision-making will tire us.
There are so many things going on with decision-making; we have to think broadly and deeply, take multiple things into consideration, refer to our past lessons and mistakes, and look further into the future to see if this decision will make sense, etc. Naturally, this is a tiring process.
So how to have the energy to go through this process?
Habits! They help us to do as many things as we can on auto-pilot so that we can conserve our energy to make only important decisions for which we really need to think. When regular activities are done automatically, we are not using our energy for those activities.
The goal is to create as many habits as we can so that we will be saving our willpower only for difficult jobs that actually need our willpower. If we use our willpower and energy for everything, we will face decision fatigue, overwhelm and we get burnt out and go on a downward spiral from there.
3) True freedom in our day
Habits give us the capacity to solve our current set of problems and then move on to our next set of problems. Without habits, we are tied to the same set of problems that we keep solving again and again without moving forward.
For example, if I want to eat a healthy diet and I am creating my habits in this area, then soon I will achieve this goal and I can move on to my next problem area which is to workout every day and take care of my fitness. Once I form habits in that area and achieve that goal, I can move on to my next area.
We can achieve true freedom when we create habits to take care of our priorities.
On the other hand, if I don’t create any habits to achieve healthy eating, I will be working on this for years and years without any consistent results or benefits. All my other areas will still be there waiting for my attention, constantly swirling in my head reminding me that they need my attention.
These swirling thoughts can cause huge stress for our bodies and minds. We will be tied and tangled in these problems.
4) One way or the other
If you don’t create habits, that doesn’t mean you don’t have any habits. Your body will create the habits for you.
Your body is very smart. It will not use its limited resources (energy, motivation, willpower) to solve problems every day. It will create habits as solutions for all the problems that it faces every day.
Some examples are, if you are feeling tired at the end of your work day (a problem for your body), you automatically turn on the TV to relax for a while (it created a solution). If you are hungry (a problem for your body), you automatically reach for your favorite comfort snack and start eating (it created a solution). You are stuck on a problem at work and you must focus in order to solve it (problem), you automatically reach for your phone to take a short break and come back later to this problem (solution).
You get the picture. So, one way or the other, you are doing your habits, whether you carefully created them or your body created them for you.
5) Habits and non-habits
This is related to reason # 2.
Only certain tasks you can put in automatic mode. Our eating patterns, workouts, sleep schedule, spending time with our loved ones, work and productivity, house chores, paying bills, etc. can be formed as habits. These are the regular tasks, chores, and responsibilities that we must do every day in order to live a healthy holistic life.
Once these are done by you automatically, then your brain power will be less used on them, and it will be more available to you to handle the not-so-frequent tasks such as making that important call that you have been postponing, or working on that creative project that you are not starting, etc.
If you use motivation and brain power for both habits and non-habits, you will only get overwhelmed and not do anything. You will not have any energy left to handle any new challenges in your life that can take you to the next level. Even worse, you might even resort to bad habits to take your mind off of the stress, to forget about your problems, and to relax.