Habits are the repeated actions, behaviours, thoughts and or tasks that we repeatedly do without having to really think about doing them.
Or as Wikipedia puts it, A habit is a routine of behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. As you may already know, we have many habits that “rule our day” such as waking up to a coffee first thing once the alarm sounds, to hitting the gym before the sun comes up, driving past the ocean each day to check the surf, or simply following up dinner with a routine serving chocolate and red wine. Everyone has habits, some are good, some are great and some are just not serving us, but are we keeping stock?
For many of us regular Gym goers, Going to the gym has become a non negotiable, pre-planned, deeply ingrained habit that occurs consistently at the same times each week and will continue to occur for a long time. The reason our habits are embedded is largely because either consciously or subconsciously we learned that doing them either leads us towards pleasure, away from pain, or towards a pain that is less painful than the alternative.
Think about it, no one really wants to face up to discomfort and suffering, so it makes sense that a lot of our unconscious patterning is developed to avoid discomfort or experience pleasure. We put on a “all is great” facade at the party in order to present as likeable and avoid seeming vulnerable, in the gym perhaps we do the exercises that we are good at so that people don’t judge our level of competence and we get to stroke our own EGO and “feel good”, or we wear our headphones so that we don’t end up having an awkward conversation with someone we don’t want to. Maybe at home when our partner says why didn’t you do XYZ, you feel attacked and the best form of defense (Avoid the pain of disappointment) is to attack right back, so you without thinking, Attack your partner and end up in an argument instead of facing the pain of apologising for not doing XYZ.
Whatever your habits are at home or in the gym, the people that have the most self awareness, have the best experience of life, because they aren’t being ruled by their habits, they are creating them, evaluating them and adapting them on many levels to suit their ever changing lives.
So, now that I have outlined a little framework around what habits are and why they matter, allow me to give you my 3 favourite habits to foster for lasting success.
#1 REFLECTION
The best habit you can possibly have in my opinion is the habit of reflection. Humans, being creatures of habit, find it all too easy to get stuck with the same ones for long periods of time. You see it in the older generations where they have spent the first 50-60 years making up their mind on what life is and what it isn’t and it becomes very hard for those without a reflective thinking practice to remain open minded around all sorts of life topics. You also see it in the younger ones addicted to their phones which have been created to overstimulate you and give you an immediate pleasure response, and the youth of today have a habit of reaching for their phones almost more frequently than for oxygen.
A reflective practice can take many different looks, pardon the pun, the main thing I will mention is that you set aside some time to evaluate the habits that you are participating in from a physical, mental and emotional level. Many of us are aware that our physical habits are under our control, so too are our mental habits which also are clues to our emotions. These 3 layers of experience can guide us towards what we deeply want in life and away from what we don’t, and it starts with creating a reflective practice.
From the space of reflection I can have awareness that I keep skipping gym sessions when I have had a busy day at work. Through reflection, I can recognise that a busy day of work is exactly what every day is like and that I probably won’t ever be fit, if I keep skipping the gym on busy days. From that reflection I can accept that “committing” to regular gym training, despite work being busy, is a new action I am going to ingrain over the next 30, 60, 90 days until it becomes a given… or I can decide to change plans and recognise that before work 4am might be a better time for me to get to the gym and start my day with exercise and energy.
Creating space to reflect is what accelerates success, because it allows us to catch ourselves stuck in bad habits and change them before they get momentum and before we get too attached to them. If you are attached and stuck in your ways, reach out and I can help you to unstick yourself and create new energy and momentum in ways that serve you best.
#2 WARM UPS
This habit that humans have adopted for as long as I have been alive and probably way longer is doing old school sport warm ups that they learnt 20+ years ago, or doing no significant preparation before working out whatsoever. Here’s my favourite, it’s the one where you grew up playing footy, cricket or netball and you are still doing the same warm up routine before your gym session that you learnt in under 12s that didn’t matter when you were 12, didn’t help you when you were 30 and is practically useless for you now that your in your 50s.
You know what I mean, you go for a quick run and barely sweat, you do a few twists, an arm circle or two and bang our 30 half push ups and get straight into it. I can’t count the number of people that I have seen over my lifetime who are over 35 years old, who still walk into the gym thinking they are 14 years old and don’t need to ease their body into it or build up to their heavy working weights.
If you are over 35 years old and you aren’t warming up your body, you have a habit worth some reflection. I don’t just mean increasing your body temperature either, I am talking about preparing your mind and body specifically for the demands you are about to place on it during your given training session… and maybe even undoing some of the tensions and restrictions that you gave your mind and body in the previous 24 hours too. Our bodies are not just skin, muscle and bones to be thrown around at will, but very deeply intelligent, connected receptive vessels that need to be nurtured and cared for.
We store our emotions in our body, and you only have to notice someone who walks into the gym with a stern look and their shoulders up near their ears and twisted in their spine to realise that they are carrying worry and stress that’s unresolved. That tension can be melted with a gentle routine and imbalances can be released and balanced before loading up to heavier weights and even turned into potential energy if you can recognise it. The warm up is the perfect opportunity to touch base with the mind and body.
#3 JOURNALING
This is a funny one because journalling can be writing records of your day, recording a running commentary of your emotions or literally anything that pops into your mind, AND it can also be a structure, premeditated set of questions that you answer or framework that you fill out.
For many of my clients, I encourage journaling, because our words give us an insight into the emotions that we are experiencing. The same way that our physical actions can become habits without us realizing it, so too can our language we use to define ourselves be consistently negative.
Journalling is a fantastic way to catch yourself accepting negative thoughts as true for you. You may begin to write ” today’s training was a piss poor effort, I felt tired, lazy and didn’t achieve very much” and go on to record your exercises sets and reps.
The power of this diary entry is in full flight when you review it on reflection day. The amount of injuries that occur after consecutive days of people journalling that they were exhausted but pushed through, noticing the way one continues to burn the candle at both ends can be a clue that the person is in the habit of pushing to breaking point, and that their injuries are not because of bad form, but bad judgement.
Journalling can be the tool that allows you to recognise that no matter how good you do and no matter how often you show up you are always writing negative things about your technique or body, or that you are constantly unsatisfied with your performance. If this is the case and you have a contradictory goal of going to the gym to ‘feel good about yourself’, it may be that your journal is the key to your ‘feel good experience coming true’ and can be the tool that enlightens you to work more deeply on the way you assess your efforts and perceive yourself in a positive light, rather than critiquing your efforts harshly in the hope that one day develop some hero level performance in the gym that may be good enough.
A journal can also show up eating habits that are the cause of your weight gain, performance slumps or reveal to you the amount of crap food or grog that you put in, that you casually rationalise as “I eat pretty good actually”.
AND so in light of all this Habit bantar, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to just read this and go do nothing with it. So please, write down the 3 HABITS on a piece of paper and give them a little thought.
May you all create the outcomes you desire and experience a great life and great rewards from your training