Breaking Bad Habits

Ok so if this whole year is really about growing as a person, I have to let go of my rules, step outside of my comfort zone and basically throw everything I think I know out the window so that I can start from scratch.  That all sounds pretty easy but sometimes the bad habits get in the way.

Some people smoke.  Some people drink too much.  Others bite their nails or chew with their mouth open.  Whatever it is, we all have something that we do that we can consider a “bad habit”.  Sometimes we have several.  In my world, the one that bothers me the most is one that I’ve talked about before and that’s my lack of follow through. 

You see I don’t put a lot of effort into things.  I constantly put forth just enough to get by but I want spectacular results.   The saying is that you get what you give and in most cases I don’t give nearly enough to get what I want. 

I’ve been good at a lot of things in my life but never great.  I go back to my sport playing days.   After every game or meet, I would get in the car with my Dad and he would tell me I did ok and then give me a laundry list of things I could do to improve.  I hated those moments!  All I wanted was some praise and all I got was criticism.  It wasn’t until years later that I realized that I really didn’t deserve the praise.  Again I did just enough to get by and for a while it made me seem like a good athlete but eventually, my lack of devotion and hard work would catch up with me.   I started off good but as people got better, I leveled off and in the end I was just ok.  Yes maybe I would never have been a great basketball player or runner even if I did work harder to improve, but I’ll never know just how good I could have been.

This idea of doing just enough to get by has followed me beyond my subpar athletic career.  I excelled in school subjects that came easy to me and was disinterested in ones that didn’t.  I could have pushed harder to be good at everything but that required more effort than I wanted to exert.  In relationships, when things get tough, I am usually more likely to walk out and attempt to let it blow over or give up rather than put the work in to make it better.  Call it lazy, call it unmotivated, or call it whatever you want, but inevitably I am holding myself back from seeing just how great I could be.

So I go back to where I started this post.  In order to grow as a person, I need to break the bad habits that I’ve developed over time in order to achieve the things I want to achieve in the future.  I want a successful relationship, career and life.  You don’t get that just by wishing for it.  I want to be more proactive in making my life happen. 

Let’s start with this blog.  I’ve been trying to keep up with my posting but I constantly let writer’s block or other things, keep me from writing.  I am going to start small and make the commitment to write every day through the month of March.  If I can’t find something to write about every day, then I’m not working hard enough at committing to this self evolution process.  

"You get what you give.  What you put into things is what you get out of them." - Jennifer Lopez