Our Habits Are Our Destiny

Cultivating positive and eliminating negative habits are your greatest powers

In lieu of surfing during the slow summer months I’ve taken up swimming to improve cardio, strength, and endurance. Photo: Per Håkansson.

Every day we are involved in about a dozen habits. We might wake up and reach for our phone, go for a walk before work, have lunch at the same place, watch the same evening news et cetera.

Many of our habits we don’t really think about as habits, we just do them because we have always done them and see no reason to change. But if we do want personal betterment, we also need to take a deeper look at our habits.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.“ – Annie Dillard

To cultivate new habits or eliminate old habits is simple but not easy. There are several different methods to explore and I would recommend James Clear’s excellent book “Atomic Habits” on the subject.

By forming positive habits, and eliminating negative habits, we can take advantage of the cumulative effect of actions and rely on effortless recurrence over energy intense repetition and distractions.