Habits Make Us Who We Are

We are humans of habit. Habits make us. “We are what we repeatedly do,” Aristotle said, “therefore excellence is not an act but a habit.”

The Daily Stoic

Wow, this is so powerful. I was reading this book ‘The Daily Stoic’ by Ryan Holiday and Stephan Hanselman and flipped the book to the page with today’s date ’May 13th’.

The title of the article is ‘Fueling The Habit Bonfire’. It summarises aptly that we should review our activities last week and what we have planned for the day and the week ahead. Then, check it against the supposed actions that the person we would like to be, or see ourselves as would likely take.

Repeated actions form habit

In a way, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want to be a healthy person, you cannot be eating junk food, not exercising and subjecting yourself to unnecessary stress.

Repeated good actions form good habits; the reverse is also true. So, if you act opposite to what you hope to do and wonder why you didn’t become the person, the answer is very clear.

Write daily to become a better writer

I have been telling myself that to become a disciplined writer and to keep my blog active and to grow my blog audience, I need to have a schedule of posting an article often.

I had this idea of posting just a short article of around 300 words daily, at least for the next 1 month. I want to see what this frequent posting could bring. Of course, nothing might have happened. However, there is always the possibility of something magical happening – my blog reaching other people and another person responding to my blog post.

However, there were always obstacles – I was too tired … I had nothing to write about … I had an idea of what to write, but I just didn’t have the creativity and resourcefulness to turn it into a short article within the 30 minutes and I didn’t want to spend the next 2 hours cracking my brain on this.

In short, I was lazy and giving myself excuses for not doing something. But to become a better writer, I need to write constantly. Even if it is just one word, getting down to the task of writing daily would eventually help me form a good habit. So, even though my bed seems a more welcoming place, I decided to just switch on my laptop and share this enlightening piece of knowledge that I have just read with anyone who this reading this blog.

Take action now!

May we become the person that we would like to be – not tomorrow but starting right at this moment. Now is the best time.