As we all know, I’ve been pondering habits and their place in our lives for a while now.

(Wednesday is the last day to save $10 on Simple Secrets for Healthy Habits!)

And one thing I’ve been thinking about is our common-sense conception of habits and how this notion (like most others) has a shadow side as well as a bright shiny side.

One thing I’ve noticed as I listen to people talk is that they are much more likely to identify and talk about their ‘bad’ habits than their good ones.

I’m guessing you’ve heard it (and probably done it!) too. We talk about our caffeine habit or our Facebook habit, or even our habit of losing our keys.

We don’t tend to talk about our ‘good’ habits. The way we floss every day. Or make sure we have our kid’s favorite cereal in the house before we go to the grocery store. Or wave to the neighbor as we’re walking the dog.

Maybe that’s just part of not wanting to toot our own horns, but I think it gives us a distorted idea about what habits are and how incredibly useful they can be.

One of the elements of habit that definitely has a light side and a dark side is the idea that they are actions that we perform ‘mindlessly.’

Mindless vs. Automatic

This notion definitely has a bad rap, but change it up to ‘automatically,’ and you can see that perhaps this isn’t always a bad thing. After all, with so many decisions to make and actions to take in a given day, it’s kind of a relief to have some things happen ‘automatically.’

It would be a real chore to decide every day how to brush your teeth. But at this point, you have a pretty-well established habit. So you put the toothpaste on the brush and go. You don’t have to think about whether to brush the top or the bottom first.

Things that happen habitually also tend to happen without a lot of resistance. This can be a bad thing (as when you habitually reach for a cookie after every meal), or a good thing.

Can you remember when something (like getting into a car-seat) that elicited great resistance from your child eventually didn’t? It finally became a habit to buckle up, and once that happens, the resistance may not disappear altogether, but it dramatically diminishes.

Perhaps you can think of some change you’ve made in your own life that was a struggle at first, but eventually became habitual, and the resistance finally smoothed out. Now the behavior is ‘second nature’ and it’s so much easier!

Be mindful so you can be mindless.

Here’s how I resolve this paradox.

I think we need to be mindful in the creation of our habits, and then let the mindlessness or automaticity take over. I honestly don’t want to have to think about how I brush my teeth, or whether I’m going to the gym in the morning. I know that if I let myself think about it too much (especially at 5:35 when my alarm goes off!), I can come up with all kinds of reasons that sound very persuasive at that hour to stay in bed. So I circumvent this process of thinking and instead rely on my habit.

Don’t think… Just throw.

–(Bull Durham)

Research into high-performance bears this out. The best free-throw shooters perform the exact same series of movements each time they step up to the line. Plenty of thinking has no doubt gone into each aspect of the activity, but when the time comes, they are no longer thinking about where to place their feet, how to hold the ball, when to release it, etc. At that moment, thinking is not helpful!
For more on this, see Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code.

So how about you? Is there something in your life that you’d like to become an easy “mindless” habit?

Let me know and I’ll either reply to you personally or write a post about it!

And… one more time:  Wednesday is the early-bird registration deadline for Simple Secrets to Healthy Habits!  Register today and save $10 on this action-packed, fun-filled workshop that will send you home with strategies you can use over and over to create healthy habits that stick!

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