My journey in the world of habits, and how to make positive changes to them, has been fascinating so far and I believe will continue to be even more going forward. I hope you enjoy being with me on the journey.
It is over five years since I read a business book on the subject of focus. It was a 300 page book but the first 28 pages talked about habits and how your habits can affect your performance in your job or business.
I read those first 28 pages and thought about it… and read the same pages again and thought about it some more. The more I thought the more intrigued I became.
From that point on came a phrase I use frequently – ‘Your Habits Control Your Life’. Very quickly I added the tagline – ‘But You Control Your Habits’.
My realization was that habits don’t just affect our business activity, in truth they affect every aspect of our lives. Our happiness, our health and our wealth.
This ‘aha moment’ took me on the first part of my journey to establish how habits allow us to take control of our health and more specifically permanent weight loss. But that is a subject I will come back to in another post.
Although my interest and belief in the power of habits has increased over the years, for a long while I couldn’t actually give any scientific explanation to the process that occurs when we make habit changes.
That all changed back in early 2012.
Many times I have used Napoleon Hill’s quote – “Out of every adversity comes the seed of equal or greater benefit” and looking back it was so true of this scenario.
The adversity in this instance was when a member of my family had a stroke resulting in loss of use to the left side of their body.
The benefit came when I attended a short seminar given by the rehabilitation team whose task is to get back as much use as possible to this left side.
They explained that when a stroke occurs part of the brain dies and in this case the left-hand side actions connected to it cease.
But this is the WOW factor – they went on to explain that with time, determination, belief and, most important, repetition of movement of the affected parts, the brain will move those left-hand side actions and reconnect them to a healthy part of the brain and use of the left arm, hand and left leg can return. And it did!
This phenomena comes about due to the creation of new neural pathways in the brain.
I was absolutely spellbound. If I had ever underestimated the power of the human body before, I never would again.
I now had the explanation of how we develop new habits – we create new neural pathways in the brain.
You don’t need to wait for any sort of adversity to occur. No, you can start exactly where you stand right now and decide on new positive habits and create new neural pathways with belief, determination and repetition.
The most important fact I want to leave you with is that the person in my story was a lady in her late 80’s which should tell you that, as people progress into later life, the ability of the brain to change never diminishes.
“Your Habits Control Your Life – But You Control Your Habits
You Can Take Back Control of Your Life”
Filed under: Habits
