Forging new habits
This holiday vacation was a great time to work and improve myself.
This year’s vacation was a bit different than usual as the family and I didn’t really travel anywhere, which means it was a good opportunity to do come with new ideas to stay busy. Implementing a new routine is always a challenge when you are stuck in the work-sleep-work never ending cycle. That’s why I identified a few goals/habits to develop and set to work toward them. I thought I’d put them in place before the end of the year while i wasn’t working. This way, it will be much easier to continue applying them once I roll back to my normal daily routine. It has worked well for me when I quit smoking many years ago.
It was in 2011 that I met my girlfriend, who would eventually become my wife and mother of our two children. She didn’t want to date a smoker, so I had to be serious about quitting. This hadn’t worked for me before, despite trying a multitude of methods which included the patch, the gums and even cold turkey. We eventually went on vacation for a month to see my family, at which point I had nowhere to hide to satisfy my addiction. After returning home and getting back to my normal daily routine, I realised that I might as well keep going. I never touched a cigarette since. It’s reflecting on that sequence of event that led me to this year end resolution.
I’ve had a few goals I’ve intended on achieving, only to keep postponing or abandoning them after a short while. The excuses were always the same: too busy, too tired etc…. This time it’s a bit different. If i’m enjoying 21 days off, why not try to forge new habits in the same way that I abandoned old habits in 2011 while being away from work? This is what I’ve started doing for the last 2 weeks. I’m now training at the gym with consistency. I set my goals to being able to run 5/10km next summer and touching a basketball rim again. This implies I will need to lose weight. How much? I have no idea… I set the bar high but not to high and made my goals flexible.
My other goal is to write consistently even if it’s only a short post or text at least once a day. I have too many ideas I’ve been waiting to put down and now is the best time to forge the habit. There’s a good chance I might not be able to keep it up but I’ll never know for sure if I don’t try. At least the odds are much better this time so we’ll see!