When We Live, We Learn

Habits are hard to form. They're ambiguous from the start. They're intimidating and invoke a fear of the unknown that otherwise would have been left dormant in the dungeon of our subconscious mind.

The formation of habits is a really difficult thing because deep down, we're always struggling to figure out how our brains work. Sure, we know how we function on a surface level:

• I'm a night owl
• I'm an early bird
• I need a quite place to work
• I can work at a coffee shop

But few of us really take the time to understand how systems integrate with our core functionality.

Creating a system that works best for our brains is a trial and error affair. Systems are constantly in a state of improvement and can take years before being solidified practice.

Forming habits invokes fear because we don't necessarily know how we will form the habit. It's also really scary to predict who we will be on the other side of forming the habit.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits states this very harsh truth, saying, "It's hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven't changed who you are."

Who is that person going to look like? What is that person going to be cutting out of his or her life in order to fit this new habit? What will come from forming such a habit? Will I be more organized? Will I be healthier?

Clear goes on to say, "True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the reason you'll stick with on is that it becomes part of your identity."

Based on Clear's findings, habit formation is not just about what we do every day, but why we do it; this is reality made famous by the venerable Simon Sinek in his book Start with Why.

Another fear about forming a new habit: what if that new habit ends up not being something that you want to do or be. What if all that work to form the habit turns into something that you don't end up enjoying?

So much unknown, so much uncertainty and doubt.

How can we mitigate uncertainty? Clear has a simple process:

1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins

If my experience with behavior change has anything to say about the future, it is this: Stop trying to predict the future you. Stop spending so much time trying to understand the person that will be and start focusing on the person you are right now and how that person can become 1% better by the time they hit the bed and go to sleep.

When we stop predicting the future, we begin to shape and build it in real time.

Many readers may have questions such as , "What if I like who I am right now?" or may state things like, "I think my life is set up pretty well. Who is to say that I should be putting my intrinsic motivations into question"

To those questions, I believe the answer is that we all can and should question ourselves consistently. We are changing every day in many small ways. It is how we are designed biologically.

As Nicholas Carr states in The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains, the genius of our brain's construction is not that it contains a lot of hardwiring but that it doesn't."

What Carr is describing is our brain's plasticity. Plastic does not mean elastic, in other words. Our Neural loops don't snap back to the former state the way a rubber band does; they hold onto their changed state.

Instead of approaching our futures with fear and uncertainty, we can shape it with assertiveness and focus. By questioning ourselves, we communicate to ourselves and to what we hold to be true or not true. By committing ourselves to growth and learning, Carr says, "We become, neurologically, what we think."

Instead of being afraid of habit formation, we need to accept that we are never going to be the same as we were yesterday. The sooner we accept this, the faster we accept the unknown as an opportunity to grow and learn.

In forming habits, we must grow to accept that we are in a constant state of change. What we experience in this life changes us permanently. The human mind has adapted, through the process of evolution, to this reality. It is up to us to accept our biology, to learn from our experiences, and proceed in a positive direction.

Habit formation, therefore, is not just a singular process, but a lifestyle.

When we live, we learn.