The One Habit Mediocre People Fall Into (and 3 Simple Habit Hacks for Success)

“Habits are the holy grail of ‘average’ people”

I recently attended a 2024 mind-mapping workshop with a powerhouse multiple NYT-best-selling author and high-performance coach. I love participating in other coaches’ programs occasionally. It helps me elevate my own approach to coaching, lifestyle, and workflow from a bigger-picture perspective. These experiences also help me craft more diversely insightful programs for my clients.

But when he said this about habits, I bristled.

He stated that attitudes matter more than habits. His reasoning? “Attitudes are intentional but habits are, by definition, automatic.” It seemed that he was saying we can control our attitudes, but not our habits.

I vehemently disagree. It’s yet another scenario where I feel the need to point out the importance of looking at things from a ‘both/and’ viewpoint, instead of ‘either/or.’?

Yes, attitude does matter. Anything we strive to do in life is amplified by putting our intention behind it. And yes, habits are automatic – in the sense that most people’s behaviors do occur without much thought. However…

Habitual behaviors can be a positive when attitude (read: intention) is cultivated and embodied.?

Most automatic habits are simply responses to external circumstances.

For example, you forget to eat during chaotic days, and then suffer the guilt of losing your sh!t with your kids or partner over something relatively minute.

Why does this happen?

Because your habit of skipping meals dysregulates your blood sugar levels, starving your brain of fuel. This triggers the amygdala (emotional/primitive part of the brain). You lash out at others in anger or frustration like a ravenous dog because your brain is in survival mode. It thinks it’s literally starving to death.?

Often, we look at ‘healthy eating’ as a means to a pretty superficial end: lose weight, look better, etc. When was the last time you considered that developing healthy eating habits can (does!) improve your relationships? Prevent the guilt of reacting rashly? Support you to be the person you are striving to become?

The simple fact is, you CAN control your habits when you do three things:??

1. Decide who you are BEcoming.

It’s easy to allow our habits to control us when we overlook the fact that these responses are creating our lived reality. If you want your life to be different, you need to show up differently. You have to BE the person who’s crafted the life you crave. And this means developing intentional habits as opposed to living on autopilot.

2. Develop self-awareness.

The negative aspect of ‘automatic habits’ is that we rarely stop to consider WHY we do what we do. This keeps us trapped in automated loops of behavior that don’t serve us or allow us to fulfill our purpose.

When you create the intention to pay closer attention to your everyday actions, you’ll start to see patterns plain as day. It will feel like they appeared out of nowhere, but they’ve been the wizard behind the curtain of your brain for a very long time.

3. Use your brain’s ‘autopilot’ to your advantage.

If the habits we don’t want can happen without any thought or effort… doesn’t it make sense that habits we DO want could become autopilot responses as well?! To put it bluntly, our brains are lazy. They conserve energy to ensure our safety and survival. So they follow the path of least resistance - those deeply carved ruts that have developed over the years.

Our autopilot habits are only so because we’ve done them enough that we don’t need to think about them to keep doing them. Take brushing your teeth for example. It’s a healthy habit that you most likely do twice a day without even a second thought. Why? Because it was emphasized so heavily in your early life that your brain built ‘muscle memory’ around this habit.

Literally ANY habit can become as easy and automatic as brushing your teeth. It just requires awareness and intention at the outset to cement that muscle memory.

YOU are not average, my friend. You are exceptional!

Your habits and attitude matter. Your dedication to creating your life on purpose through habit curation is proof of that! And that’s why you’re here.

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