Habits

Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Habits shape our daily lives in how we perform routine actions, accomplish tasks and make decisions. Many habits are created unconsciously, and they are typically carried out automatically -- how we brush our teeth or do the laundry or make our bed (or not). Habits help us all to do the many things we need and want to do daily. Because we can carry out a habit without having to think about it, it frees up our thought processes to work on other things. Awareness of the power of habits matters. The best way to change an existing habit is to create new ones to replace it, and/or connect a new habit with an existing one (such every time I brush my teeth, I think of one thing I’m grateful for).

Class Resources

Power of Habits

Pulitzer Prize winning writer Charles Duhigg combines informational facts from research, anecdotes from real events, and personal experience with insightful observations to explain why human behaviors are compelled by habit.

Hidden Brain: Gratitude

Shankar Venadtam examines how many of us struggle with self-control and assume willpower is the key to achieving our goals. But there’s a simple and often overlooked mental habit that can improve our health and well-being — the practice and habit of gratitude.