Looking at good habits as a way to improve your life can be misleading. We look at successful people and we see them do these things and we think that if we do them, we'll be successful as well.
But it's not that easy, is it?
The problem is we've got things backwards. Those habits don't build successful people, successful people apply these habits for a successful life. The successability (is that a word?) comes first, the habits pour out of that.
(I'm making a bold claim here and there are a lot of caveats, but in the interest of brevity and impact just bear with me here.)
My main pont is that don't think these good habits can be best achieved by directly applying pressure to yourself.
Waking up early requires going to sleep early, which usually means you need to break some mindless scrolling habits, which are usually rooted in some deeper emotional stuff.
Not ruminating is awesome, but you can't force yourself to stop ruminating without clearing your system of the things that make you ruminate in the first place (again, often emotional things).
And being positive is the same thing. If you layer positivity on top of negativity, you just get a shit sandwich. That shit needs to be cleared out first and that takes work, courage, and commitment, and often some help.
My bottom line is that if you are a blank slate, applying these habits would do you a world of good. But if you have some existing habits, behaviors and thoughts patterns, there's more to it than that.
Originally posted on reddit.com/r/getdisciplined.
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