Bring consciousness to the things
The place I like to start from when examining a habit is awareness.
Many of our habits are subconscious. We do them without even thinking. There are many things we do not even notice about ourselves until it is pointed out by someone else.
Like I never realised how much I talk with my hands until I watched myself on TV.
In order for change to happen we must first become aware of what it is we want to change.
Recently, just before we started 75 Hard, our facilitator, Didi, asked which of the daily tasks we would find easy and which we might struggle with. At the time, I believed that taking daily pictures would be the easiest because my vain self loves taking pictures all the time. I also thought that I would struggle with the alcohol abstinence because I do quite enjoy my alcohol and it was for this reason that I chose to commit for only 30 days initially.
I wasn’t too worried about the other requirements. I had no intention of ruining my wonderful relationship with food by going on a diet, so I was going to keep my diet the same. I knew I could read 10 pages a day easily (which became 10 questions from my Qbank). I assumed that because I already drink “a lot of water” anyway, I would be able to handle drinking a gallon a day.
This assumption was put to the test one day in the first couple of weeks when I almost wet myself after only drinking 1.5L of water. I realised that I must not have been drinking as much as I thought if 1.5L had me running all the way home in order to prevent public embarrassment.
One of the ways in which I bring consciousness to my habits is by tracking. My life is a series of mini audits. I track anything from my menstrual cycle to how many times I’m peeing in a day. Knowing when I’m expecting my period reduces my chances of waking up in a pool of blood and saves my sheets an extra wash plus bleach treatment. Knowing how many times I’m peeing in a day tells me if I need to call my GP or not.
Awareness also increases efficiency and productivity.
This can be applied to any habit. Many years ago, when I was focused on losing weight and thought of calories as the enemy, I started a food journal to track exactly how much my daily caloric input amounted to.
I used MyFitnessPal to track my food consumption and the results were very interesting. You’d be surprised how much that banana accompanied by a handful of groundnuts and washed down with a bottle of fanta adds up to in calories.
Or how that healthy salad you had for lunch is the caloric equivalent of an ice cream sundae thanks to the liberal dousing with salad cream.
I experienced something similar when I got my first FitBit in 2015 and was quite surprised to find out that I was averaging somewhere around 6,000 steps a day so perhaps my life was not as active as I imagined. Since then I have gone through seven or eight more Fitbits and now I know that there is more to being active than spending time in the gym and the days I go to boxing or salsa are the days I have the most steps.
Thanks to technology, it has never been easier to do these little audits. Between the calendar on my phone and my notes app and my photos and my many apps, I can track anything.
I use the NikeRunClub app to track my runs.
I use Strava when I cycle.
My Clue app tells me when to expect Aunt Flo.
My Monzo bank app automatically tracks my spending and generates a report with different categories so I know when I’m overdoing the T.K Maxx thing and when to slow down on taking an Uber everywhere. (Best bank, 10/10 highly recommend if you live in the U.K.)
When I lived in the U.S I used Mint. When I lived in Nigeria I used Spending Tracker (which I did not enjoy as much to be honest because I had to manually input my expenses.) If you know any Nigerian bank that offers this expense tracking function, please let me know.
Reviewing my screen time report on my phone led to me deleting candy crush and Twitter from my phone many years ago (I’m an addict, I still play on my computer). Recently I almost deleted my Instagram for the same reason but my vanity prevailed so I hid the instagram icon on my home screen and now I no longer spend as much time on the app.
These are only a few examples of the ways in which I maintain awareness of my habits. Years of doing this has made it even more important to me because I now know how easy it is for the consequences of our habits to sneak up on us simply because we aren’t paying enough attention, or because we are not paying attention to the right things.
So my darling, which of your habits are you going to become more aware of?
Do you already track some of your habits? Feel free to share so I can add some more to my never ending list.
This week I read
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown And by read, I mean listened to because audiobooks are really making my life so much easier at the moment. I have many things to say about this book but not here. Find me on Instagram where I now post book reviews on what was originally my travel account.
This week I wrote
something about being a parent.
This week I was introduced to
Skosko Said It A podcast by a young Nigerian woman after my own heart. She talks about important things like sex positive christianity and body politics in the most soothing voice.
That’s it from me for now my friend.
Remember that you have everything you need to do the things.
Have a kickass week.
Chioma.