We are what our habits have made of us. Some habits we imbibe ourselves since it suits us and some we unknowingly pick up. And both these types of habits create us, in terms of our reactions, our characteristics and most importantly our behaviour.

The habits that we unknowingly pick up are mostly due to the constant flow of external influences that we are exposed to. A friend that you spend most of the hours with, has a habit of saying “So” at the beginning of a sentence. You start making fun of them so much that you unknowingly start using it! Picking up habits from parents by imitating them, lying habits, spending without reason, are changes that become habits eventually.

The habits we imbibe ourselves are also mostly due to flow of external influence. Peer pressure, bad accidents or events, can leave a person changed. The impact of external influences that causes us to change our habits knowingly can be good or bad. A spouse who is deserted due to lack of good body appearance takes up new habits of exercising and giving personal attention as a sense of realization of the necessity of looking good hits them. Meanwhile another spouse who is deserted may take up bad habits like smoking and alcohol unable to cope up with it.

Whatever the type of habits we pick up, it is all a result of repetition. The more you do it, the more it becomes a habit. Start lying once, twice, thrice and it has become a habit before you know it. Do something to impress others multiple times and unknowingly it becomes a habit. The more we repeat, the more we are rewiring our habit circuitry, the more we are creating new behaviours that in the end recreates us.

It is fascinating when we learn that when we repeat some actions enough times, we can make it a habit. Yet, we do not take this learning seriously. We hardly take any efforts to repeat, rewire and recreate new habits that empowers us, that enables us to get to a better place in our lives. We wait for something drastic to happen in our lives, to shake us from within, to start something anew.

Let us not wait for life to push us to the extreme to create new empowering habits. Let us not wait for external influences to direct our lives. Let us not give others the opportunity to create who we are. Let us take the control in our hands, make a choice of who we want to be, and recreate a life that we dream of, by imbibing habits that serve us and help us grow.

Let us repeat…rewire…recreate.