So it has been a long time since I wrote a post.

Why?

Is it because I didn’t have anything to share with other people? Or is it because it is not comfortable for me to sit and write? Or maybe is it because I don’t have time, and I may not have time because of my bad habits?

I think the latter is the most reasonable argument as sometimes, not always, but at least once a month, I have something in mind that I want to share with other people and I think: “oh, that would be good for my blog”.

But then, I usually do not have time for that (or at least, that’s what I tell myself), I have other priorities. And this usually happens because my day is not sufficiently organized which is derived from my bad habits such as waking up too late.

Though, I’m not here to talk about my own habits.

But rather to talk about our well-being as individuals and its relation with habits and guilt.

I won’t explain, or try, how habits work here

Well-being and habits

We all want to feel good physically and mentally, that’s a fact.

And I believe that cultivating good habits while eliminating bad ones is one of the most fundamental steps toward wellness.

Why? Because certain activities make us homo sapiens feel better, for both biological and psychological reasons (or worse).

Not that psychology is not a biological phenomenon, but you understood my point.

Examples (being very general here):

Good: exercises

Bad: smoking

Now, enough about context. What I wanted to discuss here is the relationship of these concepts with guilt.

Guilt

Usually, when we have the intention of adding a good habit to our life, or also removing a bad one, we take the responsibility for the success of it.

Obviously, we don’t always succeed. It may happen that we fail several times, and we keep living with things that make us feel bad and without practicing the things that make us feel good.

And then, we blame ourselves.

We blame ourselves by saying:

“I didn’t succeed to <put_your_habit_here> because I don’t have enough discipline, I’m not motivated enough, I don’t have focus…”

But are we really guilty?

Most people are not aware about the science of habit formation (considering it describes correctly some of our behaviors) because no one taught us.

Does it make sense to blame someone (including yourself) for something that you are not aware of?

I don’t think so…

But even people who might know a bit about habit formation might continuously fail to implement/remove habits (that is me). And I think the reason is:

• Motivation: they are not confident enough about the theory.

  • They might think: “oh habits formation, yes, I read about it in a book. I’m sure they help a bit, but the human mind is way more complex than this so I decided to not apply these habits formation concepts on my life.”

• Execution-ease: there is some effort in changing habits. For each habit, you have to think about triggers, rewards, behavior-ease… and see how you might modify them.

  • And you know how it works, you’re already discouraged with everything, so you get hesitated trying to do one more thing as you probably think “this will probably not work too.”

So yeass, I would say.

At least for our individual daily activities, no one is guilty for the lack of good habits or the practice of bad habits.

Do not blame others

That is something that I probably did until now

People you worry about, that you concern about their physical and mental health, try to not blame them for their lack of good habits.

Even for the people that are already conscious of the changes they have to do on their life.

If they already know what they need to do but they fail, it’s usually just a matter of them not knowing exactly how to build the habits.

Guilt again

Again, don’t blame yourself or others for bad habits.

Whenever you want to add a good habit on your life, start small and try to keep the consistency.

If you got curious, and I would recommend you anyway, read a bit about habit formation.

There are some books, articles and videos about it.

Just found this summary for Atomic Habits, it might be worth to take a small read: Atomic Habits Summary

Books that I read and I recommend:

• Tiny Habits, BJ Fogg
• Atomic Habits, James Clear
• Power of Habits, Charles Duhigg

Of course you don’t need to read all of them. I just read all because I didn’t get convinced, so I just kept reading more whenever I felt the need to change my habits. (I got fully convinced only on the last one that I read (Tiny Habits) lol)